The Assistants(7)

This was all customary. This systematically chaotic gathering of the receipts, the retracing of steps to manifest the paper trail of everything he’d bought that week using cash. It was the same every time.

You’d be amazed by how much money the man could shell out in a seven-day stretch. Don’t let his outward grit fool you; Robert enjoyed his comforts and luxuries. And I think he must have gotten a kick out of reaching into his vest pocket, pulling out a wad of bills, and fanning them like a winning hand of poker onto the table at Per Se or Porter House. Otherwise why not just charge everything?

In fact, I bet Robert would have paid for all his purchases using gold bullion if only he could carry that much gold bullion in the vest pocket of his Armani suit jacket. Once I overheard his senior VP ask him if his Mercedes was a lease, and Robert nearly spat on the carpet. “I like owning things,” he replied. I imagined a similar situation whenever a clerk or attendant innocently asked Robert, “Cash or credit?” I could see the way he’d glare at them just before throwing down a rubber-banded brick of hundreds.

It was nothing but more work for me, the weekly process of collecting the receipts, scanning them, and sending them to T & E for approval. But today it would be my lifeline. Today I filed Robert’s out-of-pocket expense report in the usual way, methodically, robotically. Then I hit replay and did it again. Same receipts. Two reports. One for him, and one for me.

How did this plan dawn on me?

I’ll tell you: In the past six years there had been many days I thought, Wow, Robert Barlow really trusts me! Because I had serious access to this man’s identity. Account numbers, passwords, when he was due for his next prostate exam. I knew all his secrets. On the worst days my thinking was more along the lines of, Wow, I could rob Robert Barlow blind if I really set my mind to it!

But this was a working-class girl’s fantasy not so different from my childhood wish that I was actually a foundling whose real parents were the royal king and queen of all the land . . . The truth was, I took great pride in the trust Robert had in me. I was flattered by it, and by simply being associated with him. On my own, as a person, I wasn’t so important. But as Robert Barlow’s assistant, ma?tre d’s and hoteliers knew me by name. I couldn’t afford to frequent their establishments, but they still knew my name. They sent fifteen-pound panettones addressed specifically to me at Christmastime.

Robert made me worth something. I would no sooner have stolen from him than I would have from my own peasant-stock mother and father.

But now this. Emily f*cking Johnson. Beneath Emily’s pomposity I had never believed her to be very intelligent. I’d assumed she was just another dumb blonde with an expensive education. Now I didn’t know what to think. She was obviously smart enough to outsmart me.

From today onward, for however long it took, this would be my method: duplicate Robert’s out-of-pocket expense receipts (totally illegal), get reimbursed for the false receipts (all lies), cash the reimbursement check (no turning back now), and hand the cash over to Emily. (What were the odds she’d even say thank you?)

Filing the same receipts twice, the second time with my account information plugged in instead of Robert’s, was by no means an ingenious plan. If Emily weren’t the one doing the approving, I would have gotten caught on the first false report. I cannot stress this enough. The reason we could actually get away with this is because the men who made the big bucks passed off the responsibilities they couldn’t be bothered with (like signing their own names) to their assistants.

A few weeks’ time, Emily said it would take—which was highly optimistic. So I added an extra thousand dollars here and another few thousand there to the report on my computer screen—each time clicking the box for Receipt Lost or Damaged. That would speed things up a bit. Usually you needed to provide a receipt for any expense over one thousand dollars, no exceptions, but (a) this was Robert’s company, and (b) Emily didn’t give a damn either way.

I hesitated before hitting File and then just closed my eyes and went ahead, because if I’d learned anything from reading Hamlet in my senior-year Shakespeare colloquium, or from consuming ceaseless Nike commercials throughout the midnineties, it was to just frigging do it already.

Ten grand. Boom. Filed.

Just then, Robert yelled something from inside his office and I understood he was calling for his senior editor.

I popped my head above my desk’s dividers like a mole peeking out of its hole and called out over the plain of cubicles. “Dillinger! Robert wants you.”

Everyone on our floor addressed one another by their last names, Longhorns football style. It was a habit nobody who worked outside of a male-dominated office could really understand.

Dillinger, whose first name was Jason, rushed to Robert’s office and closed the door behind him. When I returned to my seat, I noticed the lower right-hand corner of my computer screen had come alive.

Lunch today?

Kevin Handsome was g-chatting. By “lunch” he meant heading down to the cafeteria at the same time to buy our lunches, and then riding the elevator back upstairs together to eat separately at our respective desks. In all it was a ten-minute date, five minutes tops of uninterrupted conversation. A minimum of three minutes of palm sweats and me obsessing. What does this guy want from me?

Kevin wasn’t called Kevin Handsome for nothing. Genetics had been good to him. He had a mop of dark hair and round brown eyes in an all-American style. He was tall and fit with just enough dork mixed in to make him approachable. I sometimes imagined him jogging or boating, or playing touch football with his brothers à la the Kennedys.