by JT Kalnay
"I can't see you again until Saturday,” she said.
"Saturday's good for me,” Jay answered though he ached to ask why and to beg her to see him tomorrow and the next day. He wondered why she said “can't”. "Saturday's fine,” he repeated, trying to control his voice.
"What do you want to do? Go for a run?” Tonia's eyes widened in excitement and acceptance of the idea.
"That sounds great and I know just the place. Meet me in the long term parking just outside the front gate to Islip McArthur airport on Long Island at 5 am next Saturday? Okay? Wait right by the gate so I don’t have to drive in to get you."
"Where?" he asked incredulously.
"Islip. It's a small airport about 50 miles out on Long Island. You might even want to stay over at a hotel nearby if you can't get up that early,” she teased, reminding him of their last morning date when she'd had to haul his butt out of bed.
"Don't be late. Not even a minute late. We'll have somewhere to go and we'll have to be there exactly on time so don't be late!" she repeated. One last kiss and she was in her convertible, top up, and gone into the Sunday night blackness.
Back in his apartment, Jay put on the Sunday night baseball and ironed his shirts and called his mother.
"Yes she's nice mom.”
(pause)
"No she's not Jewish mom.”
(pause)
"Yes she's done college mom.”
(pause)
"No she's not older mom.”
"Yes I like her Mom.”
"No I don't know that Mom.”
"Yes I'm going to see her again Mom.”
"Next Saturday Mom.”
"We're going running.”
"We went to a baseball game.”
"No. It was her idea. She really likes it, she knows the players and everything.”
"No she's not a tomboy.”
"Mom, mom, MOM.”
"Relax. Inhale. Take a breath. That's better. Now one last question okay?"
"NO! And it's none of your business if we did anyway,” Jay said firmly. There was a pause while his mother thought up another of the questions that would form her harangue.
"She's in sales so she travels a lot. Listen. I gotta go ok?"
"No she's not here, I'm ironing. Why should I pay a dollar and a quarter a shirt at the laundry when I can do them myself right?"
"Yes.”
"No.”
"Yes.”
"No.”
"Yes.”
"Okay. I'll call you later this week. Good-bye.”
Monday and Tuesday came and went. Jay worked 12 hours a day and jogged more miles than usual. His life was attaining the level of focus it required to remain stable and keep him from his bouts of childhood depression. Wednesday afternoon arrived and brought Bill Beck with it. Jay had some news for him.
"Bill there's something in this system that doesn't make any sense. There's a data sink here that I can't figure out.”
"A data sink?"
"Yeah. There's a flow of data into a place where it is never used and from whence it never flows. A data sink. I can't tell if there's supposed to be a backup tape drive there or what? Probably someone just forgot to take it out. It could be slowing down the whole system significantly while it waits to do these meaningless writes. And, wherever the repository is it’s got to be filling up and causing a whole bunch of other problems."
Bill leaned in close to look at the diagrams. After a few minutes he picked up Jay's phone, dialed and machine gunned some orders.
"Come on,” Bill ordered.
"Where are we going?"
"To talk to some programmers.”
"Oh,” Jay said. He suddenly realized that he and Bill were going to talk to the people who were likely responsible for the data sink. Twenty minutes later they were in a conference room on the 8th floor at the head of a hastily convened meeting. A dozen casually dressed programmers and two managers in three piece suits were seated around the table.
"Jay. Why don't you start us off,” Bill ordered. The room hushed. Most of the people focused on Jay. One of the managers feigned indifference.
"Alright Bill. I've been reviewing these design documents and...”
One of the 'suits' snapped his head up from his notes.
"You've what? He's been what?” Shooting to his feet, the surly looking manager spoke directly to Bill. "Who's this guy to be reviewing our design documents and code? Who the hell do you think you are?"
"Sit down Hal,” Bill ordered. His voice left no doubt who had seniority in the room. "He is Dr. Jay Calloway. At my direction he has put fresh eyes on this long-standing problem. Go on Jay.”
