At seven feet tall and a thousand pounds, entrances to most dwellings are a problem, the notable exception being bay doors. Hulk makes the effort when the mood strikes him, stooping, bending, contorting, shimmying. With his umbrella insurance policy, patience isn’t necessarily required of him, as long as he can stomach the escalating premium. What impatience looks like: steel or wood doors torn from their hinges and tossed aside like sheets of cardboard, plowed-through door frames. shoulder-contoured sections of missing wall, scattered glass fragments.
Hulk isn’t happy with his bank when they EFT the funds from his account to cover the damages. For how much they assess his account for he’s paid up for future demolition. He doesn’t find out until he’s at the branch checking his balance, the teller nervously rifling her keyboard, a mad plastic scramble, pause, mad plastic scramble, circular mouse glide, mouse click, mouse glide, mouse click, mad plastic scramble, mouse glide, mouse click, mouse click, mouse click, mad plastic scramble, mouse glide, mouse click. He’s huge and full of muscles and he’s green for God’s sake, he’s gruff, none of the usual spry quips or weather-related banter, Hulk’s an economist of the language. The waterline rises perceptibly when Hulk’s in the pond and the fish are perfectly still, when Hulk arrives to the sound of shattering glass.
The bank could have let him know. It would have seemed less like they were helping themselves to his funds, as if as stewards of his money the bank is entitled to some of it, or any of it, at their discretion. He has enough of it that they can’t resist, not offering him the opportunity to negotiate the amount or compare repair estimates.
“Excuse me, Dave, the Hulk’s out here and he’d like a word with you.”
Dave the Branch Manager smiling absurdly, at how emaciated, how atrophied he is by comparison, as he introduces himself to Hulk. Dave apologizing, Hulk absolutely should have been notified, Dave politely denying Hulk’s request to transfer the funds back to his account, theoretically, numbers electronically transferred out, numbers transferred back in, a little 10-key action and a couple of mouse clicks to determine how much money he does or doesn’t have.
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that.”
The words hang echoless and still in the air. People are listening and pretending not to, anxious to see how Hulk will respond, but he doesn’t, instead lumbering back toward the compromised entrance. Dave following hesitantly, not sure if he needs to, wondering if Hulk is leaving, hoping so, wishing it would be that easy even if it never is. Hulk pauses at the entrance, surveying the damage, looking over the twisted metal frame and jagged shards of glass, Hulk pointing out that there is no structural damage to the wall, yet. Though he refers to himself in the third person and speaks monosyllabically, eschewing adjectives or prepositions and disdaining conjunctions, he has Dr. Banner’s nuclear physicist brain.
If this isn’t enough to sway Dave, Hulk gives him something else to consider.
“Hulk could make big stink.”
Ah, yes. Hulk the celebrity, a case to be made for the too-small twin doors as discriminatory toward people of stature. There has to be a would-be civil rights attorney ready to take up the cause, soliciting other Americans of stature to join a class action with Hulk as high-profile fellow plaintiff.
Hulk isn’t just another customer, Hulk is one the bank’s highest net-worth depositors, with his paid appearances at poker runs and ultimate fights and MMA main events and tractor pulls, the endorsements, royalties from sales of Hulk-trademarked paraphernalia like beach towels, Christmas cards with Hulk depicted in Santa regalia, Hasbro Marvel The Incredible Hulk Talking Smash Bash Fists™, Hulk hands beer holders.
“Let me see what I can do.”
Dave knows if he promises to see what he can do he’s committed to doing something, as far as the customer is concerned, and it gets worse if he sees what he can do and it turns out he can’t do anything. Consulting Lisa the District Manager seems wise, Lisa as cover, let Lisa make the call, but then he picks up the phone and thinks a few moves ahead. Knowing exactly what call she’ll make, and who she’ll let deliver the bad news, Hulk a hulking mass of human capable of breathtaking devastation.
Nearby in the lobby, on opposing sides of a desk too out in the open, the branch mortgage specialist trying to close a loan, the customer sitting back, arms folded.
“If you can’t tell me what the work gap fee is for, I’m out. Seems kind of outrageous that you don’t even know what you’re charging me for.”
“I understand, sir, I wish I could tell you, I don’t determine the closing costs. I have nothing to do with that.”
“You represent the bank and the bank determines the closing costs, so in my eyes you’re the bank.”
“We’re talking about a hundred and twenty-five dollars.”
They’re both looking down at a long list of closing costs and avoiding eye contact, the branch mortgage specialist referencing the hundred twenty-five by pointing to it with his bank-logo pen.
