by Melissa Good
Andrew shook his head. “This is a squad with the trots and one outhouse kinda mess.”
“I told ‘em Dar wouldn’t do it,” Mark said “Matter of fact, since I had him on the phone, I told him exactly what kind of no brain ears out the sides of his asshole jerkwad he was.”
Dar had one hand over her ear and the phone pressed to the other. “Yes, I hear you. No, I don’t have anything to comment on about that since it’s not my problem anymore.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I’m
sorry they’re having issues, but I suggest they direct their questions to
the management at ILS. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Lord,” Andrew said. “This ain’t never gonna end good.”
“You got that right, daddy Roberts,” Hamilton said. “Let me go call those poor idiots who sent me and tell them they should go off and buy some banana plantations in Curacao and get out of this damn technology business.”
Kerry reached over and put her hand on Dar’s thigh, feeling the tension under the fabric of her jeans and the slight vibration as she jiggled her foot restlessly. She met Ceci’s eyes across the table, exchanging a faint shake of the head with her as she tried to reason a way through the problem.
There was no reason, though. That was the problem. She could only consider the actions of their replacements as some kind of ego driven insanity and she agreed with Dar one hundred percent that she should stay the hell out of it.
“Yes, I agree it seems odd that a system that was working well stopped working, but again, you would need to ask the current management,” Dar said in a firm tone. “I don’t want to speculate on what would have caused it.” She listened then glanced at Kerry and rolled her eyes. “Do I think it’s a cyber attack? I have no idea. I have no data at all to base any theory on.”
“You’re actually being extraordinarily kind to those people,” Ceci said. “They’re lucky it’s you they’re talking to not me.”
“Willerson was an ass,” Mark said to Kerry, lowering his voice. “I mean, like really. Just all snide and creepy. He made it out like he knew we’d planned this all out, and when I called him on the whole change thing he did, he said he’d sue me if I told anyone else that.”
“Wait. He called you for help and then said he was going to sue you? Really? He must be nuts,” Kerry said. “What in the world is wrong with these guys? They think this is some kind of stupid game?”
Mark shook his head. “I felt so slimy after talking to him I took a shower.”
“Well, yes, I could do that,” Dar said into the phone. “If it’s a general interview on how that type of technology works, sure.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m at a café down the road from our offices. If you want to come back over, I’ll give you a few minutes.”
“Lord.”
“C’mon, Dad, don’t you want to be on CNN?” Kerry smiled at him.
“No, I do not.”
“Okay see you in a little while.” Dar released the line and let her head drop back against the back of the chair. “Son of a bitch.”
“Wouldn’t take no for an answer?” Ceci guessed. “Well, I’ve seen you on television, kid. You draw eyeballs.” She regarded her tall offspring and smiled at the droll expression directed back at her. “Make sure you get a nice plug in for the new company.”
“Kill me now,” Dar said. “Mark, where did you leave it with this jackass?”
“Told him he needed to clean up his own shit,” Mark said. “Sorry, Dar. I wasn’t going to let him talk smack to me, especially when he was calling me to beg for help.”
“Didn’t have the guts to call me directly?” Dar smiled briefly. “I know my home number’s in the records there. Hasn’t changed in years. He wouldn’t have even had to search for a sticky note.”
“The angle he took was, he was doing this as like a favor to me, sort of letting me come back in and help you help him so you didn’t have to get dragged in the mud,” Mark said. “He said if he went public, you could kiss your new business goodbye.”
Hamilton turned his head toward Andrew. “What do you say we go visit this gentleman? He’s from the North, y’know.”
Andrew looked thoughtful. “If that there feller is making threats at my kids, I do believe I should go talk with him.”
“Let’s wait until after CNN interviews Dar for that.” Ceci took a sip of her wine. “Because that would be too much excitement for them to handle and I want to put a deposit down first on that little cottage in St. John’s for us to escape to.”
Dar leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. “Hamilton,” she said. “Can you get me the number of Higgs, the jackass who replaced me?”
