“How do you mean?” Kevin asked.
“Sasha just likes to control the flow of information. She likes knowing what’s going to happen,” Martina said. “She’s not the most madcap person. She prefers to be prepared.”
“What, are you a Boy Scout leader or something?” Kevin asked, quite seriously.
“What? No.”
“Isn’t that their motto?”
“Be Prepared?” I asked. “Well, sure. It’s the motto for both the Boy and Girl Scouts and the scout movement in general, which was founded, as you may know, by Robert Baden-Powell, who was known as B.P., bringing us full circle to Be Prepared. But no, I’ve never been a Scout. And Martina, I’ll have you know that I’m just as madcap as anyone else in this place.”
“You’re right. That was incredibly madcap.” Martina rolled her eyes.
Carl pulled out his wallet with a flourish. “I’ll get the next round,” he announced, as if to force the conversation back in his direction. He handed his credit card to the bartender.
As he passed it over, I noticed that it was an Elm Street Optimus card. I knew the brand. Not from personal use, but I knew of it. It was one of those secured credit cards, typically given to folks with major blemishes on their credit reports. From that single glance, I knew that Carl was paying upwards of twenty-five percent interest, probably a penalty for previous financial misdeeds.
I smiled, and not because he had bad credit. I smiled because, at that moment, I probably knew more about Carl-the-temp’s real life than anyone else at the Escape Room. If they were the right details, all you needed were a few.
“Thanks, man,” Kevin said to Carl. “I’ll take another beer.”
“I meant that I’d buy for the ladies,” Carl said.
I watched Kevin’s sweet smile fade.
“Temp work not paying like it used to?” I asked Carl.
Martina put a hand on my arm, but I was irked. He could cover his fancy shoes but not a simple happy-hour beer?
“It’s not like it’s a long-term gig,” Carl said.
Martina turned to me. “Play nice,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. I looked at Carl. “I wouldn’t think a guy in your financial situation would spend like that on shoes.”
Carl stopped smiling. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“No? How’s this? You’re an over-extender. You’re all plans, always with a scheme, but you’re not much for actual work. You drive a fancy car, but I bet you’re behind on your payments. You seek out women with good incomes, because your own money never comes in fast enough. You want everything before you’ve earned it. You saw the Prada shoes, so you got them. You saw Martina sit down and you figured for the cost of a few cheap drinks, maybe you’d get lucky. Besides, if you stay over at her place, the repo man won’t be able to find your beat-up old Porsche. And you’ll give Martina your work number, because you don’t expect to finish out the week there. Then you’ll start the cycle all over again. Another temp job, another bar, another girl.”
Carl had waved to the bartender before I finished speaking. “Give me my card back,” he said, his features furrowed all together.
“Is any of that true?” Martina asked. She unfolded a napkin that had been written over. “Is this your work number?”
“It’s not fucking true,” Carl snapped, right before he got up and stalked out of the bar.
Martina turned back to me. She didn’t look upset. In fact, she was sort of smiling. “It’s not like I was going to end up with a guy who spends more on shoes than I do,” she said.
“That’s what I figured. He wasn’t your type.”
“But sometimes it’s better to wait for the whole story. You’ll never know everything. You can’t.”
“I’ve heard Carl’s story more times than I can count,” I said. “I know it backwards and forwards.”
“You really ripped that guy a new one,” Kevin said. “How did you know all that?” Even before I turned to look at him, I knew that his smile was gone and it wasn’t coming back. Kooky was bad enough, but now I had scared him.
“Go ahead,” Martina said. “Why not?”
I pulled out my business card and handed it to Kevin. He looked at it, then dropped it onto the bar, as if it had burned his fingers.
Sasha Gardner
Senior Auditor
Internal Revenue Service
“I guess you see all types,” he finally said.
“All types,” I agreed.
Soon after, Kevin excused himself to go feed his parking meter. I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t return. Then again, I was rarely surprised anymore. It was my job to notice details, see patterns of behavior, and infer attitudes, motives, tendencies and likely actions. Once you’ve learned to do that, you start to realize how predictable most people are. There’s actually a degree of comfort in that.
“Two guys scared off in record time,” Martina said. “That was fast, even for you.”
“I didn’t scare them off,” I said.
“Right. It must have been me,” Martina said. “Didn’t that Kevin have a nice smile?”
“Contractor,” I explained. “They get audited an average of three times throughout their careers. A lot of cash expenses. I knew as soon as he told me.”
Martina shook her head. She reached into my purse and pulled out my accounting book. She placed it on the bar between us. “Guys skip the brainy girls.”
“That’s not always true.”
“Okay. Guys skip girls who can assess penalties with interest.”
I conceded the point.
“And he was cute,” she went on. “If you’d just said that you work at the Gap, you’d be on your way to a first date right now.”
“I don’t work at the Gap,” I reminded her. “That’s the problem. That’s always the problem.”
Chapter Two
SO PEOPLE SOMETIMES TRIED TO AVOID ME. SURE, I might have wished it were different, but I was an excellent auditor. Not everyone could do my job. Not everyone could build lives atop quantitative foundations or look beyond numbers to the events and decisions that put them there. The best auditors love to unravel the story that lurks in the data, to see hidden meanings and solve the puzzle. They have an eye for detail and great powers of concentration.
At
