Wednesday morning, the paint shop called to inform me the work was done and I could pick up my baby. I headed over right away, eager to ditch the loaner and go home in style.
My car waited for me outside, and the shop’s owner had decided to go intense on the amount of glitter decorating the front before fading it out along the car’s body until the rear was a metallic silver dusted with trace amounts of glitter. She sparkled in the sunlight, and I loved everything about her.
I wanted to hug her hood, but I figured I’d get my filthy fingerprints all over her shiny paint job if I did.
“She’s perfect.”
“She’s definitely going to turn heads. Look inside.”
As promised, he’d done a lot of work on the accents in the car, and anything that could be covered in glitter was. I dug out my credit card and waved it. “Take my money, please. This is even better than I thought it would be.”
All in all, I thought my midlife crisis was starting off well, and after taking the time to exchange pleasantries with the shop’s owner and pay my bill, I headed to my landlord’s office to notify him I wouldn’t be staying. With the housing market as it was, I expected he’d love getting rid of me so he could bring in someone willing to pay more.
I’d gotten a good deal initially, and the lease, signed through the previous owner of the building, had barred anyone from raising my rent beyond a certain percentage each year. The new landlord, a decent enough fellow, had agreed to keep the terms of my lease, as I paid my rent on time, never caused him any trouble, and usually did my own damned repairs unless I couldn’t handle it on my own.
As hoped for, he cut me out of my lease early, and he gave me to the end of the month to vacate.
When I returned home, Wolfgang and Ben waited for me, far ahead of my proposed three in the afternoon, and they had a throng of helpers armed with milkshakes with them. Ben offered me a milkshake, and it had two cherries on top.
Happiness was a milkshake and a new, glittery car, and I questioned why I hadn’t snapped prior.
I’d missed out on a lot of good things staying sane.
“Why are you driving a Mercedes covered in glitter?”
“I regret nothing,” I announced, plucking off the first of my cherries and popping it into my mouth, yanking off the stem and flicking it into the nearest bush. I chomped until I located the pit, which joined the stem in the bushes. “I have a barren field of fucks, Ben. I’ve decided the first thing I would do was buy a nice car, paint her how I like, and do the things I want to do for a change.”
“And that involves moving where?”
“If I don’t tell you where I’m moving, my brother can’t get to you. If my brother can’t get to you, he can’t get to me, and my first act as an independent adult woman is to put that jackass in his place.”
“I have no idea what Mat did, but he’s very sorry.”
“Oh, he will be. I’ve wasted how long being his scapegoat?”
“I sense some resentment from my favorite accountant. Seriously. What did Mat do that tripped your trigger?”
“He’s mad at me because I didn’t let his bitch of a bride run from the altar. She, of course, is upset I took special lengths to make sure she married my brother. That plus I paid how much for his damned wedding?”
“I can send him the bill for my share of the work,” Wolfgang announced. “And I can make the invoice clear you paid for everything in labor.”
“I spent how much time and effort making sure they married? I’d rather not turn their marriage into an early divorce, especially not when Amy’s pregnant. But then again, I left all the paperwork in his apartment for him to find, under the ball and chain, so I’m probably signing him up for a divorce anyway. It’s their problem, not mine. So, do what you want, Ben.”
Ben sighed. “You just can’t win, can you?”
“I’m winning right now. I’m doing what I want, for me. Mat is just going to have to deal with it and live happily with his wife. He’s a damned grown adult, so he can take care of his own problems.”
“I see he’s finally gotten on your last nerve.”
“As I said, he got pissed over me making sure he got married, and Amy’s being a bitch about it, too. I’m not getting involved. I left him copies of all the invoices, and well, he’s an adult. He can deal with it. Frankly, I don’t care what you do, but I’m not going to be the one who bursts his bubble about how she lost all of the deposits and payments. The wedding happened, and the wedding happened with only a minor hitch or two.”
“A baseball to the head is hardly a minor hitch, Hope.”
“It barely grazed me, and it only rattled my brain in my skull a little. Actually, outside of the headache for the first night, I walked away the winner there. I didn’t have to deal with the damned reception.”
“Mat missed you at the reception.”
“And then got pissed because there was a reception. Nope, Ben. You’re not going to guilt me into backing out of this. I’ve already quit, I have a job interview on Thursday, and I mean to ace it. It’ll be good work for me, and it’ll be work I enjoy. I’ll still be able to manage your taxes, too, just as I promised, so you don’t even need to bring Mat into it. I don’t want him to get a divorce because I’m pissed at his drama queen of a wife. He loves her, and that’s that.”
“He loves you, too.”
“He can love me from a distance.”
“Just how distant are we talking about here?”
“My barren field of fucks has lost its map. Somewhere.”
“You’re really going to leave me waiting to find out, aren’t you? Or worse, you’re going to make us put in effort to figure out where you went.”
“Mat can figure it out if he really wants.”
