September 13, 2011

Jim sat drumming his fingers on his desktop. His opposite elbow was propped up on the desk, his chin sat in the palm of his hand and his gaze was fixated on an image of Pam and Amelia playing with Amelia’s white kitten, Snowy, on the front porch of their home that past summer.

Jim sighed heavily and glanced up towards the closed door of his office. His stare quickly returned to a series of picture frames on his desk – particularly towards a small drawing that Amelia had made for him for his birthday. Pam had taken their daughter to Central Park one late afternoon in August that Jim worked late. They had sat in the park together, both of them drawing – Pam with charcoal and Amelia with her crayons. Amelia drew some grass, a flower and a bird. She had squealed with pride when Jim tore the wrapping paper from the picture that Pam had gotten framed. In the corner of the picture, Pam had written, “To Daddy, Love Amelia” – dictated by Amelia.

The little moments Jim spent with his daughter and the little moments that he heard about from Pam seemed to be the only thing still keeping him sane these days. He was forced to work long hours with Ryan and everything that he did was closely watched and scrutinized by Michael and the company lawyers. Even after the months that followed the first vague meeting with his co-workers, he still wasn’t a hundred percent sure what was going on. He knew that he was under scrutiny for possible embezzlement, but he also knew that there was no way he was embezzling any company money.

The accusations angered him as well. He had been with the company since he finished his master’s degree and he had been the vice president of the company for almost four years. He had been nothing but loyal to the few people who worked above him and the plethora of people who worked below him. He was infuriated that this was the way that he was being repaid for his years of service and sacrifice to the company. He was even starting to question whether or not he still wanted to work for a company that treated him this way.

He heard the familiar ring of an incoming e-mail sound from his computer speakers. That ring was a sound that he had learned to dread over the past few months. He no longer received any e-mails bearing good news. Most of them contained short and concise subject titles that were always horribly vague and most of them contained horrifying information about how another hundred dollars was missing from his account or mysterious charges from companies no one had ever heard of had suddenly appeared on a company credit card bearing his name.

Jim opened the e-mail and groaned aloud:

There will be a meeting in Conference Room C this afternoon at 1:30.

Jim was tired of the meetings; partly because every time he went to one he was accused of something new. If he wasn’t accused of something at the meetings, then he was alerted to new developments – that led no where – to the source of the money loss. And he knew that he had no choice but to attend. Sure, he would sit in a small, uncomfortable room with Michael, Ryan and two lawyers while they constantly blamed him of things that he wasn’t doing – though Michael wasn’t one to point the finger in Jim’s direction; he often sat in the room with an expression on his face that mirrored the same discomfort that Jim was feeling. He knew that if he didn’t attend, he would risk losing his job – though again, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad at this point. Even so, he needed money in order for him, Pam and Amelia to live the way that they had grown accustomed to. Now, he was in a situation where Ryan had basically been educated on basically every single aspect of being the vice president of a major advertising company and Jim knew he couldn’t risk missing a meeting.

***

Jim ate lunch in the staff break room that day. He couldn’t remember the last time that he actually spent his lunch hour there, but given the frequency of others spending their time in there, he figured that he could have a quiet and peaceful lunch – maybe with a couple of employees milling in and out from time to time.

He finished his ham and cheese sandwich and stared blankly out the window as he slowly ate his potato chips. He really did not want to go to this meeting. He really did not want to know what sort of events had recently transpired.

“Jim,” a voice sounded from behind him. He jumped in surprise and turned around to see Kevin standing behind him. He hadn’t seen Kevin in a long time and the man looked different. Jim couldn’t pin point if it was a good different or a bad different, though. He looked a bit more worn down than before, but there was brightness in his eyes that Jim didn’t recall seeing there in the past.

“Hey Kev,” Jim said, moving his chair aside, silently beckoning for Kevin to sit next to him.

“You don’t mind…” Kevin said, nodding towards the empty chair next to Jim.

“Please,” Jim said.

Kevin sat down in the empty chair and unceremoniously dropped his brown paper bag onto the table.

“So how are things?” Kevin asked as he opened his bag.

“Okay I guess,” Jim replied. Kevin groaned loudly and pulled a crushed sandwich from the lunch bag. “What is it?”

“I accidentally took Julian’s lunch,” Kevin said shaking his head. “I don’t understand that kid. He loves these cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches…” he pulled the slice of white bread off the top of the sandwich and grimaced at the sight of cucumbers spread out in a thick layer over what appeared to be vegetable cream cheese.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Jim lied.

“I don’t know where he gets his love for weird foods,” Kevin said. “Though he’s not going to be too happy when he sees that he’s gotten my pastrami sandwich.”

“So how are the…” Jim began, but he stopped himself in the middle of the thought. If he was talking about his son, Julian that meant…

“You got the kids?” Jim asked.

Kevin beamed and nodded as he picked cucumbers from the sandwich, “Yep, I got my boys. Karen got the girl. I thought about trying to get custody of her too, but she’s not my kid. I figured that Wallace can fight for her when he decides that he’s had enough of her mother.”

“So how is that…” Jim said as he waved his hand around, not really wanting to say ‘divorce’, “How’s that all going?”

“So-so,” Kevin said with a shrug. “I mean, really, I got what I wanted. I wanted full custody of my sons and that was granted. Of course, Karen is constantly hounding me for money – not that I really have a whole lot of it left. I don’t think that she’s going to get it…”

Jim huffed, “Good luck with that.”

“How did you handle it?” Kevin asked.

