"Terrible." Her mother agreed. "I have to say your being there also makes me quite anxious, however, Kerry. Angela is also concerned. "
"Thanks. It's been a rough day. We were down at the disaster site earlier. We just got back uptown a little while ago."
"Oh my." Cynthia gasped a little. "I had no idea! I saw the pictures on television just before--it seems absolutely horrific. Hold on, Angela, I have your sister on the phone. She seems right in the middle of everything again--what--oh, all right. Yes, hold on."
"Ker?" Angie's voice came over the line. "Are you nuts? Get the hell out of there!"
"Hi, Ang." Kerry gave her table mates a wry look, and a shrug."Family," she mouthed. "Get out of here? We're in the lobby bar at our hotel. What's wrong with it?"
"Kerry, cut it out! Why are you guys there?" Angela acted upset. "It was bad enough when you were at the Pentagon, but Jesus!"
Perversely, after being horrified the whole day, now Kerry felt the need to downplay the whole thing. "C'mon, Ang. There's a whole city full of people here. Chill. We had to come here. There's a lot of stuff that needed taking care of. "
"How long are you staying there?" Angie asked. "Have you heard what's going on here?"
"I heard. People are going a little crazy, I think," Kerry said. "We have a lot of customers down here, and there are some things we're doing for the government. It's not just me and Dar, either. Our CEO is here and a bunch of our corporate people. "
"So you and Dar aren't running the planet as usual?"
Kerry spotted her beloved partner entering the hotel, surrounded by men, all of whom were glued on whatever it was she was telling them."Who us? Nah, we're just little fish here." She watched Dar, hands moving in a decisive motion, dismiss her accolytes who scattered in all directions. "We're just a couple of nerds to these guys."
"Uh huh," Angie said. "Sis, be careful, please? It's easy to get hurt in all the stuff going on.
"I will."
Dar stopped at the front desk and leaned over the top of it talking to the short, well dressed woman behind it.
"Ker?"
"Huh?" Kerry wrested her attention back to her phone. "Sorry, what was that?"
"I said, here's Mom back. Be careful!"
"Here comes Big D." Mark spoke up. "Looks like she could use a beer too, Shaun."
"Hey, you'd think my family were Irish bartenders or something--oh wait. They are." Shaun good naturedly got up and headed back to the bar.
"Kerry?"
"Yes, I'm here." Kerry could see the irritation in her partner's body language, but she smiled anyway, as the stormy blue eyes lifted and found hers. "Listen, I hope everything settles down and people start to think again. I know this has to be a knee jerk reaction."
"I certainly hope so. Will you be there long? "
Kerry considered the question as Dar arrived and took a seat on the arm of her chair. "I think we'll know more on Monday, to be honest. I'll let you know," she said. "I'm sure Dar will want to get out of here as soon as we can."
"Bet your ass." Dar commented.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" Cynthia asked. "Was that Dar? I thought I heard her voice."
"It was," Kerry said. "She was just agreeing with me."
Shaun came back over and offered Dar a glass. "They told me to get this."
Dar eyed him. "They did, did they?" She let her eyes narrow. "Now why would they say something like that?"
"Um." Shaun took a half step back.
"C'mon boss." Mark called over. "Be nice."
A grudging smile appeared on Dar's face and she extended one hand to take the glass. "Thank you, Shaun." She lifted the glass and glanced around the table. "Let's hope this is one day in a million."
"Hear hear." Kerry lifted her own glass. "Mother, we're going to rustle up dinner now, so let me let you go. I'm glad the family's safe there, and I hope things cool down." She listened, then closed the phone and put it down on her knee. "People, you all did an amazing job today."
"Ma'am, we just hung out and watched," Shaun said.
"That's okay, I did too." Kerry bumped Dar's leg with her shoulder. "Dar did the heavy lifting. But everyone hung in there, and now at least we have a plan, and we're moving forward." She glanced up. "Right?"
Dar waggled her free hand and took a sip of her beer.
"Uh oh." Kerry retreated to her own mug.
"We have some challenges," Dar said, after a pause, waiting for everyone to lean forward to listen. "I found out we need to go and take a closer look at the subway tunnels coming under the office tomorrow.Apparently there's more than one set."
"Oh sure," Scuzzy spoke up. "You ain't gonna believe how many tunnels are under this city here. I think there's like ten that come into Grand Central--you remember Grand Central? That's where we met up that time."
"I remember." Dar nodded. "Looked like a maze made by whacked moles fighting blind badgers," she said. "So tomorrow we need to try and scope a path for them to take that cable up into the building so we can cross-connect it to our gear."
"We can't use the copper riser," Mark said. "I didn't find any ground level demarc."
"I'll go with ya tomorrow," Scuzzy said, confidently. "My old man worked here. I used to sleep in some of them little rooms, me and the rats and the bums."
Kerry felt the air in the bar hit the outsides of her eyeballs as they widened.
"Y'know, you never know. They might have coal bins and who knows what down there. We'll find something. But I thought you were telling them to take it out to Roosevelt?" Scuzzy went on. "What's up with that?"
"Kerry reminded me it'd be a lot closer to bring it here," Dar said."We've got enough pipe here to take at least part of the traffic."
"That sure helps," Scuzzy said, sucking on the straw poked in her colorful fruity drink. "Cause you don't want to be in those tunnels under the East River, you know?"
"I know." Dar agreed solemnly. "Me either."
"Specially since the Roosevelt is like, halfway to China." Scuzzy continued, "It's like, ten, maybe fifteen stories underground, and I got my ears all screwy going up and down from there."
Dar regarded her for a moment, then she looked down at Kerry."This project lucked out having you in it. I sure as hell am not going ten stories underground to fish fiber cable up."
"Anytime, honey." Kerry leaned her head against Dar's hip."Though I have to admit I'm not crazy about going ten stories underground right now either."
"That was rough, today," Scuzzy commented. "I thought I seen some bad stuff before but that was bad. Real bad."
"I've asked our real estate branch to find a different location for the technical office there." Dar said, after a brief silence, "I don't know how long it's going to take them to get things going again."
"I feel bad for all the people who live down there," Shaun said. "Like the office folks. They can't go home. That must be terrible on top of everything else."
"Living down there right now would be a lot worse," Scuzzy said. "They're better off staying uptown. I got a cousin who's right on the edge of where they don't let you go no more, and she's thinking of staying with my uncle in Jersey for a while."
"I'm sure most of the people here would rather go somewhere else for a while," Nan said, in a quiet voice. "I know I would. It was horrible in DC, but nothing like this."
Kerry listened to the voices around her, and found a kinship in the mental exhaustion she heard in them. She felt Dar's fingers close on her shoulder and figured they needed a change of scene. "How about we all go find some dinner now. You guys up for that?"
"Hell yes." Mark put his glass down hastily. "I'm starving."
"That sounds damn good to me too." Andrew had been sprawled in a nearby chair. Now he straightened up and studied his neatly laced military boots. "Find us some place we can get some steak and taters."