The Best Part #2

 

2

 

The tire held.  Barely.  It would have to be his priority when the workday was done.  Or maybe he could go at lunch.  He was reluctant to leave the office once he got there.  It wasn't easy to time things out, and he would wind up consuming a lot more calories than he intended.

Freedom Tax Service was in a small strip mall in a section of town that wasn’t the best, but not yet the worst.  Most of their clientele were people who brought in their freshly minted W-2s and were looking to get cash fast. That was a lot different from where he had worked before, for almost twenty years.  Their clientele were people with more complicated returns; rentals, side hustles, and S Corporations filtered through to the individual.  It was more interesting, in a way, but it had long grown old for him.

He opened Freedom’s door and heard the little chime.  Only Marie was there, popping out of the break room to see if it was a client.  “Hey, Aldie!  Got some fresh brew in the back!”

“Thanks for letting me know,” Aldie replied. He would add her name but realized he wasn’t 100% sure what it was.  Was Marie right?  Maybe it was Mary.    She was an old hand at Freedom, meaning this was her second tax season.  Nobody had been there more than three years because that’s when the franchise was opened here.

Even after three days, he had sampled the coffee enough to know it wasn’t worth it. It tasted one step above battery acid tinged with toxic sludge.  There wasn’t enough creamer and sweetener on the planet to make it drinkable. No, he would stick with his morning brew from home. 

Marie was a bright, chipper force, at least based on the few days he had known her.  She was short and stout,  dressed in khakis and a blue blouse.  She wore large framed glasses and had frizzy brown hair that stopped an inch or two above her shoulders. She had a bright, welcoming smile, which was a good thing because her desk was closest to the front, and she most often acted as the receptionist. Marie also did tax returns.  The office was far too small to have a full-time receptionist.

This meant that sometimes Aldie would have to answer the phone or greet someone at the door. It was part of the orientation he had when starting up.  Well, it wasn't so much an orientation as “Sometimes you’ll have to answer the phone and talk to whoever comes in the front.”

This is not something Aldie liked to do.  He had a separate office at his old job and was never expected to handle incoming calls or clients. The phone was one of his least favorite things about life. But beggars could not be choosers.  At least not ones with bills and mortgages.

As he settled into his work area, a desk with a computer just behind Marie, he noticed there were no returns set for him to do.  It was really early in the season, but there had been a few.  Most were from people who got their W-2s almost at the crack of January and wanted to git-er-done.  If they had not been to Freedom before, there was a lot of information to get to set up the initial tax return.  Some people lost patience with the process and huffed off if they had to get additional information or documentation.  But if they had been there before, it was only a matter of minutes to complete the whole thing.  Then they left smiling with a check in hand.

The next person in was the only other office person, Annabelle Lee, her Goth personality making Aldie think with that name, maybe she really did step out of an Edgar Allen Poe poem. She was the office manager and the one in command unless the franchisee holder made a rare visit. Annabelle was tall, at least compared to Aldie, thin and with straight black hair that ran down the length of her back. 

“Guys, y’all be ready,” she said, continuing to march towards the back office, the only one that had its own door.  “Pearce Lumber is handing out W-2s today.”

Before we could react, she was in the back office.  The office was really Jackson Strickland's, but he was so rarely there that she used it in his absence.  There was a third desk behind Aldie that Annabelle used on those rare occasions.

The only time Aldie had seen Jackson was when he was interviewed, just before Christmas. He had gone back to Jackson’s office, poorly lit, a desk lamp pointed at him as if he was in a police interrogation. The interview was not all that tough, and Aldie handled it well, even though it had been two decades since he had had to do one.

There was one question that threw him.  “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?” Jackson solemnly intoned.

The proper answer is, “That’s none of your business and not a question you can ask in an interview or base a hiring decision on it.”  Or even, “Yes.  And I believe that one of the most significant themes in the bible is that usury is wrong, that it is not proper to charge interest for lending money.  I’m sure that if Jesus were to return and see the tremendous rate of discount you’re taking on your clients’ tax refunds, you would have some overturned desks and a pearly gate shut in your face.”

But Aldie said neither of those things.  Instead, he said, “Sure.  Absolutely.”

There was no more time to think.  Three men had just come in, W-2s from Pearce Lumber in hand.

Time to make Jesus weep.