But I'm getting ahead of myself.
That day began normally enough. For the past two months, I had been settling into a new job as a systems designer and software engineer with Symbiotic Software in Waltham, Massachusetts. It was one of a hundred programming shops in those big, mirror-glass office buildings that dot the Route 128 Beltway around Boston. You know the kind: no hard walls, no doors, just dozens of low, pastel-colored cubicles filled with a mixed bag of grungy 20-somethings in every size, shape, color, orientation, and gender. My cubicle was like all the others, except for the cheap plastic nameplate that said “Peter E. Talbott, Senior Systems Engineer” hanging at the entrance. Inside, the wall behind my chair featured a framed poster of Eric Clapton, signed by The Man himself, ripped-off from a LA record store back in my younger and much crazier days. On the wall across from my desk hung a beautiful Air Mexico travel poster: a color shot of a beach at sunset near San Jose down on the Baja, with a thin, solitary young woman in a bikini walking away down the sand. That was where Terri and I were supposed to go that last fall, but she got sick and we never made it. Other than the simple 8” x 10” photograph of her sitting on my desk smiling up at me, the Baja beach poster was easily my most prized possession.
It was already 5:30 PM. Headset on, I stared at my big, flat-screen computer, pounding away at the keyboard, dressed in my treasured, but badly faded, Rolling Stones 1995 Voodoo Lounge World Tour T-shirt, blue jeans, and a worn-out pair of Nikes. Like the shoes, I was a tad older and more scuffed than the rest of the hired help, so clothes helped me fit in during those first awkward weeks after I moved there from LA. Anyway, I had just finished a crash project and was slowly coming back down as I listened to the last tracks of a two CD set of Clapton's Greatest Hits. When I really get into a problem, the building could go up in flames, and I'd never notice unless my monitor went blank.
I leaned back in my chair, eyes closed, playing air guitar riffs along with “Tears in Heaven,” when a cold hand lifted one of the ear pieces and whispered in my ear. “Earth to Petey, you are going to have the sub-routines done by tomorrow, aren't you?”
“You said “tomorrow”, as in “close-of-business tomorrow,” not “tomorrow-tomorrow,” or “tomorrow morning”, or “today-tomorrow,” I answered.
“I know, but I've got a problem and “tomorrow” just became first thing tomorrow.”
Looking over my shoulder was Doug Chesterton in his “harried boss” costume: a wrinkled white shirt, a cheap necktie with soup stains, and a pocket full of pens. It read MIT all the way — smart as hell, but dumb as a rock.
“Douglas,” I smiled. “Having anticipated that you'd be a completely disorganized and unreasonable asshole…”
“And your brother-in-law, your boss, and the magnanimous owner of the company.”
“They're done. I e-mailed them to you twenty minutes ago.”
“That's why I brought you here, big guy,” he said as he gave me a big bear hug and planted a disgustingly loud, wet kiss in my right ear, tongue and all. “You're like a bloodhound when you get the scent, Petey, you're fucking relentless.”
“Relentless with a wet ear, you moron.”
Doug leaned in over my shoulder and looked at the screen. “Then what the hell are you still working on? Wait a minute. That's the Anderson job I gave Julie, isn't it?”
“Don't get pissed at her; it was my idea. She had some meetings at school with her kids, so I said I'd help her out.”
Doug laid his hand on my shoulder. “I'm not pissed. I'm glad. I know it's been hell for you since Terri died, but you moved here to get a fresh start and Julie is drop-dead gorgeous. She's divorced and she's exactly what you need.”
“Julie? Oh, come on, I'm just helping her out, I wouldn't…”
“No, you probably wouldn't, but she would. Trust me. The faithful widower? Half the secretarial pool wants to take you home and mother you, and the other half wants to have your baby. They think you're a saint.”
I looked over at Terri's smiling photo. I knew he was right, but that wasn't what I wanted or what I needed. He saw me look, too.
“She's gone, Pete. It's been a year now and it's time you moved on. She was my sister and I loved her as much as you did, but that's what she'd tell you, too.”
“I know, Doug, I know.” The truth was, Terri did tell me that, almost every day at the end and almost every day since. That was where Doug and all the others had it wrong. I wasn't alone. I still had all my memories of Terri, and my life was full, so full I didn't have anything left to give to anyone else. Someday, maybe, but not then.”
“Look, I didn't come out here to bug you,” Doug said. “But accounting keeps gnawing on me about your social security number. The IRS still has your account blocked.”
“I've called them three times. They keep mumbling something about a “numeric anomaly.”
“It's no anomaly. They've got you mixed up with somebody else with the same name and they think you're dead. So, if you want to see a paycheck anytime soon, get the damned thing fixed.”
I shrugged and put it on my list of things to do. Maybe it was number fifty-nine, but it was there. Besides, Doug was right. He was boss. More importantly, he saved my life.
I was born in Los Angeles — a child of the Golden West, raised on a steady diet of hard rock, fast cars, Pacific beaches, and the trend-du-jour. After UCLA, I went to work at Dynamic Data in Pasadena. It was Terri who introduced me to her MIT techno-nerd brother. We both bounced around Pasadena, going from one hot software shop to another, doing what we both loved and what we were good at. I was smart, but Doug was always smarter. He sold his old Porsche and moved to Boston with his three mangy cats, sinking every dime he could beg or borrow into his own start-up software company, which he named Symbiotic Software. The title was just vague enough to let him take on all sorts of work. However, trading the beaches and sun of Tinseltown for a long, gray winter of snow and ice in New England wasn't my idea of fun, so I stayed in LA. Shows what we knew. Doug's little company found a niche and he never looked back.
Back then, LA was the “land of milk and honey,” where the growth curve only pointed to “UP” and “MORE UP.” Like the white rabbit told Gracie Slick though, “one pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small.” Gracie had no idea how small. Outsourcing was a new word to us “left coasters.” Layoffs and downsizing were something for the Midwest autoworkers and the steelworkers in Pittsburgh with the beer guts and lunch pails to worry about. This time however, it was us smart guys with the white shirts and the glasses of Napa chardonnay who found ourselves on the chopping block. Yep, ask not for whom the HR manager tolls, he tolls for me and for thee.
I became a WOOWCP-WFP as we Southern Californians called ourselves — or at least the ones who still had a sense of humor. That's a White-Out-of-Work-Computer-Programmer-With-Few-Prospects. The big aeronautical engineering firm in Glendale that I was then doing software design for was spinning off people faster than an Oklahoma tornado. Half of the parking lot was empty and the signs on the executive parking spaces had hastily painted-over names or no names at all. We'd been downsized and out-sourced to India and Pakistan and most of my friends were now calling themselves house-husbands, shoe clerks, the Orange County Militia, or alcoholics. My defense mechanism had always been a cynical black humor, but even that gets real old, real quick. So does the weekly humiliation of the unemployment line, a McJob that wasn't worth going to, or sharing my afternoons with Oprah. When Doug phoned me from Boston and offered me the job, I packed the Bronco, did a reverse Horace Greeley, and headed east. Why not? Terri had died of cancer the year before and there was nothing holding me in California anymore. All I had left were my memories of her, but I soon discovered they were surprisingly portable. I could take her with me anywhere I went, and she never complained, not once.