That was under her breath, but Kerry heard it anyway. The door slid shut, leaving her with a stocky, dark-haired man of middling height, about her own age. He studied her for a moment, then held out his hand. “So, you’re the infamous Kerry Stuart.”
Kerry sighed and shook his hand. “Infamous? I hope not. I just got here.”
She gave him a wary look. “And you are?”
He laughed. “Relax. I’m Mark Polenti, head of MIS and security.” He paused. “I’m a friend of Dar’s.”
Kerry gave him a friendlier look. “Really? To hear people talk, she doesn’t have any of those.”
“Nah, she does. Not many, that’s true, but the right ones, in the right places, if you know what I mean.” The stocky man smiled. “As long as you know your shit, you’re all right with Dar. If you don’t, you’re toast.” His eyes met hers. “You must know yours.”
“Guess we’ll find out.” Kerry relaxed a little, then turned as the doors opened onto the floor she’d requested. She and Mark exited, then both headed
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down the same corridor. Kerry could hear raised voices as she reached the double doors which lead into Dar’s office, and she glanced sideways at Mark.
“Sounds like a fight.”
“Sounds like a Monday.” He sighed, and held the door for her. “C’mon, might as well get used to it.”
The inside of Dar’s outer office was very different in the daytime. Several people were waiting, facing a desk behind which sat a short, round, gray-haired woman, who was pressing the phone against her ear with one hand and covering her other ear with the second. Two of the people waiting were arguing, one waving a set of printouts.
“There is no way we can complete that account, Larry. It’s not going to work, so go find another way to do it!” the shorter of the two men shouted.
“We’ve got no choice, Scott. The account team promised a full support center, and now they’re holding us to it!” the other man replied, throwing up his hands. “I hope to hell Dar can figure out how to pull us out of this mess.
I’m going to beat the crap out of Sue Kingston on the account team for pulling this crap again!”
Two other women, carrying reams of paper, were trying to get the secretary’s attention. She was on the phone with two lines blinking and talking on a third. Barely audible, a buzzer sounded. The secretary put her caller on hold and punched it. “Yes, Dar.”
“I’ve got half the goddamn domestic network down, three mainframes whose loads were screwed by mids last night, and ILIPC won’t answer their phones. Get me someone in Illinois who doesn’t have their heads up their asses, right now!”
“
Ay
, I’m trying, believe me,” the harried secretary replied.
“I can’t have trying, Maria, I need those people!”
Dar’s voice was rough with frustration, and Kerry moved towards it compulsively, easing around and between the throng and ignoring the startled looks. She found herself at the secretary’s desk, and gave her a wry smile as the woman looked up. “Hi,” she said softly. “Looks like a busy morning, huh?”
The older woman interrupted her boss’s further ranting. “Dar?”
“What?” the executive growled.
“Ms. Stuart is here.” Maria gazed at the slim blonde appraisingly.
Silence for a moment. “Oh, good. Send her in.” Dar’s voice had dropped an octave and sounded almost cheerful. “Hello, Kerry. Welcome to Hell.”
For a moment, everyone fell silent, watching her. The only sound was the buzzing of Maria’s phone. “Thanks,” Kerry managed to get out weakly. “I think.”
Dar chuckled. Kerry gave the rest of the people in the room a brief smile as she backed away from the desk. “Hello, excuse me.” She darted for the door and slipped through it, aware of the avidly watching eyes following her.
“C’mon in.”
The door closed behind her, and Kerry was surprised at the silence inside. “Whew.” The noise from outside was gone, and she let out a breath as she moved across the carpeted floor towards Dar’s desk. The executive was sitting on top of it with her phone, with its blinking lights near the edge, and 92
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her arms crossed over her chest. She was wearing a gray silk skirt and jacket, with a forest green shirt and looked casually elegant.
Of course.
The look was somewhat offset by the random disorder of her hair, which looked like she’d been running her hands through it. Kerry mentally paused, wondering what that would feel like. She rubbed her fingertips together and dismissed the thought as she continued forward.
“Busy morning?”
“They all are,” her new boss acknowledged. “Glad you’re here.”
“Me too.” Kerry could see the frustration in the lines of her body, but Dar managed a smile for her. “So, this is Hell, huh?” Kerry made a show of looking around. “Nice décor.”
