The Return of Jonah Gray Read Free Page A

“Legal pads are yellow, right? And the original highlighters were yellow, too.”
    â€œYeah, so?”
    â€œSo wouldn’t they have been useless on a legal pad? I think maybe that’s why highlighters ended up branching out into blue and green and pink, while legal pads remain yellow.”
    â€œThere are white legal pads,” Ricardo said. “I’ve seen them in all different colors.”
    â€œSure, but when you think ‘legal pad,’ you think ‘yellow,’ don’t you?”
    â€œHoney, unless I’m bedding a handsome lawyer, I don’t think about legal pads.”
    â€œAnd then there are these ledger books, which are always light green. My theory is that they’re green because they’re reminiscent of the dollar bill, since they’re intended to hold financial data. But that begs the question of whether ledger pads are also green in England. Because the British pound isn’t green, and that might imply a totally different color origin.”
    â€œI don’t get it,” Ricardo said.
    â€œYou asked what I was thinking about.”
    â€œI mean, why are you worrying about this? You’ve been in here for twenty minutes contemplating the history of office supplies? It’s August, sweetie. Every other auditor is complaining about the workload. I assume you’re snowed under, too. Is everything okay? You’re not in trouble, are you?”
    â€œYou think I’m not getting my work done?” I asked, careful to sound indignant.
    â€œI’m just pointing out that maybe your investigative energy could be put to better use than in here.”
    I made a show of taking a box of pens before returning to my cubicle. What he didn’t say—maybe he didn’t know—was that I wasn’t getting my work done. I hadn’t been for weeks.
    Before that August, I’d taken pride in my ability to plow through, audit after audit, without a drop in focus. But the morning after Kevin’s unceremonious leave-taking from the Escape Room, I’d begun to review a return, only to find myself eavesdropping on Cliff, the auditor who sat on the far side of my cubicle wall. Later that afternoon, I had spent twenty minutes trying to deduce which grocery chain would be carrying the best peaches—based on proximity of the largest stores to local trucking routes. Moments after, I’d found myself wondering why horses and cats and dogs have hair but rabbits have fur. Ricardo was right; I was in trouble.
    In my double-wide cubicle at our Oakland district office, I stood up, jogged in place, did a few jumping jacks, then sat back down. I stared hard at the paperwork on my desk, hoping that the brief burp of exercise had forced blood into my brain. Ricardo had a point: the auditing season was in full swing. Stacks of folders had massed on my worktable, each file representing a return awaiting my analysis. I had to buckle down. I had to find some momentum or fake as much. I was a senior auditor, not a veterinarian, nor a fruit wholesaler, nor an office-supply historian. I was supposed to be setting an example.
    Then the phone rang, and I imagined that it might be Kevin, feeling guilt over his graceless getaway from the aptly named Escape Room. Maybe he had memorized my phone number and was calling to apologize. Maybe he’d called the IRS switchboard and asked for an auditor named Sasha. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Near the edge, maybe, but not beyond it.
    â€œSasha Gardner,” I answered, glad for the excuse to close the file in front of me.
    â€œSo S is for Sasha then,” a man said. It wasn’t Kevin.
    â€œIn my case, yes.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by the comment. “May I help you?”
    â€œYou’re not even a man,” he said. It sounded like an insult.
    â€œThat’s true,” I agreed. “Though, as you probably know, Sasha is a male name in parts of Eastern