This is one of a series of flash-fiction pieces that The New Yorker will be presenting throughout the summer. Read the rest of the stories here.

Nobody knew what to do at first. Deposit slips fluttered to the floor. A man touched the rim of his baseball cap to make sure it was still there.

The bank robber seemed just as shocked. There were too many people. He realized that, despite all his preparation, he hadn’t considered the afternoon rush.

“Put your hands up,” he said, and people more or less did that. “You’re all hostages now.”

“We don’t want to be hostages,” someone said.

“That’s not how this works,” the bank robber said. “I come in, you all become hostages, I get some money and leave, and then you’re free again.”

“We’re afraid,” someone else said.

The bank robber got it—he was also afraid.

A bank teller waved her hand, which was still raised above her head. “I’ll be the hostage,” she said.

“You are already one of many hostages,” the bank robber said.

“Then everyone can go and sit in the old vault,” she said. “There’s no way to call for help in there, and it has a heavy iron door. That means fewer people to mess things up. And I can access everything up front.”

It was a good plan and made the bank robber feel less like he had screwed up by coming in during the rush. “You’re sure there are no alert switches or emergency phones in there?”

“It’s a hundred years old,” she said. “You couldn’t get a call out of there if you tried.”

The hostages all turned to see what he would say. He shifted his gun from one hand to the other.

“Fine,” he said.

They all went to the old vault and the hostages filed in silently. There was plenty of room for them to sit or stand; they would be comfortable there. The teller turned an iron wheel to lock them in. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get to work.”

She opened every teller station using keys on a ring she kept at her waist. He watched her stack the money in a duffelbag, one of two he had brought for the purpose. He was grateful for her knowledge and assistance, if a little unsettled that she was offering it all so freely.

“You’re not putting a dye pack in there, are you?” he asked.

The woman turned to look at him, and he was surprised to see that his question seemed to have wounded her. “I would never,” she said. “What would make you say that?”

“I’m sorry.” He tried to think about what would make him say it; he had seen a dye pack in a movie once and knew that it could explode and make a terrible mess. There was a lot that he didn’t know about robbing banks, and every moment was another opportunity to reveal his ignorance.

She seemed to sense his hesitation and plucked a pen from one of the teller stations, rolling it across the counter toward him. “Why don’t you go sit down over there and draft a taunting letter to the police,” she said. She pointed to the mortgage officers’ desks, which ringed the lobby.

He pulled back the leather chair behind one of the desks and sat. It felt funny to be behind a desk, dressed as he was in black fatigues. The bank robber couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat behind any desk, and he’d certainly never been near one this nice. He stared at the empty page. Writing had never interested him in school; though he knew he had something to say, it gave him an uneasy feeling. He put his gun in the outgoing-mail tray and dumped a box of paper clips onto the desk.

The woman noticed him stringing paper clips together. “You could start with, ‘Fuck you, pigs, dumb motherfuckers,’ ” she said. “Or, if you want it to be more personal, you could try, like, ‘I’m the motherfucking heist king and you know it.’ It depends on the tone you want.”

“Motherfucking heist king,” he repeated, writing it down.

“You’re welcome.”

“Yes,” he said, a little annoyed. “Thank you.”

He printed “Motherfucking Heist King” at the top of the page, then wrote it again and again, trying out different handwriting styles and lining the paper with a chain-link pattern. “Motherfucking Heist King”—it really was a nice phrase. Maybe if he could make a design with it, they would get the point of what he was trying to say. What was he trying to say, anyway? He realized that he hadn’t actually considered writing a letter until it was suggested to him.

After a while, the teller came out from behind the counter to get his other bag. She looked over his shoulder at the page, which by then was covered in designs of his own creation. “Want me to write it?” she asked.

He handed her the paper and stood, surprised to find himself so irritated at someone who seemed only to want to help him. Walking to one of the high windows, he saw that a few police cars had begun to gather. “Maybe I should go,” he said.

She went back behind the counter with a pointed sigh and started to fill the second bag. He watched her poking around the cabinets. Outside, the police were setting up a barricade.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” the teller said. She sounded angry. “I have to write your stupid letter and pack up this cash and get everything organized. I’m only one person.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“This obviously isn’t about me,” she said. “I’ve seen this a million times before. You come in here for a little quick cash, you want to make a getaway. Am I wrong?”

“You’re the bitch who volunteered.”

“Wow,” she said. “I guess I must have said something to deserve that.”

She sounded exactly like his mother, which the bank robber realized was just typical.

“Maybe you should go and get in the vault now,” he said. “You’ve helped me out. I appreciate you. I can take it from here.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “You think I’d let you finish this alone? I’ve done too much for you already to just walk away. I’m in it for the long haul.” She threw the last stacks of cash into the duffel so hard that it slid off the counter, sending its contents spilling across the floor.

He turned back to the window. If he just stayed out of her way, it would be over soon enough.

Grumbling, she crouched down to clean it all up. At the very least, she figured, he could have helped when the bag fell. Thinking of others clearly wasn’t in his nature. She was actually getting pretty tired of his attitude: his inability to speak up, his dismal lack of self-confidence, his unwillingness to take a stand with either the hostages or the police. He didn’t have a point of view or an exit strategy, was content to remain in limbo. It was pathetic, really.

When he approached the counter, the blank look on his face sickened her; it was the look of a man completely unable to understand the future or to confront it.

“What?” he asked.

She slid the bag across the counter and spread her arms wide, levelling upon him the full power of her scorn. “You might as well just fucking shoot me,” she said.