The Heaven Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Morning.”
    “Morning.”
    Mornings all around. The long row of tellers readied for business to his left. A dozen offices with picture windows now sat half-staffed on his right. Hushed tones carried through the lobby. High heels clacked along the floor to his right and he turned, half expecting to see Sidney Beech. But then, she’d already left with the others for the bank’s annual conference in Miami, hadn’t she? Instead it was Mary, a teller he’d met once or twice. She stepped by with a smile. Her perfume followed her in musty swirls, and Kent pulled the scent into his nostrils. Gardenia blossoms.
    A dozen circular pedestals stood parallel to the long banking counter, each offering a variety of forms and golden pens to fill them out. A twenty-foot brass replica of a sailing yacht hovered five feet off the floor at the foyer’s center. From a distance it appeared to be supported on a single, one-inch gold pipe under its hull. But closer inspection revealed the thin steel cables running to the ceiling. Nevertheless, the effect was stunning. Any lingering thoughts of the building’s historic preservation evaporated with one look around the lobby. The architects had pretty much gutted this part of the building and started over. It was a masterpiece in design.
    Kent stepped forward, toward the gaping hall opposite the entrance. There the marble floor ended, and a thick teal carpet ran into the administration wing. A large sea gull hung on the wall above the hall.
    Today it all came to him like a welcoming balm. The sights, the smells, the sounds all said one word: Success. And today success was his.
    He’d come a long way from the poor-white-trash suburbs of Kansas City. It had been the worst of all worlds—bland and boring. In most neighborhoods you either had the colors of wealth or the crimes of poverty, both of which at least introduced their own variety of spice to a boy’s life. But not on Botany Street. Botany Street boasted nothing but boxy manufactured homes sporting brown lawns only occasionally greened by manual sprinklers. That was it. There were never any parades on Botany Street. There were never any fights or accidents or car chases. To a household, the neighbors along Botany Street owed their humble existence to the government. The neighborhood was a prison of sorts. Not one with bars and inmates, of course. But one to which you were sentenced with the drudgery of plowing through each day, burdened with the dogged knowledge that, even though you weren’t running around stealing and killing, you were about as useful to society as those who did. Your worthless state of existence meant you would have to park your rear end here on Stupid Street and hook up to the government’s mighty feeding tube. And everyone knew that those on the dole were a worthless lot.
    Kent had often thought that the gangs across town had it better. Never mind that their purpose in life was to wreak as much havoc as possible without going to prison; at least they had a purpose, which was more than he could say about those on Botany Street. Stupid Street .
    His candid observations had started during the third grade, when he’d made the decision that he was going to be Jesse Owens one day. Jesse Owens didn’t need a basketball court or a big business or even a soccer ball to make the big bucks. All Jesse Owens needed were his two legs, and Kent had a pair of those. It was on his runs beyond Botany Street that Kent began to see the rest of the world. Within the year he had arrived at two conclusions. First, although he enjoyed running more than anything else in his little world, he was not cut out to be Jesse Owens. He could run long, but he could not run fast or jump far or any of the other things that Jesse Owens did.
    The second thing he figured out was that he had to get off Botany Street. No matter what the cost, he and his family had to get out.
    But then, as a first-generation immigrant whose parents had begged their