Pretty soon I felt like I was living that Seinfeld episode where George leaves the Russian hat at that woman's apartment. I was surrounded by J.'s "stuff." Some of it was very nice, mind you. I still have a clock she left on my mantle. But it was also weird. Her parents kept her very busy with church on the weekends so the only times I really got to go do things with her was after work. She would come over and make herself at home. The neighbors (the decent ones in my scary neighborhood - another story for a later date) all would come over and chat with her. In short, everyone loved J. Well, except Meredith. Meredith was always suspicious. Good senses, that Meredith.

I'll fast forward through a couple of relatively stable, boring months. We continued on. The only bizarreness was her penchant for Christian rock (I mean, this girl was the ultimate hypocrite in that regard) and her connection to her church "friend" Bobby and her 12 year-old cousin to whom she was basically a surrogate mother and best friend.

J. worked in the estimating department. Her job was to enter paperwork into a mainframe. Pure data entry, but important in that subcontractors got paid based upon what she entered into the system. She also seemed to be very good at her job. She was always finishing before the other people in her department and was generous enough to take their work when she was caught up. This was probably suspicious since she seemed to spend most of her time at my desk despite, I hasten to add, the fact that I tried to keep her away so I wouldn't get in trouble.

At any rate, a problem in her department soon popped up. It seemed that some subcontractors weren't getting some of their checks. The head of that department, a guy I really liked but a guy who was also super uptight, started investigating. Next thing I knew, J. was fired. I walked her wailing little self out to her car not knowing what the hell had happened. Needless to say, I was upset. Finally, I went to her boss to ask him what happened (or maybe he came to me, I can't remember) and he told me that he'd found the paperwork that hadn't been entered. Several days worth of work, in fact. In J's wastebasket. Seems that if she didn't have time to enter her work she just threw it out. Good plan, there, sweetie...