At a bank he’d been tipped off to by Cameron, Henry converted the pile of hundred dollar bills he’d accumulated over several appointments into a cashier’s check.

It was the sort of bank that didn’t have a branch, per se. It was just a small office in a small building with no sign on the door. In other words, it specialized in laundering immoral earnings like Henry’s.

The only other clients in the office that day were a young gentleman who clutched his backpack, even in this safe environment, with the paranoia of the inveterate weed smoker, and a well-turned-out young woman who was (Henry happened to know from a client) one of the city’s best art forgers.

The elegant British gentleman who ran the place didn’t have a secretary. He opened his office door and looked at Henry, his hand sweeping in a “do come in” gesture without a word. The clients might have to see each other from time to time, but names weren’t to be bandied about.

The gentleman, who looked like M from the old Bond movies, didn’t do pleasantries. “The usual recipient, sir?”

“Yes, please,” Henry said, pushing the envelope of cash across the desk. M took the money and swiftly turned around in his chair, dropping the money into a counting machine. He tapped at his computer, and the custom printer popped out a check to the Rainbow School in the amount of $12,000.

“See you again soon, sir,” M said. Henry realized he never used Henry’s name, had in fact probably made a point of forgetting it if ever he had known it.

His business done, Henry headed for Greenwich Village.

The security guard at the door of the Rainbow School of New York nodded and smiled at Henry, who smiled back. School was over for the day, and the building was quiet. Once inside, he turned right, straight into the business office.

The Rainbow School was located in one of those buildings that developers were always eyeing lustfully. It had been a four-story apartment building, owned by one of those old time Village eccentrics, heir to a shampoo fortune or some such. In the early 2000s, after some political wrist-twisting, and amid the usual outcries about depleting rental stock, the building had been converted into a private school for peculiar children.

“Mr. Davis!” Jake greeted him from behind the counter. “So nice to see you.”

“Jake, always a pleasure.” They kissed over the counter, and Henry felt a pleasant little stirring of desire.

Jake was one of the school’s former students, a trans man who’d gone on to NYU and a degree in Finance. He’d worked on Wall Street only long enough to pay for his surgeries, and then returned happily to the school’s fold to work as its financial administrator.

Chit chatting at a school fundraiser one night, after several cocktails, Henry had expressed his attraction to Jake, and a genuine curiosity about what it would be like to have sex with a trans man. Jake expressed his own attraction to Henry, and Henry was soon pleasantly educated.

“Love your new pictures,” Jake murmured, taking the envelope Henry slid across the counter. “The Dillinger ones, I mean.”

“Oh, are there new ones up? I did a shoot with Cameron but it got cut short…”

“I know, his mom. How’s she doing?”

“Better. Stable. How’s Erik?”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Erik is Erik. The whole sword-making thing, you know. We got that summer place upstate in Hudson, where he can have his forge. Now he never comes to the city. It’s like he’s living in this Viking dream world up there where he can pretend civilization doesn’t exist. I have to go all the way up there if I want to see him.”

Henry always smiled when hearing a New Yorker describe a two hour drive as “all the way up there.”

“Well, give him my best.”

“And you give Leonard mine, would you?”

“I will. I’m off to see him right now.”

“Oh,” Jake said, grabbing something off his desk. “Can you give him this? Save the school some postage. It’s not good news, I’m afraid.”

Henry didn’t blink or break his smile. Christina was a straight-A student, and he knew that the only bad news Jake could give him was another tuition hike. He channeled his hero in these moments – What Would Neal Caffrey Do? Would the absurdly optimistic demeanor of the charming antihero of White Collar ever change in the face of an obstacle as silly as mere money? It would not. There was always a way to make more money appear out of nowhere.

“Well, I’m certain that the money is going to the right place.”

“It is. It’s getting harder to keep good teachers without another pay raise. Half of them live in Queens now. I mean, how dedicated do you have to be to do that, right? My god, some of them are half an hour from a subway stop.” He shuddered.

Henry kept his smile in place as he kissed Jake again in goodbye, kept it past the security guard, and then, back on the streets of New York, he let himself frown.

Well out of sight of the school, he stopped in front of a closed store and opened the envelope.

Fuck! A twenty percent increase in tuition next semester. He had just paid The Bill, and barely had time to dream about what he was going to do with all his extra Colin money… and now this.

Neal Caffrey, he reminded himself. Neal Caffrey would smile and shrug it off. He’d forge a painting or he’d rob a fellow criminal or… something. Something always comes up for Neal. And so it will for you.

Somewhat buoyed by this thought, he put the bill back in the envelope and headed to his brother’s apartment.