Dar sighed and lifted a hand to rub one temple. “It’s been quite a morning.” She ran her fingers through her hair, confirming Kerry’s guess, and then let her arm drop. “Not sure where I start explaining.”
“So I see,” Kerry replied, feeling a little awkward. “Is there…um, stupid question, but is there something I can do to help?”
Dar visibly tried to relax a little. “Lots of things. But first, I think I need to get you settled in a place to sit and all that.” She stood. “So, c’mon.” She got up off the desk and paused to strip off her jacket, laying it over the back of her chair. “Gonna be one of those days.”
Kerry caught the scent of silk and spice as Dar moved past her, rolling up her sleeves as she walked. “Are there a lot of those days?”
Dar snorted, laughing and shaking her head as she motioned Kerry to follow her. “C’mon.”
Curious, Kerry followed her toward a small, nondescript door she hadn’t even noticed the other night and watched as Dar opened it, then gestured her to go forward. “Go on—believe me, it’s faster this way. If I go out in that hallway, it’ll take me eight hours to get from this office to the one I picked out for you.”
Picked out for me?
Kerry entered, finding herself in a narrow, bare hallway with unmarked doors on one side and blank walls on the other. She moved down it uncertainly, until she felt a warm hand on her back. Dar guided her forward about fifty feet, until she came to another unmarked door, which the executive motioned her to open. She pushed the handle down and emerged into a second office.
It was roughly square, with a worktable surrounded by chairs on one side and a wide, woodgrain desk on the other. The carpet and wall coverings were in burgundy, and behind the desk, was a floor to ceiling window sporting the same view as Dar’s.
Wow.
Kerry took a moment to drink in the seascape, the light winds outside blowing the waves with frosting-like whitecaps. Reluctantly, she turned to view the rest of the room.
On the desk was a computer, a phone, and nothing else, and the office was bare of adornment, so much so that it was apparent that it had never been used. “It’s, um…”
Dar leaned back against the door and gave Kerry an apologetic look.
“Kinda empty, I know, but it’s got the essentials.”
Kerry blinked at the desk and at the furniture. “It’s great.” She turned
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and looked at the window. “With this view, you could have given me a cardboard box and a tin can on a string, and I’d be happy.” She put her briefcase down on the desk. “Look, I know you’re up to your neck in problems in there. I’ll get settled and logged in, and see if I can find my way around, okay?”
Dar smiled and glanced down at her watch. “Actually, give me about an hour to clear this all up, then I’ll be back to show you around, and we can talk.” She cleared her throat. “If I’m not back in an hour, assume the rest of the network blew up and c’mon over and find me.”
Kerry faced her and smiled. “You bet I will.”
The dark-haired woman smiled back, then ducked back down the hallway, closing the door behind her and leaving Kerry in her new workplace home.
“Whoo.” Kerry sat down in the very comfortable leather desk chair and looked around. “She apologizes. I can’t believe this. I could hold an aerobics class in here, and she apologizes because it’s a little empty. Good grief.” She examined the desk, which was well made, and opened the drawers. Inside were pens and paper, clips and a stapler, the usual. The large drawer held hanging files, which were, of course, empty.
She flipped on the computer, impressed with the large screen which matched the one Dar used. Kerry wondered if it was standard, but was glad, because her eyes tended to hurt after a full day of staring at a smaller screen.
The computer booted to a network login, and she entered her ID and password, a little startled when her usual menu didn’t appear, replaced by one with approximately four times as many options. “Uh oh.” She made a face at it.” What
is
all this stuff?” ILIPC, PLIPC, NCS…it was an alphabet soup of choices along with the more familiar ones which gave her access to the payroll and personnel sections, and the customer database. Experimentally she chose one. “ILIPC, that was what Dar was having problems with. Let’s see what that is.”
It connected and she peered at the results. “Oh, Netview. Okay, I know what this is.” She logged into the IBM mainframe application and tried a display all command. “Uh oh. Good grief, how huge. Wow, that’s really huge.”