“He didn’t,” Hamilton said, straightforwardly. “But I can get you his phone number, sure.”
Dar made a come hither gesture at him. “Let me make one stab at giving him some advice. Jacques wouldn’t take it, maybe he will.”
Hamilton started fishing in his cell phone, shaking his head all the while. “More chance of getting a pig to sing,” he lamented. “But what the hidey hell. Let’s give it a whirl.”
Chapter Twelve
THE CNN LADY producer turned her ball cap around and settled it back on her head. “So just for some prelim, we went over and tried to get some information about this outage that’s apparently affecting a good portion of the banking business.”
“Interbank,” Dar said. She was seated behind her office desk, leaned back in her comfortable chair and had her hands wrapped around one hiked knee. “It’s a central clearinghouse, a meet point for a lot of the large banks where they exchange information.”
“Right.”
“Lets you use some other bank’s ATM from your own,” Dar said.
“Exactly,” the producer said. “So ILS runs it.” Dar shook her head. “No?”
“No. Interbank runs itself. It happens to have contracted a third party to carry the connections instead of building their own network. Lot of companies do that. Building and maintaining a wide area network is hellish expensive and complicated.”
“Ah.” The woman took a seat across from Dar. “How does that work?”
“Same way as you buy telephone service for your house,” Dar’s said. “Or to be more familiar to you, it’s how you buy satellite transponder space from Intelsat to send your signals to and from Atlanta.”
“Ah!” The woman nodded. “So they buy transport.”
“Yes. Transport and the management services that goes with it. Making sure there’s enough bandwidth, tracking outages, rerouting, all the things that go with keeping the data going from point a to point b,” Dar said.
“So what’d they screw up, Dar?” the woman asked. “I know you know. I heard them talking in the background in a different room than we were in. Didn’t know we were listening.”
They were alone in the office. Kerry and the rest of the gang were entertaining the camera team and the on screen talent downstairs, serving them gratefully received strong coffee. Hamilton had driven off to go have a meeting with someone. Dar hoped as soon as they were finished talking she could take Kerry home and fall into bed. Long ass day.
“I can’t discuss that on the record,” she said candidly.
“Why?” the woman asked. “You don’t work there anymore. It’s a cock up. We know about it. Why not give me a scoop?”
Dar shook her head. “Sorry, Cheryl,” she said. “If they decide to go public, I’ll comment on it, but I’m not going to talk about someone else’s problems.”
“That’s an interesting bit of integrity,” Cheryl responded. “Because I’m pretty sure if you’d been the one who caused the problem they would have outed you in a heartbeat.” She smiled. “I tried to make them.”
Dar smiled back. “It’s always better to stick to the truth or nothing at all.”
They studied each other in silence for a bit. “So no, huh?” Cheryl finally said. “It’s frustrating for us because we know there’s news here. You get a sense f
or that after you do what I do for a while.”
“There is,” Dar said straightforwardly. “Unfortunately, it’s not my news to discuss. It’s their issue, it’s their customers.”
Cheryl eyed her thoughtfully. “We could make this off the record. I could make you an anonymous source. They don’t have to know.”
“I’d know.”
Cheryl lifted her hand up and let it drop down. “Okay, fair enough. Mind if I ask you one more question?”
“Nope.” Dar glanced at her Handspring, hoping Higgs wouldn’t pick now to call her back.
“How did ILS deal with you being gay?” Cheryl asked. “I assume they knew.”
“They knew,” Dar responded. “There were people who probably cared and were disgusted, but as a corporation ILS didn’t care. Even when Kerry and I became an item, they didn’t care. They put an exception in our employment records and we carried on.”
“Because you were important.”
Dar nodded after a brief pause. “If I was working in the mailroom, probably would have been a different reaction. I was useful to them. They needed my skill set, and, in fact, they appreciated Kerry’s.”
“Practical.”
