by Melissa Good
He picked it up and examined it. “Sure. How big you want it?”
“Good question.” Dar got up “Let’s go look at the front door, and you tell us what size it should be.”
The carver gave her a quick, appreciative look. “That’s different.” He followed her out the door and Kerry followed him. “Usually customers want me to shut up and carve.”
“If we wanted that we’d just mail order it from Signs R Us,” Kerry said.
They walked outside and down the sidewalk a little, then turned and regarded the front of the building.
“Could put it above the door,” Kerry said.
“Mm.” Dar folded her arms.
“I think it would look better on the second level there, like a fourby-three, or a five-by-three feet,” Robier suggested. “See it better from the road.” He looked at her. “You’re the only tenant, right?”
“Right.” Dar closed her eyes and pictured that in her head. “Over the door it would be too narrow. And by the side there, the iron lattice would block it.”
Robier nodded.
“I like the idea of it up on the second floor, Dar. That’s right under our window,” Kerry said.
“Okay, we like it.” Dar turned to him. “Make it as big as you think would look good.”
“I need the logo,” he said. “And I’ll get working on it.”
They turned as they heard footsteps, and Kerry recognized her afternoon meeting. “Hey, John, hey Manuel.” She extended a hand. “See? We’re so new we’re still arranging for our company sign.”
“Great! We’re the first ones then.” John smiled at her. “Hi there, Dar. How’s it going?”
“Busier than I thought it would be,” Dar said, with a wry look.
“Hope we can add to that.” John didn’t miss a beat. “Can we talk?”
Dar and Kerry exchanged glances. “Sure, c’mon in.” Kerry escorted them past and into the office. “Conference room’s first door on your left.”
Dar waited for the door to close then she laughed and shook her head. “Okay, so you need a deposit from me?” She turned back to the carver.
“You didn’t ask how much it is,” Robier countered.
“When I have to file my first corporate financial results I might care,” Dar said. “Right now I don’t. I’ve never started up a company before, so I want things done right, and getting a local artist to do a sign seems right.”
Robier studied her, then he smiled, his face shifting from wary and slightly skeptical, to warm and friendly in a heartbeat. “Seems like you’re doing all right already.” He jerked his head in the direction of the door. “Gary said you guys do high tech?”
“We do high tech,” Dar said. “I know it’s kind of a weird location to put high tech, but I spent the last fifteen years in an office on Brickell and I was over it.”
He nodded. They walked over to the little patio in the front and sat down on the iron chairs. “I did high tech for a while after I got out of the service,” he said. “Telecom install, you know?”
Dar chuckled. “Oh yes I know.”
“Worked out of a central office near Doral. Just day after day of same old, same old, until Andrew hit. I think I worked two months straight, no time off, almost twenty hours a day.”
“Sucks,” Dar said. “You can only do so much of that.”
“Right. I got to where I was having flashbacks. Felt like I was back in the service with all that stress. So I just stopped. Quit one day, and went to work on construction the next.” He sniffed reflectively. “Got to learn how to use band saws, and something about the smell of sawdust got into me so I started carving.”
Dar studied him for a long moment. “That’s a good story.”
He nodded again. “Could have ended up like some other people, sweeping the street or on meds, or gone crazy, but that was an anchor. Then when I got good at it, it became something a lot more, because then, you create things.”
“Computer programming is like that,” Dar said, briefly. “You start with nothing but an empty page and end up with something that does things.” She leaned her elbows on her knees. “I wanted to get back to that, and that’s what ended up with this.” She indicated the building.
He regarded her. “You been in the military?”
Dar shook her head.
“Funny. You kinda have the look,” he said. “No offense or anything intended.”
Dar’s lips twitched. “I grew up on a Navy base. My dad’s retired Navy.”
It seemed odd to be this forthcoming to a stranger, she suddenly realized. Odd, but not really wrong. There was something about him she instinctively liked, or at least, that’s what she told herself.
Robier grinned. “Okay, that’s probably it. My dad’s retired Marines. Never lets me forget it, since I went Army.” He cleared his throat. “One thing I learned doing my own thing, is how sweet it is to be your own boss.”
Dar nodded emphatically. “That’s what I’ve been learning the last couple weeks. I never really expected it to be as different as it is.” She leaned back in the chair and hiked one boot up onto her opposite knee. “Been a revelation.”
“Sure was,” he said. “Well, I don’t need no deposit. The materials hardly cost me anything, it’s all in the work. So I’ll go get started on it, and let you know when you can expect it.” He stood up and waited for her to stand as well. “Good to have you in the neighborhood.”
He held out his hand and Dar clasped it. “Glad your neighbors recommended you. Thanks.”
He lifted his hand and waved, then made his way down the sidewalk, turning left at the end of the path and starting back down the road in the direction of the cafe.
Dar stuck her hands in her front pockets and watched him go, leaning back against the wrought iron and enjoying the afternoon breeze.
A soft knock on the glass nearby made her look up to find Kerry looking back at her from inside the conference room. She crooked a finger at her and smiled.
Dar pushed away from the lattice. “Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me.” She opened the door, catching a hint of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in the air.