"Well. I was reviewing these documents and this code and I was wondering about this data sink?” Programmers looked at each other, towards their papers, at their feet. No-one answered.
"Hal. Let's go for a walk. You guys figure this out,” Bill indicated to the programmers and Jay. Half an hour later, when Bill and the now calmer looking Hal returned, Jay and the programmers had indeed figured it out. It had been an honest mistake, one anybody could have made under the pressure the firm put on its programmers. It was supposed to have been a portal to an offline tape backup storage system that had been replaced by a high speed RAID system. But the tape writes had never been removed and apparently a virtual tape system had been patched in. A quick look at the virtual tape system showed it had been at capacity for over a month and had been thrashing to try to make room for new writes.
Bill and Jay walked back to their offices. "What happened?" Bill asked.
"Somebody forgot to take it out. That's all,” Jay answered. He was speaking protectively of the programmers. Bill caught the tone. He knew techno geeks stuck together against management. It was like an unwritten rule, the code of the playground, the honor of the programmer. Bill let it go. Jay filed away for a mental note that Bill only cared about fixing the problem, not the blame.
On Friday, Bill came back to Jay's office, scuffling his feet and speaking loudly so as not to sneak up on the jumpy Jay.
"Yeah Bill. I hear you coming,” Jay called out. The routine was getting to be a running gag around the office.
"Come with me,” Bill said.
"Where are we going?"
Bill didn't answer. They walked in silence to the elevators, rode up to the 22nd floor and into a room that looked like mission control in Houston. Jay's eyes lit up as he took in all the equipment.
"Where are we?" Jay asked.
"Currency Trading. Your fix went live this morning. Today's stats are just coming in. Thought you might want to see the result of your work,” Bill said.
Jay's blood started racing. The two men positioned themselves behind a bank of monitors. At exactly 4 o'clock a bell sounded and twenty analysts rolled their chairs back from their video displays.
"Ought to be up in a minute Big Bill,” the serious looking analyst announced. "Here it comes now. Holy SHIT! We won 23% more today. For a net gain of, wait, wait, $1,900,000. Nice work Bill.” The short spectacled man turned and shook hands with Bill. "This the kid?" he asked.
"Yeah. Jay Calloway.”
"Nice to meet you Doctor Calloway. Doctor Calloway the code doctor.” Jay recognized the Carnegie technique. "Good work code doctor.”
"Thanks,” Jay answered. Bill led him away from the busy man. Back to the elevators. They made a stop at the cafeteria for a diet coke. By the time they got back to Jay's office, there was a small crowd, including Hal, waiting for them.
"Twenty three percent. 1.9 million. We heard already,” Hal said. He shook Jay's hand. "Sorry I jumped on you kid.”
Dan Landford drifted by. He stared at Jay. "Nice work Bill,” he said, directing his comments away from Jay, as though he had had nothing to do with the day's coup. Bill and Dan walked down the hall, talking quietly.
From somewhere, champagne and beer appeared and the late workday gathering turned into an impromptu party. Jay, remembering his plans to get to the hotel
beside the Islip airport tonight, only sipped at his diet Coke. After a few minutes Bill returned and quieted the small crowd.
"Jay. You've set a tough pace to keep up. But we like it. Good work.” Bill reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. He stripped off ten $100 bills and counted them into Jay's hand. "Take Monday off with pay and have a nice time this weekend.” There were whistles and cheers all round. The whistles and applause kept increasing as Bill kept stripping off bills and distributing them, along with Monday off, to Jay’s co-workers.
As the booze ran out the party waned even as people tried to figure out what to do with their newly acquired long weekend. Finally Jay was able to shut everything down and get home. By the time he got to the hotel in Islip, it was 9:30. Jay was exhausted from both the excitement of the day and from fighting the Long Island getaway traffic. He phoned the front desk for a wakeup call, set his watch and the room's alarm clock for an hour before his date with Tonia and lay down to sleep. Minutes later he was out. Dreaming of his big day at the office and what he hoped would be a good day with Tonia.
