by Melissa Good
“Well.” Kerry navigated the nearest mouse. “It doesn’t seem that different from a regular one.” She opened up an icon. “I mean, that shows you what’s on it, right?”
Dar’s brow was creased. She took over the mouse. “Wait a minute.” She opened a black screen. “Is that a terminal window?”
“Is it?” Kerry stepped back out of her way as she edged in front of the tower. “More to the point, is that good or bad?”
“Hang on.” Dar typed in a command, her eyes popping open a little at the response. “What the hell?”
“What?”
“Son of a bitch.” Dar straightened abruptly. “That’s Unix.” She looked accusingly at a sales boy who had wandered over. “That thing is running Unix?”
He nodded. “It’s a BSD variant. Darwin kernel,” he said. “It’s not an official fork, but it’s pretty solid.”
Dar put her hands on her hips. “When the hell did that happen?”
Kerry nudged her. “Does that mean you like them now? I like that laptop. It’s sexy.”
Dar eyed her.
“Like you are.” Kerry completed the thought, with a smile.
“They switched to OS X last year,” the salesman provided amiably. “We like it. It makes the screen a lot nicer. This model, it’s got full length PCI slots. The laptops just got DVI out.”
“So there’s no more of that weird interface anymore?” Dar asked.
“You mean OS 9 and those things? You can run an interpreter and run those old programs if you have them,” he said. “But I don’t think it will do that forever. They’re trying to get people to switch everything over to the Cocoa framework. I do some development work on the side. It’s pretty cool.”
“If it’s called Cocoa, it must have your name on it,” Kerry said from her peanut gallery position alongside Chino.
“Ha ha,” Dar responded.
“Coders like them because they’re true multitasking,” the boy said. “And a lot of tools can run on Darwin.
Dar folded her arms. “All right. Get me one of the laptops with the most ram and hard drive space. I’ll give it a try,” she said. “You want one?” she asked Kerry. “If it’s got a UNIX base, I can probably get my compilers to work on it.”
Kerry considered the machines. Then she shrugged. “Let me try one of the smaller ones, those white ones there.” She pointed. “Whatever the nicest one is, I’ll take it.”
The sales boy beamed at them. “That’s cool,” he said. “I like customers like you, who even bring puppies. It’s like Christmas.”
Dar started laughing.
“Let me go get them wrapped up for you.” He trotted off.
“See?” Kerry bumped her hip against Dar’s. “Not so bad, huh?”
“Remains to be seen,” Dar said. “They still could be absolute crap, even with Unix on them.” She played with the keyboard some more. “That’s a pretty crisp screen though.”
“Better for your eyes,” Kerry kidded her gently.
“Since I have a lot of code to look forward to, probably not a bad thing,” Dar surprisingly admitted. “Been a while since I spent more than a minute here and there with my head in a text editor.”
She clicked a few more things, then abandoned the mouse and circled the table to go and rescue Mocha. “C’mere, critter, before they squish you to death.” She took back the reluctantly given up puppy and curled him into the crook of her arm. “No laptop for you.”
“Yap!” Mocha squeaked up at her.
Kerry spent a few more minutes playing with the desktop, admiring the screen and the acrylic surround. “Y’know, Chi, these are actually pretty cool.”
Chino hopped up and looked at the screen, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth. Kerry spotted a camera and clicked on it, delighted to see a box open and display Chino’s nose. She clicked the picture, and smiled, as it transferred to the box. “Look, Chi. You’re there for posterity.”
“Growf.”
One of the girls wandered over. “Is that what the puppy is going to look like grown up? They’re cute, even big.”
“They are.” Kerry put her arm around Chino, and got an affectionate lick on the arm. “They’re gorgeous, funny dogs with a lot of personality.”
The girl came closer and patted Chino. “They’re not like pit bulls, right?”
“Right.”
Chino’s tail wagged at all the attention.
“I think they’re about as far from pit bulls as you can get in a species. Except for maybe, cocker spaniels,” Kerry said. “Just very sweet, gentle dogs.”
The sales boy came back with two white bags and a swipe machine. Dar traded him her credit card for the bags, and handed one to Kerry. They had strings in them, and could be worn almost like backpacks and Dar got hers situated as one of the girls helpfully held Mocha for her.
Kerry came over and took the puppy as Dar signed the slip, waving goodbye to the gang as they left with their new toys. “That was painless.” She held the door for Dar then followed her back out into the sunny weather.
“Yeah, and we’ll get to try something new.” Dar took back Mocha as they strolled along the street. “Let’s find a likely spot for lunch.”
