Kerry grinned, walking over and depositing a handful of beads and trinkets. “I had the best time.” She said. “I've got some pictures I'll show you – it was a riot. What a party that is, between the music and the parades and everything. Nonstop craziness.”
“I was watching the news on television last night, and they had some video and it looked amazing.” Mayte replied. “I was hoping maybe we would see you but we didn't.”
“Oh, we might have been in the crowd.” Kerry's eyes twinkled. “We got to see some parades, and went on ghost tours, and did a riverboat dinner on the Mississippi... we had a great time.” She exhaled in contentment. “We got home just after lunch yesterday – the flight was late, but that was the only issue we had.”
“My mama said it looked like a crazy place.” Mayte remarked. “But papa said he'd like to go there sometime, only maybe not so close to the carnival.” She added placidly. “But I think he really wants to go because there are all those pretty ladies with no clothing.”
“Hehehe.” Kerry chortled under her breath. “Well, there were those there for sure. Some of them take their clothing off so that the people on the parade floats will throw favors at them. Dar threatened to take her shirt off to get me a stuffed monkey but I made her stop.”
Mayte clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.
Kerry removed the monkey from her pocket and waggled it. “She managed anyway.”
“Am I being made fun of?” Dar entered, carrying her jacket over her shoulder. “You were the one hankering after that coconut.”
“I would never make fun of you, hon.” Kerry bumped her affectionately as she passed. “I was just telling Mayte how you got me my monkey.”
Dar paused at the entrance to her office, looked over her shoulder, smiled and lifted one eyebrow in silent, yet sexy eloquence. Then she shook her head and chuckled, disappearing from view as she headed for her desk.
“Mm.” Kerry muffled a halfway embarrassed grin, and moved along into her own space, tossing the monkey up and down. She went over to the built in shelves and plopped the memento onto one of them, next to a stuffed pig she'd won in a baseball toss at a street carnival a few months past.
She studied it, then retreated back to her desk and set her briefcase down, aware of Dar's low tones next door. She sat down and started up her desktop, pulling out the laptop and setting it down on the desk. While she waited, she brought up her calendar on her gizmo, reviewing her appointments as the machines booted.
Busy day.
She was glad they'd decided to go straight home instead of coming in the previous day though. It had been nice to settle back into their space, and play with Chino and Mocha, and deliver to Colleen the presents they'd bought for her. Even nicer to take a late night swim, and relax in the quiet of their home.
No loud bands, no drunk people, and no weird visions of potential ghosts around anywhere, not even around the Vanderbilt Mansion they'd passed on the way back to the condo.
She'd had no bad dreams, no spooky visitations, in fact she'd managed to mostly forget completely about any of the odd things they'd seen as she'd curled up in their water bed wrapped up in Dar's long arms.
So it was all good.
She put her gizmo down and stretched her body out, feeling the mild ache of well used muscles from their session at the gym that morning. A little longer, perhaps, than their usual but a natural reaction to having spent the preceding three days in nonstop indulgence.
Worth it though.
Kerry smiled, and opened her mail, then she removed the contents of her inbox and began to sort through them. Four contracts to review, three new hires, and a report from their real estate agent on possible expansion options in the area. She set aside the report and pulled the contracts over, picking up a two ended pen and focusing her attention on the text.
**
Dar wrapped her legs around the base of her chair, and leaned on the small worktable in the programmers area. Two of the database coders were across from her, and they had a structure diagram spread out between them.
“So, we started with the base platform, but you said you wanted it to be really flexible.” The younger of the two was saying, a clean cut and dark haired Latino with broad shoulders and power lifter arms. “So we want to use relational, but we're going to need a big box, maybe one of the IBM P Series to run it.”
“Okay, Fidel.” Dar said. “Here's the problem with that. The customer's good for the cash, we know it, but this is a step by step delivery project. We'd have to shell out for the hardware, then hope they'll accept it.”
“Why wouldn't they?” The other coder asked. “It's not like we're getting it second hand from North Korea. It's IBM.”
“True.” Dar agreed “But those guys always have tech lists. We need to see what's on theirs, or get their buy in on the box before I sign the check for it.” She studied the diagram. “You always have to pre-buy to some extent, but you try to limit it wherever possible. It's a gamble otherwise.”
Fidel propped his chin on his fist. He was restless and aggressive, and actually reminded Dar a little of herself, back in the day. “Maybe we can get IBM to give us one for a POC?” He said. “So the deal would be, if it goes, then we buy it, and they get paid.”
“Why would they do that?” Dar suppressed a smile.
“We tell them we're going to buy a box from someone else. Like HP.” Fidel said. “I bet they would do it. They did on my last gig.”
Dar tapped her thumbs on the table. “If I'm going to play that game with them, might as well up the stakes” She said. “Let me see if I can get them to use us as a platform for whatever experimental they've got on tap.” She decided. “No sense in going for a mid range.”
Fidel looked surprised. “Experimental?”
“Like that Big Blue thing that beat the chess guy?” Mike, the second programmer spoke up again. “That would be cool.”
“Something like that.” Dar said. “I like the idea of leveraging them. But I'll bring in the guys from Cray in too, and see if we can get a high level pissing match going.”
“Cray? Wow..” Mike said. “You think they'll play ball with us?”
Dar smiled briefly. “We'll find out.” She said. “It's worth asking at any rate. Good ideas, people.”
Both men looked pleased at the acknowledgment. “Okay, so.” Fidel put his finger on the grid. “Then I can work out some three dimensional dynamics for the database structure. I'm going to need a crapload of table space.”
“And a bigger SAN.” Mike said. “We're going to run out of LUNs.”
Dar sighed. “Yeah, Kerry's already looking for more space for us.” She shook her head. “Mark's working on bringing up a datacenter – I can't put in any bigger systems until we get that done. Won't fit in that server room.”
“No way.” Mike said. “This all going faster than you thought?” He asked Dar.
It was strange, yet refreshing, Dar thought, to have these people treat her so casually. Regardless of how long she'd worked with people at ILS, they never had regarded her the way these men were. “It shouldn't have.” She admitted straightforwardly. “But yeah, I was expecting a little more runway.”
“Well, we can work out the structure on paper anyway.” Fidel said. “We could use that new coder they interviewed yesterday.”
“Kerry's working on it.” Dar said. “Okay, thanks for the recap. I'll go give the big boys a call.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Onto the next group.”
“Thanks, Dar.” Fidel collected the printouts. “Check back with you later.”
Dar headed across the programming bull pen over to the other side, where she could hear a spirited argument about search metrics. The overhead lights were out, flashes of neon impacted her eyes as she went past desks covered in wall hangings, and over in one corner she could see the outline of a bean bag chair.