"He made the company 1.9 million dollars today,” the one man said.
"He's cost us nearly that much in security and surveillance so far,” another replied. They'd been debating the merits of the new kid for days.
“Yeah. But you know that 1.9 million from today? That’s going to be around 1.9 million EVERY day… So keep a close eye on him. We need him. And if we’re going to pull of what we want to pull off, we're going to need him and the others.”
"Yes sir.”
"How are things with him and you know who?"
"About to get a lot more intimate.”
"Be sure of it.”
Chapter
At exactly five am Tonia Taggert pulled up to where Jay Calloway stood shivering in the dark summer morning. Jay clambered into her BMW.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"Patience," was all she said.
The road from Islip McArthur airport went west for a short bit then plunged south, toward the Atlantic Ocean, passing through ever larger stands of trees that formed into a park. They drove through the National Forest in the dark. Here they saw pines and spruce clinging to the sandy soil of Long Island. Visions of the remote wildness of the Island's yesterdays were all around them. Miles later the friends emerged from the forest and burst onto a narrow causeway perched precariously high above the still, dark waters of the south shore salt water bays. Jay didn't even know this beauty existed on Long Island. Tonia threw her windows open and the salt air came rushing in, attacking their senses. She shook her long blonde hair free from its ties and breathed deeply of the pure, fresh air. Jay's every sense seemed to arrive at a new level of awareness.
The road stretched out before them. It seemed to go off endlessly into the near-dawn. Jay had no idea where they were headed until they suddenly rumbled over an old steel grated bridge and dove down off the causeway to a thin sand spit that seemed to barely rise out of the water. Tonia braked and turned east. The sky was just beginning to lighten. She parked and got out of the car. She pulled off her sweat suit and called to Jay who was just staring at the sky and sand and water.
"Come on,” she urged him. "We can't miss it.” Tonia started jogging east.
Jay got out of his sweats and set off after her. The surf lapped gently and deliciously to his right, the rye grass waved and whisked at the dunes to his left. The plaintiff cry of an unseen seagull drifted in from somewhere off the ocean.
Jay's heart beat in his ears as they picked up the pace. He slowly closed the distance between himself and Tonia. His new level of fitness was evident in his stride. As he came upon her from behind, he was struck yet again by her incredible fitness and stunning beauty. Every muscle was toned and in harmonious proportion with the other.
"Just a few more minutes,” she said. “I grew up not far from here. My parents had a small house just on the other side of the bay. I still have it. It’s the only place I can ever get away, just by myself. I come here once in a while when I need to be reborn. No-one knows about it.”
Jay knew now that they were running to the sunrise. A glorious, soul-lifting sunrise it became. Fingers of salmon reached up to touch the few clouds that clung to the remnant of the night sky. Ribbons of honey and wheat and gold stretched up over the horizon and gilded the tops of the gentle ocean swells. The slow dance from night to morning twirled around the salmon and gold and insisted on picking up the tempo and rising to a crescendo of flame and ruby. The runners coasted to a stop, their hands finding each other's. Their bodies slowly coming together. They stood and gathered in the growing dawn together, easy friends in the manifest presence of their creator.
Tonia gently led Jay towards the dunes, guiding him between the tall grass until they came to a sheltered quiet spot. She pulled him towards her and gently kissed his lips, his cheeks, his forehead, his eyes. Jay caressed her face, returning her kisses, yielding to her soft yet persistent lead.
She pulled him down onto the sand and lay beside him, continuing to kiss him, to talk gently to him. He felt as though the glory and passion of the gift of the rising sun were being revisited on him in this summer sun shower of love. His eyes closed in complete surrender to the beauty who led him further, ever further. The intensity of her kisses, and the urgency of her touches grew. She rolled onto her back and pulled him on top of her. Their shoes and shirts and shorts dotted the sand around them. As the sun crested over the eastern horizon, Tonia Taggert lay naked, pastry dusted with powdery sand beneath the glistening, gleaming, panting body of Jay Calloway.
