Taking Stock (13 page)

Everyone started talking at once.

Cameras flashed and mom hugged the man in the blue suit. Mr. and Mrs. Ortiz picked her up and squeezed together for a big hug that would have squished Mr. Purple Bunny if he wasn’t safe on the bench.

The hammer banged some more times and then mom turned around right toward
Eric
a. She was smiling and pushing past lots of people who wanted to talk to her. She came right to the bench, reaching, reaching…

Eric
a woke with a start.

The only light came from a beach scene on her computer. The room was silent except for the hum of tiny computer fans. She felt drugged, groggy, and she could still feel herself reaching for her mother across the wooden bench. It was 4:00
a.m
. Time to go home and get some sleep.

Eric
a reached for the phone and called a cab.

Stan stopped a few feet short of Sarah’s door and listened for her voice on the phone. She’d asked him down to compare notes, which meant her overactive sense of duty was driving her to take control. She needed to know he wasn’t slacking. He needed to squash the rookie enthusiasm before Herman raised the bar ridiculously high. Stan had enjoyed free run of the company for the last eight years. No one knew what he did on any given day, no one cared, and that’s the way he liked it. There were no criminals in this tiny company and Stan wouldn’t expend unnecessary energy to prove it.

Sarah’s office was quiet.

He stepped up to the door jam and burst around the corner. “All right lady, we got your 911 call. What’s your emergency
?
” He looked under her guest table, tilting the chairs aside. “Your ex-boyfriend attacked you, you say
?
Where’s the blood
?
What’d you do with him
?
” Stan got down on his knees, looked under her desk then leaped back to his feet.

She reeled back.

He thrust an imaginary microphone in her face. “He’s in the basement, isn’t he
?
Chopped him up, didn’t you
?
  Come on admit it. It’ll be easier to tell the truth now. Don’t make me work you over back at the station.”

She stared back, embarrassed. Not a chuckle or a smile, just a confused look that said comedy didn’t fit her neat professional world of spreadsheets and task lists. She was going to be a stick to deal with, a big stick.

“Nice interview technique. No wonder the vendors don’t call back.”

Stan took a seat from the guest table, spun it toward the desk, and sat. “Funny. Ever try nailing down two hundred vendors
?
”

“No. You
?
” she asked.

“Good one. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

“What’s up with you, Stan
?
Everything about you says you hate this job. Why do it
?
”

“We’ve all got to work. Why not have some fun
?
”

“Was Herman kidding about the police thing
?
It doesn’t fit.”

“Believe it or not, I wanted to be a cop since I was a kid. I studied criminal justice and accounting. Thought I’d do financial investigations, you know insider trading, investment fraud, that sort of thing, but I could never get my foot in the door.”

“So you’re stuck here.” She raked her fingers through her long hair.

Stan felt the weight of her brown eyes on him. Drawn to them, he quashed his reaction before she noticed. He forced his eyes to the empty bookshelf. She wasn’t his type at all. Why couldn’t he look without staring
?

“It’s not that different,” she said.

“Yeah, minus the criminals, the jobs are exactly the same.”

“Don’t think about it that way. We’ve only got four hundred people to police, but our busts are big time. We’re not handing out parking tickets and directing traffic. Anyone we catch is going to jail.”

“You’re all fired up because you’re new. Give it three or four years without finding anything then tell me how important this job is.”

“I’ve already found something.”

“Get real. Do you have any idea how many of those letters we get. Some old geezer lost three hundred dollars. So what
?
” Stan stretched his lips over his teeth and began whistling his words. “Young Feller, I bought some of them dag nab mutual funds and then you made the market go down. You sneaky no-good-for-nothins. I want my money back or I’ll sue blast you. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll have you in court ‘till Betsy runs dry.”

Sarah smiled at the impression, but contained her laughter. “Those letters are telling us something’s wrong. We have to listen.”

“Things were fine without you begging for extra work. If you get lucky and find something I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“You finish your half of the plan, I’ll finish mine.”

“I know what Herman said. If we don’t make it, it’s your butt. If I were you, I’d be real nice. If not, I might start showing up late, know what I mean
?
” He gave her a sly come-sit-on-my-lap look. If she was offended she hid it well.

She fished the letter out of a folder and pushed it across the desk. Stan stood up and reached for it. The neck of her top hung forward and down and Stan spied something he hadn’t considered in his new partner. Round firm breasts trimmed with black lace hung there shadowed but clearly visible as the letter slipped toward him. He reached for the page without moving his eyes. His hand found hers. He drew back thinking himself caught, bumped the stapler and made three fumbling grabs before securing the letter.