They found a nice cafe with tables outside and settled into one of the corner ones. Kerry set her bag down on the table and relaxed, stretching her legs out and crossing them at the ankles.
Dar had put Mocha’s little puppy harness on, and he was busy exploring under the table, sniffing everything. He came around and sat down on Dar’s foot, watching the passersby with wide puppy eyes. “Yap!”
“Yap,” Dar barked back at him. “Do you know how nice it is to just sit here, and not worry about anything going on at work?” she asked Kerry. “Two glasses of white, and the sushi boat,” she added, to the Goth looking waitress who had sidled up.
“Yes, ma’am,” the waitress responded. “Would you like a bowl of water for the dogs?”
Kerry smiled at her. “Sure. Thanks.” She waited for the woman to disappear. “You’re right. This is nice,” she said. “I mean, we’ve got stuff to do next week, but right now, there’s nothing going on, nothing we need to worry about.”
Dar nodded.
“That’s cool.” She watched Mocha chew the laces on her hiking boots. “Kind of a shame the new business is taking off as fast as it is.”
Dar chuckled. “Hon, you can’t have it both ways.”
Kerry sighed. “I know. I sound like a schizoid. I told you I was all hot to open our own business, I just thought we’d have a little time to chill out before we did it. I should have known better. Our lives just don’t work that way.”
“After we get things rolling, we can relax again,” Dar said. “Once we bring in people to do the work.”
Kerry gave her a droll look.
Dar returned it with a brief, wry grin.
The sushi arrived, distracting them from their people watching. Kerry smiled with pleasure and wielded her chopsticks with skill, selecting a bit of sashimi and adding some soy and sesame seeds to it. She put it in her mouth, then looked down to find Mocha on his hind legs with his front paws scrabbling at her knees, whines escaping from his mouth.
She swallowed. “Little man, you don’t need to eat raw fish.” She tapped him on the head with the ends of her chopsticks. “Get down.”
“Yap!”
They both chuckled, then Dar glanced up. “Ah.”
Kerry caught the word and looked to see what Dar was looking at. “Hey, Eleanor,” she greeted their former co-worker and sometime antagonist. “Want some sushi?”
Eleanor pulled up a chair and seated herself. “I can’t imagine bumping into you two like this, but you know, I’m glad I did,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
Dar and Kerry exchanged looks.
“SO LOOK,” ELEANOR said. “We’ve never been best friends.”
“No.” Kerry responded. “You were one of the more hateful people I met at ILS, matter of fact.”
“Be fair, Ker.” Dar maneuvered another piece of sushi into her mouth. “I gave her good reason to be.”
“Dar.”
“It’s true. I never hid for a minute when people pissed me off.” Dar chewed thoughtfully. “Not even with you.”
Eleanor chuckled dryly. “That’s very true. You never had to wonder what you were thinking. It came right out your mouth.” She paused. “But you know, I came to actually appreciate that.”
Kerry grunted, and returned her attention to the sushi.
“Right around the time with Ankow,” Eleanor said. “After Jose and I realized the potential of that new arrangement of yours. We were at a bar, having a drink, and he’d just sold some crazy amount of contracts on it and he said to me, “shit, the bitch was right.””
Dar chortled softly.
“I stopped caring that you made me nuts,” Eleanor said. “So did he.”
“Back at you,” Dar said, taking a sip from her glass.
“You knew how to make the right decisions.”
“I always knew that,” Kerry said.
Eleanor gave her a droll look.
“Aside from our relationship,” Kerry said. “I have total trust in Dar’s choices.” She wiped her lips with a napkin. “I don’t always understand them, but they always prove out.”
“Not always,” Dar protested.
“Hon, they do.” Kerry gave her a fond look. “Even if it takes a while to unravel the clusterfuck ball, they end up right.”
“Exactly,” Eleanor said. “So.” She leaned forward. “I’m not one of the people who’s going to come running to you for a job. I’ve worked all my career for ILS. I intend to retire gracefully from them and spending my elder days playing craps in Vegas.”
Dar smiled. “I can picture that,” she said. “Size of company we are isn’t going to need your panache.”
Eleanor regarded her. “That might be the only nice thing you ever said about me. So you’re not going to build ILS V2?”
Both Dar and Kerry shook their heads in perfect unison. “We figure it’ll maybe end up being forty or fifty people,” Dar said. “I’m aiming at custom solutions, systems that make new things happen. I don’t want to be ILS. I want to go home at the end of the day and not think about work for a change.”
Eleanor looked profoundly relieved. “We, and I mean me and Jose, don’t want you for a competitor. It’s going to be hard enough to replace you where we are.”