“Well that is something that I’ve tried to forget about,” Jim replied quietly.

“Sorry to bring it up,” Kevin said. “But at least you’ve been in my situation before. You probably know all the tricks that she wants to pull far better than I do.”

“You were married to her a lot longer than I ever was,” Jim said.

“Yeah,” Kevin said, nodding, “though the Karen that you’re married to and the Karen that you divorce are two vastly different women.”

Jim nodded thoughtfully, “You have a good point there.”

“So…” Kevin asked again, “any helpful tips to handling divorce from Karen?”

Jim rubbed his chin thoughtfully and sighed, “I guess the best advice that I can give to you is to never back down.”

“I already have what I want though,” Kevin argued.

“True,” Jim said. “But the second that you back down and think that you can get back into a normal life is the second that she comes back and wants more.”

“Wants more…what?” Kevin asked.

“Money,” Jim replied simply.

Kevin huffed, “I think that she already got all of my money.”

Jim shook his head, “No. She’ll find some other way. She’ll find loopholes through accounts that you once shared. She’ll…she’s…she really knows what you’re doing.”

“Should I close my bank accounts?” Kevin asked nervously.

“If she had access to them…” Jim replied before he completely trailed off, the wheels in his head starting to turn at a rapid pace as he started to piece together everything that had happened to him over the past few months.

“So what you’re saying is…” Kevin began, but Jim didn’t hear anything further.

Immediately after divorcing from Karen, Jim had closed all of his accounts that he had shared with Karen. However, he had not taken his business accounts into consideration – not that he had the authority to actually close any of them himself. He hadn’t shared any of these accounts with Karen, but if he remembered correctly, she had had access to them. He knew that he had had access to the money in her business accounts, though he very rarely used it unless they went on a vacation and he had forgotten numbers and cut up credit cards immediately following the divorce.

“Switch your business accounts,” Jim said quickly, cutting Kevin off mid-sentence.

“What?” Kevin asked.

“Your business spending accounts,” Jim replied. “You have them, right?”

“Of course,” Kevin said.

“Cancel all of them,” Jim said.

“But…”

“All of them!” Jim said loudly.

“I…” Kevin stammered. “Okay?”

“I have to go,” Jim said, standing up quickly. “Good luck with everything.”

“Yeah, you too,” Kevin said, looking at Jim with bewilderment.

Jim practically ran from the break room and immediately made his way to the conference room. The meeting wouldn’t start for another half hour, but with any luck the lawyers would already be there and he could discuss some things with them before the formal meeting started.

He burst through the doors of the room and stood dumbly in the doorway as he looked around the table and saw Michael, Ryan and the lawyers all sitting around – seemingly already in the middle of a meeting.

“What’s…” he started to say, before he was cut off by one of the lawyers.

“Mr. Halpert! You’re not supposed to be here for another…” he looked at his watch, “forty five minutes!”

“I…” he started, but then he started to wonder why everyone else was there – particularly Michael, who was hardly ever on time for their meetings, much less forty five minutes early. “What’s going on?”

Everyone exchanged glances with one another and Jim felt like he had been punched in the chest by each and every one of them.

“Have you been meeting behind my back this entire time?” Jim asked.

“That’s neither here nor there,” the lawyer replied coolly.

Jim’s forehead furrowed and he shot a desperate glance towards Michael who glumly shrugged and looked down at the papers in front of him. They had been conducting meetings behind his back. He was the vice president and he was being treated like the temps and interns that were constantly coming and going every couple of months. He didn’t know how he could continue working under these conditions anymore…

“I want to close my accounts,” Jim said calmly.

“Your…what?” the lawyer asked.

“All of my business expense and spending accounts,” Jim replied.

“But Mr. Halpert, they’re…you have no power over that,” the lawyer argued. “We’re already monitoring them very closely…you know that.”

“And money is still disappearing,” Jim said. “I want them closed. Closed.”

“But your…” the lawyer continued to argue before Michael cut him off.

“Jim, if you close your accounts, you’ll…what will you…” Michael stammered. “Your money…”

“I know where the money has gone,” Jim said calmly, still standing in the doorway. Although he kept a calm demeanor, he could feel his chest shaking and he was certain that if he looked at his hands, his fingertips would be quaking.

“That’s…” the lawyer said, about to brush him off, but he quickly registered what Jim had just said and his head whipped to the side and he stared at Jim as if he suddenly had three heads.

“It’s Karen Filipelli,” Jim said. “It’s got to be. There’s no other explanation.”

“But Ms. Filipelli is…” the lawyer said.

“No,” Jim said, walking to the table and slamming his palms down on the table top. “Listen to me. She is using a very old account of mine from probably around ten years ago that I haven’t used in years. She still has access to it because she used it when we were married. That’s where the money is draining from.”

“So we just need to close that account,” the lawyer said, filing through a huge folder full of papers.

“No,” Jim said, shaking his head.

“But Jim,” Michael said, “you know what account it is.”

“I have an idea, yes,” Jim said. “I still want all of my accounts to close.”

“Do you know what you’re asking, Mr. Halpert?” the lawyer asked quietly.

“I know exactly what I’m asking for,” Jim replied quietly. Everyone in the room sharply turned their gaze towards Jim standing at the front of the table. Michael stared at him wide-eyed, and almost looked like a tear might fall from his eye. Ryan on the other hand, though also wide-eyed, looked thrilled and like he might jump up and hug Jim.

Jim stood up straight and tugged at the bottom of his tie. “You have until January to find the company a new vice president.”