She squeezed a blob of apricot scrub on it, and started soaping herself. It felt good to feel the clean tingle, although she'd worn her jumpsuit she'd felt like the dust had formed a film on her skin and she was literally itching to get it off.
It was good to be back at the office away from all the destruction.Kerry rinsed herself off, then applied a good handful of shampoo to her hair and scrubbed her scalp. Up by the hotel, there were people and cars, and a lot of activity, a far cry from the ghostly wasteland they'd so recently left.
With the last of the soap circling down the drain, she shut the shower off and stepped out, wrapping herself in the thick towel that was hanging nearby. Even that felt good and she dried herself off, glancing briefly in the half fogged mirror at her reflection.
Grim. She stuck her tongue out at the disheveled image. Then she got her underwear on and ran a brush through her hair, before she wrapped the towel around her neck and emerged from the bathroom.
It was quiet. The windows were surprisingly sound proofed, and the room itself had a thick carpet, and a comfortable king size bed--not a specially grand space, but right now it seemed like heaven to Kerry's tired eyes.
She pulled on a pair of carpenter pants and a polo, but left her feet bare as she went over to the desk and sat down next to it, picking up her water bottle and taking a swig.
Laying down was an option, but she knew if she did, she'd fall asleep and she wasn't sure she wanted to do that. Dar was down in the basement of their office looking for pipes, and she wanted to wait for her to come back up to the room to see what she'd found down there.
The team--she'd started to think of all of them as one big team-- would probably want to gather for dinner. She'd heard them talking on the ride back up from Battery Park, and there was something of a group mind going on that she could appreciate in the situation.
She did appreciate it. However, on a personal level, she would have rather spent the time alone with Dar simply decompressing. Her body wasn't that tired, but her mind was, having spent hours and hours chasing problems around in circles.
"I don't think I'm up to a communicative evening." Kerry remarked to the empty room. "But let's see what happens." She glanced at her laptop, then she extended her legs and crossed them at the ankles, leaving the machine sitting closed on the desktop.
Her cell phone and PDA rested next to it, both blessedly quiet for the moment.
That was good. She was tired of telling people what to do, and getting mostly bad news from all quarters. She wanted to be able to chill out, and not feel guilty that she was letting issues lie without her attention.
There was a point, she had discovered, when you lost the ability to quantify everything you had to do when there was just too much of it.It was like trying to dig a hole in the sand by the ocean--fast as you kept digging, it kept filling.
She'd found that point today, right before she'd shut her laptop and turned off her mic. No matter how many customers she'd talked to, there were more waiting. No matter how many times she explained the situation, there were people that begged the exception and, to their credit, most of them were not frivolous requests.
Never enough.
Kerry took a swallow of her water, then decided she really wanted something stronger. She got up and put the cap on the bottle, then started looking around for some shoes, figuring even a seat in the corner of the bar would probably keep her from falling asleep until Dar finished fiddling.
Maybe they'd even have some decent jalapeno poppers or something. Kerry found her boots and put them on, then tucked her room key into one of her side pockets and slipped out the door and into the hallway.
It, too, was quiet. She passed one other person on the way to the elevator, and rode all the way down in solitary splendor to the floor which housed the bar. This area was more crowded, and she spotted a few familiar faces as she made her way into the dark, wood-lined space."Hey guys."
"Hey boss!" Mark waved her over. "The big Kahuna was checking one more thing, then she said she'd meet us up here."
"Good." Kerry claimed one of the leather chairs in the midst of her techs. "Someone get me a beer, please. The bigger the better."
"Right you are, ma'am." Shaun got up and trotted over to the bar.
"Long ass day, huh?" Mark asked. "Man, I don't envy those phone guys though. I wouldn't want to be creeping around in that subway at night."
"No way." Another of the techs agreed. "They've got balls." He paused, and blushed. "Sorry ma'am."
"No problem." Kerry sighed. "They've sure got more balls than I do, anyway." She glanced at Mark. "So what's Dar doing now? Did you find a route through the basement?"
Mark shook his head. "No such luck," he replied, mournfully. "I can't even get them to tell me where our damn demarc is. They have to call some guy who was on vacation or something to find out. We couldn't find any easy way to get from the building out."
"Ugh." Kerry accepted the large, frosty mug of beer Shaun was handing her. "Thanks. Where's Kannan?"
"In our room," Shaun said. "He's still pretty freaked out. I told him to order some room service and relax."
Kerry took a sip of the cold beer and swallowed it "Good choice." She complimented Shaun. "And good idea to have Kannan just rest tonight I have my admin trying to get him a flight out of here tomorrow to go home. I don't think he's really in danger hereafter all, so many people here in New York are from India it's not really unusual--but I understand how he feels."
"Yeah, I know." Shaun picked up his own glass that seemed to be some kind of highball drink. "He's just freaked out by all of it. Sucks too, because he's our best WAN guy."
It did suck. Kerry sat back in her chair and looked around the bar. Aside from her group, there were several others, clustered around the scattered tables or watching the three television sets mounted on the walls.
Ordinarily, the screens would have sports on them, she figured.Basketball, or football, or whatever ESPN was serving up. Now, all three were tuned to CNN, and those sitting around seemed fixed on the pictures that showed again and again the horrific sights she'd gotten to know up close and personal earlier that day.
Shots of the wreckage. Shots of the Pentagon. Shots of a burned field in Pennsylvania. Talking heads. Shots of the president with his bullhorn standing on a mound of debris. More talking heads. Shots of smoke, of the mayor at a funeral, of the barges removing remains to Fresh Kills landfill along with mounds and mounds and mounds of debris.
Fresh Kills. What a cosmically ironic name. Kerry was truly surprised someone hadn't changed it just to spare everyone the wince. It was Dutch, she'd learned. The old word kille meaning water channel and the place itself was an estuary that drained wetlands into the sea, but in the current context it was ghoulish and she was tired of hearing it.
Certainly, she'd winced. That reminded her of something and she set her beer down, removing her cell phone from her belt and opening it. She looked up a number, pressed the dial, and listened to the ring until it was answered. "Hello, Mother."
"Wh--oh, hello, Kerry," Cynthia Stuart answered. "What a surprise. I hadn't expected to hear from you this evening. Where are you? Still in New York?"
"Yes. Across from our office at Rockefeller Center," Kerry replied."How are things there?"
"Frustrating," her mother answered honestly. "I have to say it's very difficult talking to people who cannot see past someone with perhaps a different religion, or so on, and who must assume everyone who is from somewhere else is suspect."
"I heard about the attacks," Kerry said. "I'm sorry. We encountered that here. One of our techs is from India and he's had a tough time."