Dar stood up and stretched. “We did a good job for them. We ready to do this interview? My day’s about to end.” She pondered taking the following morning off before the flight to Washington, the idea becoming rapidly very appealing.
“Sure,” Cheryl said. “The reason I asked about that is the guy we talked to over there inferred that you left because you felt you were being pressured to leave due to your lifestyle.”
Dar laughed.
“No, huh?”
Dar took a step back and leaned against the windowsill, folding her arms over her chest. “I’ve been out of the closet for a lot longer than I was being strategic for ILS,” she said. “The only pressure I was feeling in terms of getting out of there was the pressure to be my own boss.”
“Hon?” Kerry poked her head in the office. “Can we get this show on the road? The kids are waiting for dinner.”
“We’re heading down.” Dar pushed off the sill and waved Cheryl ahead of her. “I was just being grilled on the nerve wracking
consequences of our bedroom.”
Kerry stopped in mid-motion and looked from Cheryl to Dar. “Uh what?”
Cheryl went with the flow. “You have kids?”
“Dogs.” Kerry held the door open. “Two Labrador Retrievers. Now what was that about our bedroom?”
“THINK HE’S GOING to call you back?” Kerry had the car seat pitched back and she was sprawled across it, eyes closed as the ferry rumbled its way across the channel. “At this point I sure hope not.”
“Don’t care,” Dar responded, eyes also closed. “We’re taking tomorrow off.”
“I love you.”
Dar smiled into the darkness of the interior of the truck. “Did I do okay with that interview?” She turned her head and looked at Kerry. “I felt kind of dorky.”
“Actually, you came off as reserved yet mysterious.” Kerry rubbed her nose, pinching the bridge of it. “I liked when you started talking about BGP routing metrics after he kept asking you about what could cause stuff like that to go down.”
“Mm. Well, that is one reason it might stop working. Wrong metrics,” Dar said, stifling a yawn. “Maybe that’s what that monkey did. Skewed the metrics. That would fit the symptoms.”
“Well great, Dardar. When Willerson sees the CNN report, maybe it’ll give him a brainwave and he’ll fix his problem.” Kerry patted her leg. “Tell you what, though, I’m glad Mom and Dad are back.”
“Me too.”
Kerry smiled at the prompt and immediate response. “I hope we get this contract all settled out in the next couple days. I don’t want that hanging over us when we head out to the Grand Canyon,” she said. “This is going to be so much fun, Dar.”
“I think I’m going to wear those new hiking boots to the gym tomorrow. Break them in a little,” Dar said as the ferry pulled up the dock and she moved her seat upright. “I don’t want to mess with blisters on the trip.”
“We can hike around the island, too,” Kerry said, straightening up her own seat as they got ready to drive off the deck. “That’s a good idea.”
Dar put the truck in gear and drove up the ramp, giving the man directing traffic a casual wave. They got up to the top of the slope and she was about to turn left onto the perimeter road when a figure in a security uniform trotted toward her, waving his arm. “Ah.”
“Oh, please no drama,” Kerry moaned. “It’s too damn late, Dar.”
Dar pulled the truck to a halt and opened the window. “Hey, Charles.”
“Ms. Roberts!” He leaned on the side of the vehicle. “Glad I caught you. Listen, have you heard from Billy, since the other night?”
Dar shook her head. “Not a word. Why? He suing?”
“We don’t know,” Charles said. “We haven’t heard a peep from him and Clemente went over to do his cleaning service and there’s no sign of the guy. We were just wondering if you’d seen him, or if he’d contacted you.”
Dar looked at Kerry, who was leaning on the console. “Maybe he took off for a while?” she said. “Figured he’d let things cool off?”
“Maybe,” Charles said. “But we don’t have record of him going off island and he didn’t have a boat.”
“Could have gone on someone else’s,” Kerry said. “Or he could have been in someone else’s car going off the island. You all don’t check everyone in the back seat, do you?”