"Now,” she breathed softly into his ear. Jay exalted in the realization of exactly what was going to happen. Slowly he lowered himself as gently as a fully aroused man can. Sinking into the warmth and wetness of her, feeling the best of all that she was and all that they were together reaching up through him where they were joined. He cried out in the exquisite pleasure. The new lovers lay still in each other's arms as the dawn broke all round them.
For an eternity they lay there silent just listening to the world awaken. "Now,” she whispered again and they began to move. Rising and lowering and pushing and feeling the beauty of love and the closeness of friendship and the majesty of all that the world could be.
The sweat stood on his back and formed on his face and ran down off his chest, mingling with the mist on her gently tanned skin. Faster and deeper and more urgently he moved until it seemed he surely must lose himself inside her. He tensed for the moment that he knew was upon him and for which he had waited all these months and from which there was no turning back. He felt her body rise up towards him, her arms clutching at him, holding him tighter and closer than he knew was possible. The power of her release rocked him and drove him into the abyss where he loosed himself in searing streams, deep inside her, screaming out and writhing with feelings he'd never known.
They lay together in each other’s arms for what seemed like a lifetime. And for Jay it most certainly was. His lifetime of loneliness and detachment and watching from somewhere else and wondering if he was destined to be alone was over. For the first time in his entire life he believed he knew what love was.
After a long time, she roused him from his reverie. "It always has to be like that for us,” she said. "It can't be motel rooms or the back seats of cars or anywhere whose beauty can't match this. It can't be a kiss and a feel and a minute under the covers with our pajamas on. I can't do that Jay. I need beauty and love and belonging and being needed and all that's good and right and us. Once a year, once a lifetime, once a day, I don’t care, but it always has to be like a fairy tale like that…”
Jay had no answer except a single tear that Tonia wiped from his deep blue eyes.
Chapter
Bill Beck scuffled his way towards Jay Calloway's office. As had become the habit, the other office dwellers on the hall began coughing or throwing wadded up paper balls to announce the impending arrival of a visitor. Jay blushed
at the attention, but welcomed the warning.
Jay's concentration and focus were quickly becoming legendary at MacKenzie Lazarus. He'd work all morning, rarely getting up from his desk except to go to the cooler in the corner to get an ice cold diet coke. The department secretary had bribed one of the cafeteria workers to keep his cooler full. He'd run at noon, sometimes a mile, sometimes ten. He'd work all afternoon then drift home to catch some dinner. Sometimes he’d head home by way of the arcade where he would routinely play an hour on a single quarter and establish a high score. After arriving home, he'd work most of the evening on his powerful SUN Microsystems computer while he listened to baseball on the radio or talked to Tonia on the speaker phone.
He never saw Tonia during the week.
He spent a lot of time answering email on his computer. It seemed that his internet address had been distributed to his former students and they took delight in finding him and sending him messages. Jay didn't really mind because he was actually fond of some of his students. And when he was lonely, it was nice to have someone, anyone, even a computer geek student to talk to via email. C. Daniel Kinchon was his most faithful correspondent, frequently seeking guidance about teaching and about research.
A big mystery with his coworkers at MacKenzie Lazarus was where he'd disappear to on the weekends. No-one knew where he went and he never offered to tell. They all assumed it was to see his significant other, and they assumed from his secrecy that it must be another man.
After the success of his redesign on the CTSG system, Jay had fixed a few other software problems which had saved MacKenzie Lazarus more money, though not in such dramatic amounts. But he wasn't fixing things now. He was building something. For the last four months he'd been working on a new system for MacKenzie Lazarus' traders at the NYSE.
The idea for the system had sprung from a simple question. On a tour of the trading floor he'd wondered aloud why the traders had to make their trade, then write it down, then report it to a helper who'd keypunch the whole thing. Jay had asked why the whole thing wasn't automated with hand held terminals connected via short range FM radio links to a local file server that could act as a front end to MacKenzie Lazarus’ networks. Jay had further asked why the traders had to write the trades down at all when either a touch screen or voice- input system would be faster.
