"Mm." She nodded. "I know. Is she cut out for Miami?"
"Was I?"
"You didn't have a kid, and no skills." Colleen said with blunt honesty. "Not that I'm knocking her looking for something new, eh? It's just that I think she doesn't realize you got where you are because you earned it."
Kerry looked around at her office, hand-picked and hand-decorated by Dar, filled with knick-knacks and cute, yet mute, symbols of their partnership. A brief grin crossed her face as she sipped again at her tea. "True." She acknowledged. "But I think what she wants is to make it on her own before she lets Brian come back into her life and it reverts to stodgy traditionalism."
A soft knock came at the door. "Yes?" Kerry raised her voice.
The door opened and Mayte stuck her head in. "Kerry, the conference room is booked for your meeting at nine, but Mr. Mark says to tell you he is running a little late. Something about a wipe-up."
"Uh, oh." Kerry winced. "I think he means wipe out. That doesn't sound good. Okay. Thanks Mayte. I'll start the meeting without him. Hope he's all right." She shook her head, and reviewed her page of mails, most of which were marked with red urgent flags. "Yeesh. What a way to start the day."
Colleen stood, and chuckled wryly. "Well, my friend, I'll be on my way to start my day, and hope it's not nearly as raucous as yours. I'll let you know what the landlord says." She waggled her fingers at Kerry and headed for the door.
"Bye Col." Kerry turned her attention to her inbox, clicking on the first red flag. It was a plea from marketing--on a new account. She leaned forward and studied it thoughtfully, then shifted her window over and clicked on their network diagram. When it came up, she typed in a circuit identifier and scanned the results.
Her fingers drummed lightly on the keyboard. "Marginal." She nibbled the inside of her lip. The new account wanted a guaranteed amount of bandwidth, and the minor pipe they were running on, an offshoot of the main network in a far out part of Oregon, was approaching their self-imposed saturation limit.
Should she agree and hope for the best? Should she ask for a bandwidth increase? They wouldn't get any more money if she had to make a bigger pipe there, unless they could bag more business in the area.
After a moment's more drumming of her fingertips, Kerry went back to the mail program. She hit reply, and typed a response. "Okay, John. I'll go for the guarantee, but you guys better understand that's a very tight area. Nothing else goes in there for any existing customers and that pipe stays that size unless you book me more business."
She hit send and then sat back. After a second, she went into her sent mail file and selected the note she'd just delivered, forwarding a copy of it over to Dar. "Juuuuust in case."
Then she went on to the next note, another plea, another account, another decision to justify. Kerry found herself wondering how long it was before Dar had gotten tired of handling stuff like this? She'd developed a technique of scaring the hell out of everyone so much no one asked her for favors, and so she had a lot less of the kinds of emails to deal with than Kerry currently did.
Kerry was perceived as 'nice'--she knew it, and she knew that often played in her favor, but in cases like this, it often caused her to have to make calls she really shouldn't have to, just because people knew they could approach and ask her for it.
So, was Dar's way of operating really more efficient?
Hmm. Kerry exhaled, then jumped as Gopher Dar appeared, chittering at her from behind her mail window. "Yow. You little stinker." She laughed, clicking at Gopher Dar with her mouse. Today her little pal had on a t-shirt and overalls, and was wearing a baseball cap with the letter K on it.
Gopher Dar shook his finger at her and then pulled out a placard, sashaying across Kerry's screen so she could read it. "Nerds Rule, huh?" She chuckled. "Dar, Dar, Dar."
"Yes?"
Kerry jumped again, despite herself. She turned and gave her boss a mock glare. "Wench."
Dar sauntered over. She was dressed in jeans again, and carrying a shoulder pouch full of various nerdy things. "I'm going to the main patch closet. If anyone's looking for me, tell 'em I've got my head up a router somewhere."
Kerry gazed affectionately at her. "You going to be lying on the floor all day again? Here." She pulled a small sheepskin pillow from her large desk drawer and handed it to Dar. "Park your buns on that."
Dar accepted the fluffy thing and held it up. "You want me to walk through the hallways carrying this?" She laughed. "Kerry, I don't need a duff muff."
"Well, tell them it's my muff." Kerry replied, with a twinkle. "Actually, it's for your head. It's not good for you to have your head on the cold concrete, honey. I don't want you getting sick."
Dar tucked the pillow under her arm and sketched a salute at Kerry as she headed for the door. "Oh." She paused with the door half open. "Good decision on Oregon." Then she scooted through and shut the door after her, leaving Kerry in momentary silence.
"Thanks." Kerry said to the closed door. "Nice hat on the gopher." She added with a grin as she spotted Gopher Dar now sleeping in the corner of her screen, the hat tilted over his eyes.
With a shake of her head she went back to work, checking her watch for the time. It was nearly eight, and she had to get through the rest of her red flags before she left for her meeting at nine, and for a minute she wished she were working with Dar on her project instead.
"Bad Kerry." She resolutely clicked on the next mail.
IT HAD BEEN a very long time since Dar had wandered down to the first floor of their building and into the big central core telecom room. She propped the door open from long habit, looping a piece of old Ethernet cable tied around a conduit, just for that purpose, over the door handle and proceeding inside.
It was far from a glamorous place, concrete block walls lined with rack upon rack of circuit cards, cables, and routers. It also held two big UPS units to power the room if they lost outside electricity, its own air conditioning unit, and a, thankfully, raised floor so she didn't actually have to lie on concrete.
The walls were covered in steel conduit that lead to every other floor of the building, and there was a set of bright red pipes that indicated the lines coming in from outside. Those had tiny camera attachments to one side that allowed a fiber optic thread to penetrate the pipe at the top and give the security department visibility through the conduit to its terminus outside.
There were also cameras pointed toward them inside the patch room, a bit of extra insurance Dar had installed a year or so back. It never paid to take chances, and admittance to this particular room was restricted to four people inside the company, she being one of them.
Kerry and Mark were another two, and the fourth key resided in Plano in the hands of the corporate security officer, in case of disaster.
Dar set her bag down and ran her eyes over the racks to re-familiarize herself with the configuration. She'd supervised the original installation in this room, but it had been a while since she'd seen the hardware. She ran her fingers over the patch panels, peeking behind them to inspect the jacks.
Everything looked in order. Dar circled the room one more time, and then she selected a spot on the floor and knelt, pulling out her laptop and a set of cables. She plugged the end of the cable into one of the two master routers and sat down, leaning against the rack and putting Kerry's pillow behind her head to cushion it.
It added a bit of unexpected comfort that was welcome, considering the number of hours she suspected she'd be sitting here on the floor working. Dar smiled, taking an Ethernet cable from her bag and attaching the back of her laptop into the network with it. Kerry was so cool sometimes.