“Harsh. All right. I expect you to keep contact and email me at least once a week, especially if you’re going to be changing numbers.”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I will be changing numbers. I’ll be out of the area. I’ll keep my old number for a while for emergencies, but it’ll be a cheap plan unless my carrier offers no roaming.”
“Considering how small Washington really is, that is of no surprise to me. Just how far out of the area are you going?”
“Far enough.”
“You’re really going to play hard ball on this, aren’t you?”
“I already played ball with my head. That actually worked out okay. It knocked sense back into me.”
It had also given me time to get to know Rick and his love of Florida Man and other ridiculous headlines. In my new life, I would join him in seeking out the absurd, and I would remember my weird night with my brother’s friend. Had I met the new me before Mat’s wedding, I might’ve tried to take things too far.
He was handsome, single, and fun.
I was single, and I wanted to be fun. It wasn’t up to me to decide if I fell into the attractive category, but I hoped for somewhat interesting bordering on pretty.
“Or out of you. From where I stand, it looks like your common sense took a lethal blow.”
“I disagree. Just because I’m doing something for me doesn’t mean I lack common sense. It just means I’m not living my life to someone else’s terms or standards. I did too much for Mat. He’s married, he can handle his own matters moving forward.”
“But do you have to move to do it?”
“Yes. We’re talking about Mat here. He’d show up at my apartment until he got what he wanted, which would be, in this case, making his wife happy. Probably. Frankly, I question his taste in women, but she either played him really well or she’s a totally different person around him. Right now, I’m in a bad mood about it, so I’m assuming she’s played him and is pissed off she’s not getting out of that relationship without a divorce hearing.”
“While I’m not really fond of the woman, their relationship seems genuine enough.”
“Except she went out of her way to sabotage the damned wedding,” I muttered.
“
You don’t have any proof of that.”
I stared at Ben. “Really? Every provider had an issue for the entire wedding. I had to essentially toss together a wedding on the fly. The only thing that wasn’t screwed was the church, and I bet that’s only because I dealt with the arrangements for the church on Mat’s behalf rather than hers.”
“While that is suspicious, you don’t have any proof.”
“One thing going wrong is life. Everything going wrong is intentional. Everything went wrong, Ben. Everything. If it had only been one thing, maybe. But not everything. Anyway, she’s not my problem, and I’m not going to stick around under my brother’s thumb when he’s pissed at me for making sure he had a wedding. Maybe that makes me a bit of a bitch, but I’m done being the workhorse.”
“What about your parents?”
“What about them? They like when I’m independent and self-reliant. I’m being independent and self-reliant. I’ll visit them at the appropriate intervals.”
“I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do, but thank you for your concern. This time, I’m doing something just for me, and well, people are just going to have to deal with it. If Mat wanted me dancing to his tune, he wouldn’t have taken me and my hard work for granted—and he wouldn’t have taken that tone with me. Not after how hard I worked making sure his wedding worked out for the best.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what he said to you that pissed you off so much, but I’m sorry.”
“He dismissed me. That’s all.”
Ben grimaced. “Okay. I can see how you’d get upset over that. But moving and getting a new car?”
“If I’m going to have a midlife crisis, I will have one in style, Ben. Now, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
It took until midnight to empty my apartment out and finish cleaning. I thanked everyone with dinner, focusing on everything I needed to do before Thursday morning. I’d be leaving town with a few new outfits courtesy of Ben and Wolfgang, along with a new hairstyle.
I barely recognized myself in the mirror.
Wednesday night, I slept at a hotel in town. Thursday, I packed my new car with the basic necessities and hauled ass to New York in the wee hours of the morning. My new residence, an extended stay place I would spend too much on until I found an apartment, was a hop, skip, and a jump away from where I’d interview, which made it worth the staggering weekly rate.
Either way, I’d have to find a new apartment—or drive a hefty distance to a cheaper area to find somewhere to live in until I secured work. I would make my new situation work out, and if I had anything to say about it, I wouldn’t be unemployed for long.
Thirty minutes before my interview time, I walked to the building, checking out the block before showing up a reasonable fifteen minutes early. The receptionist in the lobby directed me to the third floor, and the man seated behind the tall desk told me to take a seat.
Every business had a different method of hiring someone, and sometimes, an interview began the moment an applicant entered the building. Doing nothing would drive me into fidgeting, something that might ruin my chances of being employed. As I had no idea how long I’d have to wait, I retrieved my e-reader from my purse and settled in to read. I liked that no one could readily determine my books of choice, although I’d used what I was reading as talking points in the past.
If anyone asked, my choice of The Art of War might raise a few brows. Sun Tzu’s insights, still applicable even in modern times, investigated the nature of humanity in a way I could understand—if I tilted my head to the side. I’d have to put some serious thought into how to apply some of his teachings to my life.
I focused on the section dedicated to the laying of plans, and how I might take control of my life through careful strategy rather than haphazard impulse. I made a foray or two into the chapter about evaluating strengths and weaknesses, as I figured I’d have to focus on my strengths while eliminating my weaknesses if I wanted to get ahead rather than just getting by.
