On a Hudson Bay blanket the mother was wiping and dabbing at the muddy rolls and creases of her little girl. A gust of wind whipped up leaves around the two, and it was like last night on TV. Some pear-shaped Spanish grandma had been crammed into this glass booth with money going nuts all around her. The grandma had grabbed at the bills, stuffing her clothes with money, this twisted look of desperation on her leathery face. She had looked so stupid. He couldn’t tell if the point was to degrade the grandma, but he could tell that this grandma didn’t care. When the wind in the booth was turned off all the money dropped and lay in a pile at her feet. All that money just right there, but not for her. She had gotten some, but not enough. Never enough. Not quite like money, brittle and wet leaves stuck to the felt of the hippy mother’s dreadlocks and onto the swamp of the little girl. “I’ll just be a sec,” the hippy mother said when she saw him there on the porch.