The internal network was displayed, with lots of items marked as inactive. “Bet that’s what Dar’s fighting with, huh?” she commented, flicking the screen with a fingertip. “Well, back at home in Michigan, at the university, we used to do an ACT ALL.” She typed it in, then hesitated. “Ah…probably not a good idea. Oh, what the heck, it can’t hurt.” She hit Enter.
“That’ll take forever, so…” She minimized the application and clicked on mail, startled when it opened and she had a mailbox full. “I guess that’ll keep me busy for while. Good grief, what are all these things?” A lot of forwarding from Dar, stuff she was involved in apparently that she wanted Kerry to review. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here.” She started reading. “Jesus, designing Olympic racing bicycles and doing financial transfers for the Bank of New Zealand. Do you think this company can get any more diversified?”
There were all kinds of problems. All kinds of operational issues, like which processors could be assigned to which projects, and whose project took 94
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precedence. Kerry found herself becoming fascinated by the patchwork of interrelationships; she suspected she certainly wasn’t going to be bored.
She got up and pulled out her few personal items from her briefcase, arranging her desk the way she liked it and prowling around the office to discover all the nooks and crannies. She opened the front door and peeked out, letting a tiny grin edge her lips when she spotted a neat kitchen just down the hall. “I bet there’s coffee there,” she decided, retrieving a cobalt-blue mug from her briefcase and ambling over.
She glanced around the kitchen and bit off a chuckle. “Wow, This is better equipped than the one in my apartment.” There was a refrigerator, of course, with a sign on it. “Don’t leave food for more than a week unlabeled or it will be glorped.” Kerry shook her head. “I’m not gonna ask.” The countertop held not only a regular coffee machine, but an espresso machine as well, and there were containers with various types of milk and cream, and real and fake sugar. As she selected artificial sweetener and poured a cup of coffee, a young girl entered behind her and said a cheerful hello.
“Hi.” Kerry turned and leaned against the counter, stirring her coffee.
The girl removed a small packet from the freezer and popped it in one of the three large, commercial microwaves in the rack near the door. “Breakfast?”
The girl turned and smiled. “Snackies.” She chuckled. “I work for Eduard Castillo. He gets grumpy around this time if I don’t feed him.” She held out a hand. “Mary Evers.”
Kerry took it. “Kerry Stuart.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “Omigosh. You’re Dar Roberts’ new assistant!”
The blonde woman forced a laugh. “Okay, are you going to tell me I’m brave, or stupid?”
A smile snuck onto the girl’s face, and she leaned closer. “I was going to say lucky.” She winked at Kerry, then removed the gently steaming packet from the microwave and set it on a small plate she’d brought with her. “Not everyone thinks Dar’s a bad thing, you know.”
Kerry was pleasantly surprised. “That’s nice to hear, because I happen to like her.” She relaxed into a grin. “And it’s been murder having everyone look at me like I was out of my mind.”
“You do, huh?” Mary bit her lower lip and chuckled softly. “That’s interesting. I thought you came from Associated. They were almost axed, you know.”
Sea green eyes studied her. “Oh yeah, I know,” Kerry replied quietly. “I talked her out of it.”
The woman stopped in mid motion and stared at her. “You did?”
Kerry took a sip of her coffee, which she found to be common, garden-variety office bland. “Well, we debated the issue, and Dar found enough merit in my arguments to find a way around it, let’s put it that way.”
Mary blinked at her several times. “Holy shit,” she blurted.
Kerry shrugged and smiled. “I’m really looking forward to working with her more. It’s been a great experience so far.”
“Uh, yeah. I can see that.” Mary tucked a napkin under the plate hastily and started to back away. “That’s, uh…good to hear. Nice to meet you, Kerry.
I’ve got to get this tamale back to the boss before he breaks all his pencils.”
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Kerry regarded the packet, which was wrapped in what looked like cornhusks. “Nice to meet you too. See you later.” She paused. “Oh, what does your boss do?”
Mary turned as she was leaving. “Marketing for the Caribbean. Be seeing you.”
She disappeared down the hall, and Kerry regarded the wall thoughtfully before she took her coffee back into her office. Her office. She grinned, as she just stood with her back against the wall and looked out the window. “Ah well. Back to work.” She set down her cup and resumed her reading. She was so absorbed in it, she didn’t hear the back door open or someone approach until a hand touched her arm, and she jumped. “Whoa!”