He noticed the long straight hair again. She reached to straighten the stapler giving Stan an even better view.

“Read that and tell me there’s nothing wrong.”

She looked curious that he was still standing. He sat.

He browsed the letter thinking about her move to the stapler and her overwhelming drive to get caught up in this minutia. She must be some sort of compulsive neurotic. When he finished half the letter he casually nudged the stapler off kilter an inch. He peeked over the letter, pretending to read as he watched. No longer aligned with the pictures and the tape dispenser, the stapler had her full attention. She held back a moment before carefully lining it up with the other accessories.

Stan restrained a guffaw behind the letter.

Working with Sarah was going to be more fun than he thought. He didn’t quite understand why he promised to finish the vendors by June, but he did. He also volunteered to evaluate the employee review system, the more difficult of the two remaining projects, so Sarah could work on her complaint letters. Odd for Stan, he left her office eager to get back to his and dig in. The work hadn’t changed and he wouldn’t admit why his attitude had heaved about, not even to himself.

At
7:02
a.m.
Eric
a
flipped the switch and lit up the vast expanse of client services cubicles. She wasn’t making a statement by arriving first. She was truly nervous. Fifty people were about to start using a system that needed two more weeks to be ready. After losing Keith and Mike midstream, it was a miracle it worked at all. As she made her way to Gregg’s office, she remembered the two mornings she discovered her late night work had gone terribly wrong. Exhaustion had made her unreliable. She wondered how many similar problems would spring up today and how long they’d be fighting them. Brad’s inhumane expectations had done this, but he’d take no blame for what happened today.

The table outside Gregg’s office had been arranged the night before with a PC to monitor the server upstairs and enough chairs for
Eric
a’s team to gather. From there they’d watch carefully for signs of stress on the system and its users.
Eric
a laid out enough food to keep them going all morning. A dozen bagels, a half dozen tropical fruits and four coffees, two for her if they weren’t claimed soon, covered half the table. She fought the plastic top off the fruit tray and walked across the floor to fetch a handful of napkins and white plastic utensils. She arranged and rearranged the food to occupy herself. Not a soul came through the lobby.

Andy and Ganesh had another twenty minutes to arrive on time. She wondered what could be keeping them. Andy, tall with a waistline that was expanding with middle age as his hairline receded, had left at eleven the night before to drive to the suburbs. Ganesh, short and slight with a personality to match, had stayed till nearly
1:00
a.m.
to help with a few final configuration changes. Both men were steady and competent. She never would have finished without their help and she feared she was going to need them desperately once the users started arriving.

Alone,
Eric
a felt just how tired her body was. With nothing to do, she melted into her chair to wait. Fear had driven her the last weeks and now she had nothing left to give. She met Brad’s deadline without begging for help. They’d skimped on testing and left out a dozen features
Eric
a had promised, but the unrelenting pressure left her no choice. It had to be done and delivered today. She had signed off and now she sat waiting for the repercussions to come crashing down.

Ganesh arrived, gangly if that was possible for someone five feet four. Meek enough to go unnoticed in any group, he propped himself up on the seat and waited for his orders. Andy arrived next showing signs of a long commute and impossibly long hours. He slumped along to the table, thick rings underlining his eyes. A missed button had one side of his collar springing up while the other was fastened securely to his chest. Gregg strolled in next, cheerier than the rest, and took up a position between
Eric
a and the outer wall of his cubicle.

Eric
a manned the computer and doled out plates and coffee before reviewing the plan. Andy and Ganesh would wander the floor, visiting the supervisors regularly, and watching the staff for signs of frustration.
Eric
a would monitor server performance. If things went badly enough to warrant emergency changes,
Eric
a would make them.

Shortly before
8:00
a.m.
, the supervisors began to trickle in. These were mostly friendly faces
Eric
a had worked with for years. Many had volunteered for roles on the project team and they’d taken the time to be trained and retrained. They were eager for her to succeed.

  Soon a flurry of five people arrived and began settling in for the day. Andy and Ganesh wandered around watching them turn on their computers and log in. Sitting still in the chair,
Eric
a’s eyelids threatened to close in spite of the pressure. If she dreamed it would have been a chaotic and turbulent nightmare, a mass of twisted silicon surrounded by angry wires. The people in her dream would expect perfection. They wouldn’t understand that the electronic beast was utterly uncontrollable.

Gregg leaned toward her. None of his staff had arrived, so they were alone with a fair amount of space between them and the nearest client services rep. “Who’re you betting on
?
” he whispered.