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“The Escapade” by James Tate 🇺🇸 (8 Dec 19438 Jul 2015)
When Patsy came home from work, I told her the bad news. “I resigned from my job today,” I said. “What?” she said. “Grant Jennings told me the report I had been working on for the past five weeks, day and night, as you’ll recall, was absolutely useless. He said all the figures appear to have been made up out of thin air. He called me all kinds of foul names, and I had no choice but to tender my resignation.” Patsy took off her coat and walked around the room scratching her head. “Can you sue the bastard?” she said. “Well some of the figures might have been off a little,” I said. “How could that be? You know that business inside and out,” she said. “I’ve put quite a bit of money aside, you know. We could go someplace,” I said. “But I’ve got my job. We have the house and our friends,” she said. “I’ve got over thirty million dollars,” I said. “Thirty million. You must be crazy,” she said. She went into the kitchen, and started nervously making herself a cup of tea. Maybe telling her was a mistake. I thought she would be happy for us. But Patsy’s such a straight-arrow. “We could go someplace really nice,” I said, “and never work again. Come on, we’ve both worked hard all of our lives. We deserve a break.” “They’ll catch us wherever we go. And then what? We’ll spend the rest of our lives in prison. Is that what you want?” she said. “It’s just loose change. I was in charge of the books. They’ll never figure it out,” I said. Patsy was thinking. She looked very distraught. “If you turned yourself and with all of the money, you could plea bargain,” she said. “It might not be too bad,” she said. “No way in hell am I going to do anything like that. I feel the company owes it to me, and I’m going to enjoy it,” I said. Patsy look like she was going to cry. “I really liked our lives as they were, both of us working, and our weekends together,” she said. “It had to end. It was too good,” I said. We sat there in silence, mourning the end of an era. Finally, I said, “It’s all a lie, Patsy. I was just testing you, to see which way you to go if it came to that. And, now, I can see that you’d leave me, maybe even turn me in. And all along I thought you loved me, that you’d stick with me through anything. Well, I still have my job, and I certainly don’t have thirty million. But I have to wonder about your loyalty,” I said. Her eyes were popping out of her skull. “Frank, you’re crazy. You’re sick. How could you put me through this?” she said. Then she started laughing really wildly. I was frightened and didn’t know what to say. “My god, you’re a funny man. And that’s why I’d go with you anywhere,” she said, still shaking her head like a crazy person. I didn’t even have a plan. I looked around the room for anything to hold on to.