“Miss Kensingvale?”
I recognized Garret’s voice, and I pressed the power button on my e-reader, slid it into my purse, and rose from my seat. “I’m Miss Kensingvale.”
A man who only appeared a little older than me looked me over before holding out his hand. “Garret. Pleased to meet you in person. If you’ll come this way, we’ll start the interview. I apologize for being late. Things have been busy.”
“Quite all right. I assumed things would be busy due to your circumstances.”
“That’s a mild way to put it. Rather than the standard question and answer session, I have a test for you. You’ll have an hour to go through the papers, and we’ll determine if you’re appropriate for the job by how well you perform. We’ll review the documentation at the end of your test, and we’ll discuss your performance. After, we’ll notify you of our decision. I expect this will take three hours in total unless there are delays preparing employment documentation.”
Well, while the next three hours would be stressful, it beat waiting to find out if I’d be hired. “That seems reasonable.”
“It won’t seem quite so reasonable once you see the test.” Garret led me into a conference room, which was covered with piles of papers.
I’d endured similar audits before, and it would take a lot more than an hour to audit the documents. That was the entire point, however. How I handled the stress of dealing with a mass audit would give Garret a good idea of how I worked under pressure.
I set my purse down and rubbed my hands together. “Anything I should know before I start, sir?”
“Garret, please. These are fictional files founded on an actual audit. We received the company’s permission to model our test audit for interviews under the condition we change all names to generic descriptors. When we were hired, the CEO suspected embezzlement and wanted professionals to go over the numbers to find any discrepancies.”
“Understood. May I begin?”
“Begin,” he ordered.
It would take hours to fully evaluate the number of files, so I dove in and went to work, reviewing every page—or group of pages—to begin making sense of what I had. It didn’t take long for me to determine the company did a lot of advertising, although I couldn’t tell the nature of the business from the placeholder names. I organized the invoices by who the company was hiring. One company, dubbed Placeholder D, earned the lion’s share of money from the company, and payments ranged from several hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars. While tempted to whistle over the spend, I sorted the invoices into their appropriate piles by date before tackling the smaller stack of employee financials and information sheets.
Once I had all employees isolated into stacks, I went through the invoices again and separated them by date and company to each employee.
Employee A primarily handled Placeholder D’s invoices, although Employee C handled all invoices worth more than ten thousand dollars.
Employee C had careful notations on every invoice, explaining all expenses thoroughly.
Employee A treated their invoices with Placeholder D as things to be paid without question, leaving few clues on what advertising work the company had received.
Making use of a stack of sticky notes and a pen, I flagged all invoices with unknown expenses for further review, marking the oddities as something to fully audit with internal records, and made decent progress on organizing when Garret cleared his throat, which I assumed meant I’d run out of time.
I found it amusing my auditing test lacked any actual accounting or demonstration of real auditing skills.
If they were testing for my general eye and ability to notice anything amiss, I stood a good chance of passing. I set my pen down, took the sticky note I’d been working on, and stuck it to the invoice I’d been reviewing. “May I make a comment, sir?”
“Of course.”
“In a real situation, I would’ve been using a spreadsheet or accounting software to create e
ntries for the invoices while referencing the accountant’s files—and I would’ve been taking notes on a tablet with stylus.”
Garret chuckled. “You’ll have access to such things during real work. We’ve already spoken to your previous employer about your applicable job skills.”
Crap. While I’d included my former boss as a reference, I always hoped new employers wouldn’t take the time and effort to interview those I’d worked for. But, rather than assuming the worst, I’d hope for the best. “Then this is a logic test to see if I have the skills needed to organize from the ground up on a new project.” I regarded my work with a frown. “Which implies you want a ground-up approach to these audits, expecting something to be found and needing every element of the company’s operations evaluated to check for errors or potential embezzlement.”
“Or even shoddy recording.”
Shoddy recording of funds and funds mismanagement happened in many companies. I’d dealt with it at every workplace I’d ever done accounting for. No matter how hard the accountants tried, someone found a way to mess things up, even if it was forgetting to file an invoice correctly after payment, resulting in chaos when accounting had record of a payment without having a copy of the invoice they’d paid. “Has anyone told you those are dirty words, Garret?”
“I was asked specifically to use those dirty words in that order to see your reaction. We’ve learned we can tell a lot about a potential employee by how they react to the hazards of their specific profession.”
Well, I appreciated the man’s sense of humor, which boded well for my future—if I got the job. “I bet the accounting at the company those files came from really didn’t like Employee A after audit.”
“As a matter of fact, you would be correct. When we were building the test, our accountants said some rather unpleasant things about Employee A. We’ve also learned Employee A is unfortunately common.”
“Every company has at least one. Or three. Or ten.” I grimaced. “Usually closer to ten.”
“It’s an accounting hazard. So. My question for you is this. Can you handle working with people like Employee A every day for the foreseeable future? That’s what we’ll probably be dealing with as we dig through this auditing mess.”
The Run Around Page 8