KERRY FINISHED HER laps and stretched her arms out along the edge of the heated pool, glad to keep most of herself submerged and not exposed to the chilly air. “Damn that feels good.”
“It does.” Dar had just surfaced after doing a few underwater somersaults and turned over onto her back, stretching her body out with luxurious thoroughness. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Kerry extended her legs and crossed them, sinking down in the water and feeling the pull against her shoulders.
“What do you think about taking the boat up to Crandon Marina tomorrow for the party?” Dar asked. “We could take some people for a ride maybe.”
“You know what I think?” Kerry asked. “I think you’re really getting into driving that boat.”
Dar grinned, taking up a position and stretching her own arms out along the coral stone verge. “Me wanting to take the boat out twice this week make you think that?”
“Mm.” Kerry tilted her head and gave Dar a kiss on the shoulder. “Sure I’d love to take the boat, hon, long as we stay near the Intracoastal if things get rocky. I’ve had a chancy stomach with that thing since we got back from the islands.”
“We can take Chino and Mocha,” Dar said. “I bet they’d like to meet everyone.”
“I bet everyone would like to meet them,” Kerry countered. “We should have taken them to work today. You might not have lost that laptop case.”
Dar chortled softly. “Little terror.”
“I don’t know how he got out of that laundry room,” Kerry said, with a sigh. “And left the gate intact. That’s what I don’t get.”
“Opposable paws,” Dar said. “He opened the gate, then closed it behind him.”
“Dar.”
“Okay, Chino closed it.”
“Dar!”
Dar lifted her hands up and pu
t them down. “What do you want me to say? They have psychic powers?”
“Urgh.” Kerry let her head rest against the stone. “Want to go down to the cabin after the party?” she asked, after a moment’s quiet.
“Yes.”
“Was that part of the plan, too?”
“Maybe. Depended on what you said to it.” Dar eyed her. “We have to introduce Mocha to the cabin anyway. Don’t we? There’s not that much for him to chew down there I don’t think.”
Kerry smiled, her mind already moving ahead to waking up on Sunday to a run on the beach, maybe a ride on the bike. “I’m so up for that.” She exhaled happily. “Before we get attacked by another dozen customers next week. Sheesh, Dar.”
Dar chuckled. “That was pretty out of the box,” she admitted. “I like the idea of some of those initiatives, though. Most of them are in our scope.”
“Most of them are in ILS’s scope too.” Kerry grew serious. “Are we going to be in trouble with this? I know we didn’t solicit them, but if someone looked at it from the outside, it looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?”
Dar detached herself from the edge of the pool and started a slow backstroke across the surface. “No.” She said as she crossed back over toward Kerry. “I really don’t think so, Ker. It’s not existing business, and they approached us. I’m not going to turn down legitimate work because they happened to get introduced to us at ILS.”
“They could say we were stealing work from them,” Kerry said, launching from the wall and swimming alongside her. “Should they have the right of first refusal?”
Dar stroked cleanly through the water, pondering the thought. Overhead, the stars were crisp and bright, the sky completely clear as it almost never was. “Should they? I don’t know, Ker. Let me ask Richard on Monday. See what he thinks.”
“Not that I mind getting business.” Kerry turned over on to her back and blinked the warm water out of her eyes. “I just want us to be clean in this. I don’t want a confrontation with them.”
“Yeah, I get that. Problem is, we’re in the same industry. They could make the case any work we do they had prior art on,” Dar said. “So if that’s going to be an issue, I’d rather put the work ahead of it and deal with the fallout.”
Well, that was true. Kerry had to admit privately. After all Dar had really only worked for ILS, so by definition, anyone approaching her would have known her in that role, with the exception of the military contracts. Those she’d earned the hard way, very young, coming sideways into the industry.
But these guys? And the ones visiting her on Monday, and Tuesday, and then the City of Miami?
“Relax, Ker.” Dar caught up to her, swimming with that sinuous grace Kerry always envied. She wrapped her arms around Kerry and kept flexing her legs, driving them both through the water. “Truth is, we brought a lot of value to them. People recognized that, and want to exploit it.”
“Mm.” Kerry let her legs drift down to the bottom now that they were in the shallow end. “I just think we should be careful. We want to be successful, but in a legitimate way.” She poked Dar in the belly. “As much fun as it would be for us to toss them head over heels in the marketplace.”
Dar grinned. “You know what their biggest problem is? It’s not that we’re competing with them.” She rested her forearms on Kerry’s shoulders. “Their biggest problem is the gap we left. How much of their current service offering was my intellectual property?”
Kerry studied her face. “What do you mean?” she said. “Your programs?”
Dar shook her head. “The way we did business. The way we structured accounts. The way a new service was laid out, how we sized things. That whole matrix.”
Kerry blinked.
“That was all mine,” Dar said, in a mild tone. “Not sure I ever mentioned that.”
“Not sure I ever thought about where that came from,” Kerry muttered, after a minute. “I mean, I knew the analytic schemas were yours, but...”
Dar smiled. “So. Like I said, let’s see what Richard says. I think if it ever came down to going into court, if they lost business to us, they would have to admit why they were successful all those years.”