“That’s true enough, ma’am, but it just seems strange, you know? He was around and about the island for weeks before that, kinda bothering everyone, now poof. He’s gone.”
“Well, in a week or so we’ll be gone so if we see him before that, we’ll let you know,” Dar said. “Ker and I and the dogs are going on vacation.”
Charles smiled. “We’ll keep an eye on the place for you, ma’am. Don’t worry.” He tapped the door and stepped back, giving them a wave as Dar rolled up the window and they proceeded on.
“That was weird,” Kerry said. They pulled into the lower level parking and Dar tucked the truck into the spot next to her SUV. “Dar, did it sound to you like they thought we might know if something happened to that guy?”
Dar rested her hands on the wheel and considered. “No,” she said after a moment. “I think they were just asking everyone they knew was involved with him.” She opened the door to the truck and slid out, shutting the door and heading for the steps up to their home. As she reached the door her Handspring started ringing and she pulled it out. “You know what?”
Kerry reached around her to key the door open. “What?” She pushed the door inward and stepped in quickly to greet Chino and Mocha’s excited wiggling.
“Fuck him.” Dar hit the ignore button and shoved the phone back in her front pocket, sending the call to voice mail. “I gave him a chance. I’m done.” She followed Kerry inside and shut the door, reaching down to pick up the frantic Mocha puppy. “C’mere, squiglet.”
“Are you glad to see us, kids?” Kerry knelt and gave Chino a hug. “Did you take care of the little man today, Chi?”
“Growf.” Chino wagged her tail gently.
“Time for dinner.” Kerry stood up and moved toward the kitchen, picking up the mail on the dining room table and sorting through it as she walked. She put the stack down and went to the cupboard, taking
out two portions of dog food and retrieving a mixture of chopped beef and chicken from the refrigerator.
Mocha hopped up and down at her feet, his front paws scrabbling at her kneecap. “Yap!”
“Yes, I can see you’re hungry.” Kerry assembled the meal and put it down, getting hastily out of the way as the dogs hoovered the contents as though they were being chased down by wolves threatening to take it away from them. “Take it easy, guys.”
Dar wandered in behind her and draped her arms over Kerry’s should
ers. “I turned off my phone. I think we should just move on. Let’s go to DC tomorrow and just leave ILS behind.”
“I’m all for that, hon. I just hope ILS doesn’t chase after us, given our mutual customers.” Kerry enjoyed the warmth surrounding her. “You want some tea?”
“Sure,” Dar said. “I’m going to go change and chill out.” She gave Kerry a squeeze, then released her and stepped over the dogs, busy licking their dishes clean. “Like little vacuum cleaners.”
Chino left her empty dish and went to the dog door, bustling through. Mocha first made sure she didn’t leave any food behind, then chased after her, yelping as the door flap swung back and nearly knocked him over.
Kerry chuckled and went to the door. “I’m going to stretch out a little.” She opened the door and went out onto the landing and watched the dogs bolt down the steps into the cozily lit garden. “Nice night.”
It was clear overhead and the stars were vivid against the darkness. Kerry went down the steps and walked over to the seating area, going into the work space and putting water on to heat.
She could have done it inside, of course, but there was something sweet in the air that made her want to savor the night and she got out the small tea set she kept in the outdoor cupboard as she hummed softly under her breath.
Kerry glanced over her shoulder, giving the dogs an indulgent smile as they chased each other in a circle. She set the pot on the burner and stepped to one side, reaching up and grasping the chinning bar Dar had installed there and letting her back stretch out.
It felt good, easing muscles that were cramped from too much sitting around during the whole of the long day. She slowly let her knees unlock and relax, taking her weight on her firmly gripped hands and feeling her shoulders rotate and pop into place. “Ah.”
Chino spotted her and paused, then picked up a sadly bedraggled stuffed lamb and raced over.
Kerry pulled herself up, getting her feet under her as she was nearly knocked off them. “Hey!”
Chino pushed the sodden toy into her thigh.
