It came together last year around this time. Hot summer day. You know how it is. You’re hanging out. People let down their guard and you can’t help yourself. You notice things. Like the safe squatting prominently in the life guards’ station. You fixate on it. First up, is figuring out the code, the combination, the what have you. If anyone would know it, it would be Maud, my Boss. I make nice. A tricky thing cuz you don’t want to come off as too “suck-uppy”. I notice she likes coffee. Super sweet, but that’s none of my business. One morning, we’re now in early August, I come in with an extra “oops” cup, as in “Oops, Betsy called in sick. And now, I’ve got an extra coffee…want it?” Like that. We hang. I pump her in the sweetest way imaginable. I want to know her birthday. The address of her childhood home. Etc. Etc. I work it. Now, if say I’m in the mood to go out drinking or buy that pretty scarf in the earring shop which compliments my eyes, I wait until after hours. Then, I swivel the dial this way and that, pop open the safe, and give myself a modest pay raise, somewhere in the neighborhood of an extra ten or twenty. I’m not about to empty the kitty. Why kill the gift which keeps on giving throughout the year?