“Okay, if you think that’s an insignificant amount, why don’t you waive it?”
“I meant in relation to the amount of your mortgage, or what you’ll save in interest with the lower rate we’re, I’m, offering you, or…”
Hulk wanders over and stands near and facing them and their negotiation suspends, both men turning to him, watching him from their sitting positions without a word. Where ordinarily they might wonder if they can help him, implying that he’s inserting himself into their private business. It’s the ever-loving Hulk, though, and Jesus he’s big up close. Hulk harrumphs like a buffalo about to charge.
Dave knows, Lisa the DM will say, “DO NOT put the funds back in his account.” Hulk could react one of several ways and none of them good. Taking out the entire wall around the entranceway, charges of discrimination/negative media attention, taking his high net worth to a competitor, tanking the branch’s P & L and costing everyone their bonus, his included. If he isn’t fired. And always that threat, the unspoken possibility force-placing any directive no matter how poorly conceived, or for failing to meet assigned quotas for opening new checking or savings accounts or CD’s.
“How are your numbers?”
Always the first thing out of Lisa’s mouth when she sees him, when she calls, and she calls two or three times a day if she doesn’t visit. She calls between meetings, on her way in, at lunch, driving to her next meeting, on her way home, if she’s away at training. Checking accounts, savings accounts, CD’s, referrals to the investment guy or the mortgage specialist, more, more, more, more this month than last, more next month than this, grow or die, make the numbers go up or lose your job. Open more CD’s, when the branch pays less than one percent interest for balances of less than $25,000 with maturities under three years. Terrify then mollify them, tell them how risky the stock market is, the older they are the more risk averse they need to be, and CD’s are FDIC insured. As if that works.
“From now on, Dr. Ban…Hulk…I’d ask you to please approach at the drive-thru window rather than coming inside, that way we can avoid this situation,” his voice tailing away. Telling Hulk to do anything is absurd. Hulk ignores him, waiting on the teller to print a slip showing the credit back to his account, the teller fat-fingering the keyboard, oops, backspace, retype, “here you are sir,” the receipt tiny in his hand.
Hulk ambles back through the open entranceway, squeezing daylight into corners as he passes through, ducking slightly, out into the parking lot and into a deep knee bend, disappearing into the air like falling up. Inadvertently destroying a section of parking lot where he pushes off, depressing the pavement and leaving a pothole that would bend any axle or snap any CV joint, ruin any expensive rim, flatten a tire, initiate a small claims action if not immediately repaired.
Dave sighing as he surveys the damage, wondering what he’ll put for his reason for leaving this position on the application for his next one. They always want to know.
As much as he does it Hulk enjoys leaping, launching himself, airborne bull soaring over a world of china, quickly being somewhere else from where he just was, sometimes as far as a zip code away. In much the same way as firing a bullet up into the sky, knowing the bullet will land, but where? As inconsequential as where the bullet might land, where Hulk might land surely isn’t. At half a ton, anywhere Hulk lands he leaves a mark. Dr. Banner calculates Hulk’s velocity at over a thousand pounds freefalling from an estimated height of three thousand feet, and the PSI when he lands is off the charts, registering at the lowest end of a base-10 logarithmic scale.
Hulk knows where the parks are within the metropolitan area or the open spaces in the suburbs or outlying areas, cabbage fields, manicured lawns surrounding office buildings, golf courses, and he catapults himself to these places. To minimize the potential damage, wherever he lands is wherever he lands, no amount of flailing mid-air will change that. Hulk crashing into an OBGYN clinic at the edge of a park once, slamming down in front of a woman with her legs up in stirrups waiting to be examined.
When he lands on soft ground, he leaves deep foot prints like tree stumps ripped from the earth, more than once on a golf course, the grounds crews opting to create bunkers wherever the Hulk may have landed, by digging out the impacted grounds and filling in the excavated area with imported sand, a finer grain.
Quite the sight for the golfers, the green speck in the sky growing quickly in size and landing suddenly and with enough impact to deliver a tremor throughout most of the eighteen-hole course, leaves trembling like astonished murmurs, water hazards rippling like visible echoes from his abrupt arrival.
He lands in an outlying area near the freeway and runs south on the freeway into the downtown area, crumpling the freeway like a mishandled bag of potato chips spilled in his wake. It takes forever to fix the freeway, an important artery to the downtown business district, traffic snarls at all hours and particularly suffocating during rush hour.
Fuckin’ Hulk.
