“Ker.” Dar started laughing.
“Sweetheart, it’s just true.” Kerry mock sighed. “Somehow ILS had you so busy being management they forgot to take shameless advantage of you as a programmer.”
“Well, isn’t that nice?” Cynthia rallied gamely “If that’s so, then I think this project will be successful. It would be nice to have a political scene become something useful for a change.”
“We’ll do our best.” Dar said.
Cynthia nodded. “And how has it been going with your new business?” She asked. “It must be strange after working for that other company for so long, for you Dar?”
“A little. We’d already tendered our resignation though.” Dar said. “So in the end it was just annoying with all the garbage going on.” She leaned back as the waitress returned to deliver their sushi. “After all that time, it would have been nice to have a graceful exit.”
“Many of my colleagues feel the same.” Cynthia said. “And very often end up being chased out of their offices by newcomers with very little ceremony.”
“Wonder what that’s like at the White House?” Kerry mused. “That must be really weird.”
Dar wielded her chopsticks, tapping the tips together. “Wonder if they do things like leave an old fish in a garbage can in the Oval Office.”
Kerry snickered.
“I’m sure they don’t.” Her mother frowned. “After all, these are professional people.” Then she paused in thought.
“Thinking twice about that?” Kerry’s eyes twinkled a little. “But seriously, I think in the past even though there was a lot of head bashing and competition there was a sense of .. um.. “
“Decorum.” Dar supplied.
“Yes. That you didn’t always get to hear exactly what everyone was thinking.” Kerry nodded. “That’s faded.”
Cynthia slowly nodded.
“But anyway.. “ Dar paused, as her phone rang. She pulled it out and glanced at it and then gave Kerry an apologetic look as she stood and pushed her chair in. “Be right back.”
“Oh boy.” Kerry watched her step outside, and exhaled. “I’m sure that’s not good.”
Her mother eyed her warily. “Is there something the matter?” She asked in a diffident tone.
Kerry used a piece of sushi to give herself a moment to think about answering. Then she swallowed. “Where do I start?” She answered wryly. “So much has happened in the last month. But what Dar’s worried about right now, and me too, is that our former company is kind of in the crapper.”
Cynthia’s eyebrows lifted. “Kerrison.”
Kerry chewed another piece of sushi and swallowed it. “Actually I was going to say it was a Technicolor clusterfuck but I thought you’d freak out.”
Her mother stared at her, chopsticks half lifted in one hand.
Kerry winked at her, then went back to her plate. “Want to hear the details?”
**
Dar waited for the door to swing shut behind her before she answered the call . “Dar Roberts.” She leaned against the wall of the restaurant, watching the cars go by.
“Hey Dar, it’s Mark.”
“Hey.”
“So listen, I know you guys are up in DC, but that skanky guy called me again.” Mark said. “Only this time, he wasn’t slimy, you know? He was just scared shitless.”
“Well, that’s better than slimy, I guess.” Dar hitched one knee up. “So what’d’ he want now?”
“Yeah I thought so too, about him being slimy. Anyway. What he said was, okay, so, no bull, he’d be very grateful to any information me, or you, would be willing to give him to get this fixed.”
“That is better than slimy. It’s borderline honest.” Dar responded. “So, I assume you told him the obvious – put things back?”
“Sure. He didn’t go so far to say he’d tanked the repository, but he said it was down, and far as he knew, unrecoverable.”
“Idiot.”
“Yeah.”
Dar studied the road in front of her. “Shit.”
“You came to the same conclusion I did, then.” Mark said, with a mournful tone. “Hey, you’re pretty close to Herndon, right? That’s got both sides, you can get to everything.”
Dar considered walking.. no, being walked into the control room and seeing all those people again and it made her stomach churn. “I don’t want to go to Herndon.” She said. “I don’t want to put my hands on a keyboard, matter of fact.”
“Dar, they're not going to be able to fix that shit.” Mark said. “We both know it.”
“No, I know.”
“So?” He said. “Like, no offense, Big D, but I really want to get this crap to bed. I don’t want it hanging out over you, or me, you know? I’m done with them.”
“Okay.” Dar exhaled. “You can call him back, and tell him if he’ll send me the current configurations of all the master routers, I will look at them, and make whatever changes seem reasonable to me, and send them back. See what he says to that.”
“Unless his brain’s migrated back to his ass I bet he’ll cry like a baby.” Mark said. “Okay, send you what I get if he even knows how to pull them.”
Dar nodded to herself. “Okay. Talk to you later, Mark. I’m having some dinner with Kerry and her mom.”
“Ah.. huerm.. have fun?”
“Yeah. Bye.” Dar closed the phone and folded her arms, trying to decide how she felt about the new development. On one hand, it seemed like some sense was returning to the situation, but on the other hand she thought there was still an opportunity for her to get screwed in the process of trying to help.
After all, trying to help on the island hadn’t ended up too good for her, had it?
Dar sighed, and pushed off the wall, heading back into the restaurant. Maybe she could get away with providing the minimum of help - or – she wondered if she could just look at the configs, and send them back saying they were hopeless and she couldn’t fix them.
Dar paused, with her hand on the door, and watched her own eyes reflect back from her from the outside surface. She gave herself a wry, knowing, smile, then opened the door and went back inside.
**
“Ah am some pissed.” Andrew sat squarely in the chair on the porch, arms folded. “Ceci, ah know no good deed done go unpunished but Jesus P Fish.”
“Yeah.” Ceci was in the other chair, and a tray with rum punch sat between them. ‘Dar didn’t deserve that. She did the right thing helping out that kid.” She hand one knee hiked up and her arms wrapped around it. “I’d have done it. You would have too.”
“Jackass.”
“He would probably have invited us for dinner.” His wife sighed. “Instead of being so stupid as to wave a red flag in front of us and threaten to evict us from his preciously pretentious rock pile.”
“Kids should go live on down in that little place in the keys.” Andrew stated. “Ain't a right place for Dar here anyhow.”
Ceci smiled. “It fits them better.” She agreed. “But that’s one hell of a commute, you know? Especially in weather.”
“Mmph” Andrew grunted softly. He reached down and picked up Mocha, who had taken a seat on one of his boots and set the puppy on his lap. “Cute little thing.”
“Yap.” Mocha seemed to enjoy his new perch, his small pink tongue emerging as he looked around.
“He is cute.” Ceci accepted the subject change. “I wonder what made Dar decide to get another one?” She gingerly patted Chino on the head. “To keep this one company?”