“Nope.” Kerry felt a grin forming again. “Too much beginning of the year to be stuffed with crap yet.”
Dar took out her phone and dialed. “Maria? It's Dar.” She said. “Listen, Kerry's not feeling well. I'm going to take her home. Just clear my outbox and I'll pick up again tomorrow.” She smiled. “I will, thanks. I know she'll appreciate the thought. Thanks Maria.”
She closed the phone and picked up her fork. “I'm going to see if I can get her an early retirement package.”
“I'm going to see if Mayte wants to watch our place while we're traveling and start the process of setting up our new company.” Kerry responded. “Do you mind if I hire her as our first employee?”
“Nope.” Dar smoothly handed her credit card to the waitress. “Tell you what. Let's go out to South Beach for dinner. Have some stone crabs.”
“Walk out on the beach?” Kerry leaned back and spread her arms out on the seat back. “How about we go out to Crandon and relive our first kiss?”
Dar's grin morphed from just amused to criminally adolescent. “Let's do that.”
Ahh. Kerry grinned back. “At this rate, I could get to like Mondays.”
“We need to stop by this place on the beach on the way.” Dar relaxed in Kerry's passenger seat, extending her long legs out. “They've got this new phone thing they want me to look at.”
Kerry had unzipped her leather jacket, and paused to let traffic go by as she waited to turn on to the causeway. “What kind of phone thing?”
“Company called Handspring.” Her partner stretched her body out contentedly. “Some new phone and mail gizmo. I said I'd give it a try. Their distributor's got a small place down on Washington.”
“Can I get one too?” Kerry turned right and proceeded down the road. “You get all the cool toys.”
Dar chuckled. “Aaabsolutely.” She folded her hands over her sweatshirt covered stomach. “Nice to use the gym while everyone else is at work.”
“It was.” Kerry felt a little sore, her legs had that slightly heavy feeling of hard use and she suspected her night might end in the hot tub. “I think I overdid the presses a little though.. where on Washington?”
“2nd ave.” Dar flexed her hands and then laid them down on her denim covered knees. She had leather boots on, and her sweatshirt had a hood on it, and she was looking out the window with a contented expression.
Kerry's cell phone rang, and before she could get it out of her pocket, Dar had. “Thanks hon.”
Dar glanced at the caller ID. “Ops.” She opened the phones. “Yes?”
Dead silence. Then a male voice. “Uh.. ah, sorry.. ah, is that Ms. Roberts?”
“Yes.” Dar agreed. “You got it in one try. Congratulations.”
“Um.. sorry ma'am, I meant to call Ms. Stuart. I must have dialed the wrong number.. uh, let me try again.”
“Relax.” Dar watched the palm trees flash by. “You got the right number, I just happen to be answering her phone because she's driving and I love her too much to have her risk her life answering a phone.”
Kerry's nostrils flared. “Dar.” She hissed. “For cripes sake!”
“Uh.” The ops tech stuttered.
“So what is it you need?” Dar continued without missing a beat. “I assume you called her for a reason?”
“Ah, yes ma'am.” He recovered bravely. “Sorry about the call but we're seeing some latency in the network here and we've gotten some calls from people still working.”
Dar considered the phone. The urge to stop, and pull out her laptop, and find the issue tickled her. Then she recalled that she hadn't put the laptop in the car and stifled a smile. “Okay. So.” She said. “Let's have a little troubleshooting lesson. If there's latency in the office network there's only a couple things that can cause it. Know what they are?”
There was a period of silence, then the tech cleared his throat. “I asked the guys who called what was slow. They said everything.”
“Uh huh.”
“But.. usually that's not really true so I tried some stuff myself.” The tech said. “It's files, ma'am, and my mail store.” He offered. “I checked the DNS with nslookup, and it's answering snappy, so I know it's not that.”
“Good man.” Dar said. “So what does that mean, ya think?”
“Well, usually that would be the file servers, ma'am, but we asked the MIS guys to check and they said they didn't see a problem.”
“Good.” Dar nodded approvingly. “Who did you talk to in the MIS team?”
“Johan.”
“Call Johan, and tell Johan I said there's a problem with the file servers, and he'd better find it.”
Kerry turned down Alton Road and glanced at the street signs looking for 2nd Ave. “You're such a maestro.”
The ops tech sounded much happier. “Thank you ma'am, I'll do that.” He said “Is it okay if I send Ms. Stuart a text when it's fixed?”
“That's fine.” Dar said. “Goodnight.” She closed the phone and dropped it back in Kerry's pocket. “You know what else occurred to me?”
“That you do most of the thinking for a company of two hundred and fifty thousand employees?”
Dar chuckled. “Something like that. It's easier to call someone than think for yourself, but we don't get that option.”
Kerry remembered having to face that, when Dar had been in New York and she'd been faced with solving a complex technical issue. “It is easier.” She agreed. “I had to teach myself not to just call you and ask.” She pulled into a parking lot of a small strip mall, and parked. “Not easy.”
Dar turned her head and regarded Kerry with a bemused expression. “I should have forced everyone to do that.”
Kerry opened her door. “Let's go get your toy, maestro. At least they call me first now.” She hopped out of the car and closed the door, zipping up her leather jacket as the wind off the water chilled her skin. It wasn't the cold of Michigan – but she had a short sleeved shirt under her coat.
She followed Dar to the sidewalk and then around the side of the building to a small shop in the front of it, with a window full of screens and gadgets, and a radio controlled dog outside patiently barking at all passer's by.
The sun was going down, and as they entered the shop it's outside lights flickered on, and a gust of air puffed into their faces full of the smell of electrons and plastic. Dar went to the counter and put her hands on it. “Looking for Douglas?”
The man behind the counter nodded and turned, sticking his head inside a back room. “Doug? Some women here to see ya.”
Kerry wandered around the store as Dar waited for the owner, peering into the counters and finding her attention caught by the myriads of cell phones and accessories, and the cameras.
Hm. She was due a new camera. She leaned on the counter and studied the offerings, debating in her head if she wanted to move from film to digital this time.
“Hey, Ms. Roberts.” A low, gravely voice boomed out. “Thanks for coming over. I thought you'd really like this thing here, maybe you want to try it out.”
“Ker?”
Kerry left the counter and returned to her partner's side. “Hm?” She inspected the device in her partners hands. It was not unlike her palm pilot, but it had a keyboard, and the screen was color. “Oh. Hey.” She took it and touched the keys. “You type with your thumbs?”
“Yeah.” Doug agreed. “Not my thumbs, yeah? That's why I was looking for a lady to try it. I can't type on them tiny keys.”
Kerry tried a few. “Hm.” She took out the stylus and touched the screen, watching the applications appear. “Cool.”
“She's sold.” Dar grinned. “Got two of them? I don't know if I can type on it with these mitts but I'll give it a try.”