Show Her The Money. Stephanie Feagan

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СКАЧАТЬ I’d come to realize that most people saw it exactly as Barbara Clemmons and the rest of the finance committee saw it—I’d done it for purely self-serving reasons. Until I had the evidence to prove otherwise, I was as guilty of creating the problems at Marvel as any of the top brass in the company and at my firm. I was a bad guy. It wasn’t fair, but what could I do? Every single interview ended the same. “Your credentials are perfect, Ms. Pearl, but until you’ve settled your affairs with the federal government, we don’t feel it’s in our best interest to offer you a position.” Which was a nice way of saying, “You may be hanging out in the joint soon, so buzz off.”

      Nevertheless, I spent the next week looking for a job. By the end of the road, I was down to inquiring about a bookkeeping position with an elderly woman who had a lot of oil and gas interests. I’d office in her laundry room, account for her money and when things got slow, I would need to run a few personal errands. Dry cleaning. Weed the beds. Maybe address invitations to her monthly supper socials.

      The real killer? I couldn’t even get that job. The old lady said she’d seen me on C-SPAN, and the only reason she’d agreed to interview me was so she could see me in person. Then she asked if Mr. Bob was anatomically correct.

      I came home that night to a message from my mom. “Pink, baby, come home. You’re running through your money so fast, you’ll be on the streets before long. Now I know you think moving back to Midland is the worst thing in the world, and working for me is a last resort, but I have news for you, baby. You’re down to your last resort. Besides, I could really use the help. Call me.”

      Most people think I followed in my mother’s footsteps and became a CPA like she did. They’re wrong. I was a sophomore in college when Mom decided she’d had just about enough of my dad and enrolled herself in summer school. She tested out of a gazillion hours, buzzed through in two years and graduated with an MBA about the same time I wrapped up my five-year plan and got my bachelor’s degree.

      We each went to work for top-dog accounting firms, me in Dallas, her in Midland. I stuck with it. She didn’t. After a few years of taking orders from managers twenty years younger, she ditched the firm and went out on her own.

      She’s wildly successful, and it was really very nice of her to offer me a mercy job. I was appreciative, but moving home and working for her was honestly, truly, the worst possible thing I could imagine.

      Too bad I had absolutely no choice in the matter.

      I called and said I’d do it. The next morning, I put the loft up for sale, packed what I could into the Mercedes SUV and headed west, waving to Dallas in my rearview mirror.

      As I drove back to the town I’d sworn never to live in again, all I could think was what a miserable failure I’d turned out to be. In spite of my devotion, my marriage had crashed and burned. I’d lost a great job because I tried to do the right thing. And I was about to take a mercy job with my mother. How pathetic was that?

      To top it all off, I had a notice from the IRS in the day’s mail. I was going to be audited.

      I didn’t mind so much. It gave me something different to obsess about.

      Midland sits three hundred miles west of Dallas, rising twenty-four stories out of the flattest land on the planet. The twenty-four stories is the tallest building downtown and it’s joined by other wannabes that make the skyline pretty impressive, from ten miles out on the highway. It’s called the Tall City, at least by locals. Everyone else calls it the armpit of Texas, or “that town where Baby Jessica fell down the well.” After George the Second got elected, they hung banners from the downtown light poles with a photo of George W. giving the thumbs-up, and a line beneath him that says, “Midland’s Rising Son.” They are real proud of George and Laura in Midland. Even the three Democrats.

      I couldn’t stop thinking of Dallas’s trees and lakes and lush, green grass as I drove that last ten miles into Midland. The landscape around the Tall City is anything but lush. In fact, I’ve often wondered if they did a little bomb practice around Midland before they dropped the Big One on Hiroshima. The loftiest plant life is maybe four feet tall. Mesquite. Lots and lots of mesquite. Some cactus, a little sage and a very wee bit of some thin green stuff that looks like the hair on Charlie Brown’s head. Midland is not scenic.

      Still, it has a certain charm, especially within the city limits. All that oil money buys a nice town. Mom told me once, there are more rich people per capita in Midland than anywhere else in Texas. Maybe America. I believe it.

      I drove into town and went straight to my mother’s house, a zero-lot line in a small, gated community. It pained her to spend the money, but she had a certain image to uphold. Or so she said. I think she secretly craved a real house, in a ritzy part of town, and that’s exactly what she got. The place was big, with four bedrooms, decorated in luxurious fabrics, dark mahogany and old-world paintings. Very British Indies. She has a pool in the back, and with the August heat rising off the road, I’d been thinking of that pool since Abilene.

      It wasn’t until I got to the door that I realized I didn’t have a key. So I got back in the car and drove downtown, to Mom’s office, located in the old First National Bank building, the one that’s the tallest. It’s had so many owners and names over the past twenty years, ever since the oil bust of ’85, nobody knows its actual name. Everyone just calls it the Old First National Bank Building.

      Mom’s office is on the fifteenth floor, and her reception area is similar to her house, with beautiful mahogany, plush fabrics and recessed lighting. Mom can be so tight, she squeaks when she walks, but she spends the bucks when it comes to her professional image. Mom says, look successful and you’ll be successful. Guess she’s right. Mom makes a lot of dough.

      I walked into the office and saw a pretty, young woman with light brown hair and pouty lips manning the reception desk.

      “May I help you?” she inquired cordially.

      “Hi, I’m Pink,” I answered, walking close to her desk, glancing at her name plate, “and it’s nice to meet you, Tiffany.” I stuck my hand out and she shook it, then said a little breathlessly, “I think your mom’s been expecting you. Go on back.”

      “Thanks.” I turned and headed down the short hall toward the big hall that houses a small conference room, five offices on each side, then opens up into the bull pen, where the lower staffers have cubicles. Mom’s large office is at the end, generally a mess, with stacks of files all over the place.

      I was halfway there when she popped out of one of the side offices and waylaid me. “Pink! You’re here!”

      She pulled me into the conference room across the hall, we hugged, then she held me away from her and did a quick inventory. “You’ve lost weight.”

      “I’ve been a little stressed.”

      “Of course you have. I’m sorry, baby.”

      Sympathy from Mom has never been ample. Much like rain in Midland; infrequent, longed for, but given sparingly. I swallowed back the giant lump of Pity Party tears in my throat and managed to smile. “Thanks, Mom. And thanks for the job.”

      She waved away my thanks and said pragmatically, “You need a job and I need someone to work in my new forensic accounting department. It’s almost cosmic, the way things worked out.”

      “Forensic accounting? I thought your practice was solely tax prep.”

      “It was, up until a month ago. I hired an MBA named Sam Weston. He was with СКАЧАТЬ