“Ah.” Kerry exhaled. “I see what you mean.”
“But it might not come to that. They might compete and win. Some clients might not want to risk a startup. Lot of deeply conservative people in the client list.”
And that, Kerry thought, was true to a point. “Maybe they’ll go after all those really conservative ones that wouldn’t have anything to do with them with you in charge. Use it as a selling point.”
“Maybe they will.” Dar suddenly grabbed her and lunged off to the side taking them both underwater. She pinched Kerry on the butt then let her go, whirling in mid water and kicking off in the other direction.
Kerry let out a squawk underwater and chased her. They splashed across the pool until they reached the other side, when Dar got her hands on the side of the pool and pressed herself up and out of the water just a whisker ahead of Kerry’s grabbing fingers. “You punk!”
Dar chuckled, going over to the table they’d left their towels on and quickly wrapping herself in one of them, handing Kerry hers when she climbed out after her. “Here, polar bear.”
Caught in the act of shivering, Kerry mock glared at her as she got the soft terrycloth around her. “No one in Michigan would even think about standing around at night in a wet bathing suit in winter.”
“Frostbite,” Dar remarked simply. “You have to put up with a lot in Florida, but this is one of the upsides. It’s just a little chilly.”
They strolled up from the pool area onto the path where they’d left their golf cart and got in. “Now if we were in Michigan, this would need to have heated seats.” Kerry turned the cart and sped it along the cart path, winding around the side of the old Vanderberg Mansion and then along the beach front to where their condo was perched overlooking the sea.
As they pulled up to the outside gate, a chorus of barks and yaps marked their approach, and then the sound of the dog door bursting open and the patter of toenails was heard.
“Ah, the family is coming to greet us.” Kerry tapped in the code to unlock the back gate and squeezed inside as Chino and Mocha reached them. “Hey, guys!”
“Yap!” Mocha’s tiny nails scrabbled at her knee, and she picked him up and cradled him in her arms. “Enjoy this while you can, little guy. I won’t be able to do this for long.”
Mocha licked her chin with great enthusiasm, then nibbled on it.
Dar pulled the gate shut behind them. The lights were on in their little garden and the wall cut off the brisk breeze, making it more comfortable to walk. She smelled the scent of mesquite wood, and the little grilling area near the wall bore evidence of use. “Did you leave something on?”
“I did,” Kerry said, giving Mocha a hug before putting him back down on the ground. “We have some fish fillets in those little packets and sweet potatoes and wax beans.”
“Yum.”
“And a bottle of white wine chilling. So let’s go change and come enjoy it.” Kerry herded the dogs up the steps and opened the door, following them inside.
DAR ADJUSTED THE throttles as she piloted the boat through the narrow entrance to Crandon Marina. It was busy, and she could already hear the sounds of the beach front across the road from the basin they were going to park in. “Did you get us a slip on the far eastern side, Ker?”
“Yep.” Kerry was on the back deck of the boat, Mocha’s little harness leash clamped firmly in one hand. The puppy was almost beside himself with excitement, standing up on his hind legs and staring out over the transom with wide amazed eyes. “On the pontoons there, to the right.”
“Cool.” Dar eased through the clustered vessels and headed for the spot indicated, which only had a few boats moored to it. It was the furthest from the marina, but easier to maneuver. “Glad we decided to map the place out. That would have been a long ass walk on the west side.”
It would still be a walk, but there was a path Dar saw up through the trees that would lead them to the main road, where they could cross over and enter the beachfront park area the shindig was being held in.
Twenty-twenty hindsight would probably have indicated driving, but they’d decided to manage the hike as a trade off on taking the sea route out after the party was over.
Dar spotted the slip number Kerry had given her, and she put the engines into idle as the light current took them toward the pier. There were bumpers over the pontoons, and as they approached, a young man in light sweatpants and a short sleeved shirt trotted over and waited expectantly for them.
She skillfully played the throttles to counter the current, slowing their forward motion to almost nothing before nudging the bow into the slip as the dockside helper reached over and grabbed the forward tie line and got it around a well used cleat. “Thanks,” she called out to the man, who waved, as he moved aft and took the other line Kerry was holding out to him.
She kept the boat against the dock until he tied them off, then cut the engines and secured them.
“Hold on there, you guys!” Kerry called out. “Just hang on!”
Dar moved quickly to the ladder and slid down it, in time to grab Chino’s leash as the Labrador started to try and jump off the boat onto the dock. “Got her.”
Kerry picked up Mocha and stepped onto the dock, waiting for Dar and Chino to do likewise. “Whew.” She put the puppy down as Dar got Chino’s leash straightened out. “Next time, let’s think this through a little more.”
“Live and learn,” Dar said. “C’mon guys.”
They walked down the floating dock and onto the path, then headed up through the trees toward the road. It was another pretty winter day, but the high seventies temperatures made their short sleeved shirts comfortable, and Kerry exhaled in contentment as they made their way through the trees. “What are these, Dar?”
“Sea grapes,” Dar responded. “This entire area used to be full of those Australian pines, but Andrew cleared them off over in Boggs Park at the tip of the island and they replanted a lot of grapes and sawgrass in its place.”