“That might be the only nice thing you ever said about me,” Dar replied, with a faint twinkle in her eyes. “We’re going to concentrate on systems design and software as a service. Maybe put up a datacenter down south.”
“Maybe we’ll end up subcontracting you,” Eleanor said, after a pause. “No hard feelings, Dar. Everyone in that building misses the both of you. I’ve never seen so many—”
“Pissed off people?” Kerry suggested.
Eleanor shook her head. “Sad people. It’s like someone in the family died around there.”
Dar was caught off guard, and for a moment it showed. Then she drew in a breath and lifted both hands up, then let them drop in the table. “Wasn’t my choice how it happened.”
“You could have lied,” Eleanor said. “But we all knew that wasn’t your style.”
“No.”
Kerry studied Dar’s face. “You know.” She cleared her throat a little. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just say...” she paused. “Maybe arrange a company get together...maybe down at Crandon Beach or something and we could stop by so folks can get some closure.”
Eleanor smiled. “Thanks for not making me work for that, Kerry. I think we could arrange that. Maybe next weekend?”
“You can’t say we’re showing up officially,” Dar said, though she looked a lot happier. “I agreed I wouldn’t contact anyone. Part of the deal to not have to announce to the press we were fired.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “Alastair told us yesterday. I think he was trying to be consoling. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t expecting one of the security guards to ask why they did something so stupid in the first place then.”
“Poor, Alastair. He’s taking one for the team, I think.”
“He’s taking one for you,” Eleanor said. “Or at least, that’s what he said. Said he owed you one.” She exhaled. “Anyway, thanks for agreeing to do a drive by the party. Unofficially. We’ll put the word out through the usual channels, though I heard your admins were AWOL.”
“Absent with leave. They’re on vacation,” Kerry said. “We were pretty close to them, and I think the whole thing affected them more than most people.”
“And Polenti.” Eleanor smiled briefly. “I was in the room when they asked him if he wanted to step up into Kerry’s slot and he told them to fuck off. Nicely done. I don’t blame him. You know they asked Michelle Graver, right?”
“Really?” Kerry’s brows lifted.
Eleanor just laughed. “Five or six others from Fortune 100s, did the same. Some board member’s nephew? The same. Had more sense than his uncle.” Eleanor glanced up as the waitress hovered. “Can I get a glass of Chablis, please?”
The waitress glided off.
“Maybe they should bring in someone from another industry,” Kerry said. “Someone who has no idea about ILS, or us.”
Eleanor leaned back in her chair, crossing her pant suit covered legs. “That was Jose’s idea too. Just bring in some egghead with no clue about what we do. Make it much easier for the two of us, you know?”
Dar chuckled dryly and picked Mocha up to sit him on her lap. “That infrastructure should hold you for a few years. Just get someone who can keep things even keeled, and who’s service oriented,” she said. “Who knows what’ll be on the table in three or four years? Tech moves at light speed.”
“True.” Eleanor sipped at the wine the server had just delivered. “So. Haven’t ever seen you two down here. What’s up? Slumming?”
“Shopping.” Kerry indicated the boxes. “And we wanted to show off our new puppy.” She reached over and tickled Mocha on his chin, getting a lick on the hand for her pains. “Right, Mocha? Aren’t you brand new?”
“Yap!”
Eleanor rolled her mascaraed eyes. “What are those, anyway?”
“Labrador Retrievers.” Kerry leaned back as Chino hopped up and put her paws on her lap, sniffing interestedly at the sushi. “No raw fish for you, madam.”
Dar picked up a small bit of rice ball between her chopsticks and offered it, watching with an indulgent grin as Chino delicately nibbled it off the end of the wooden implements. “They’re really good dogs,” she told Eleanor. “So long as you can survive them being chewing machines for two years.” She let the wriggling puppy down to explore, but kept hold of his leash.
“I have cats,” Eleanor replied. “They’re declawed.”
Of course. Kerry dodged past Chino’s head and captured another piece of sushi, popping it into her mouth then almost burst into laughter as the dog investigated where the fish had gone, sniffing at Kerry’s lips with an intense, worried look.
“Hey!” Eleanor let out a yell, jerking her feet off the ground. “That thing just pissed on me!”
Chapter Eleven
“I THINK THAT was a successful day.” Dar wiped Mocha’s feet off and set him down in the kitchen. “We got laptops, we got sushi, had a nice walk, and our puppy piddled all over Eleanor’s Prada’s.”
Kerry was in the living room with her box and bag, busy unpacking her new laptop. “He’s a good judge of character already,” she called back. “Sorry, I know you said you were hell on wheels to her but she was still an ass, Dar.”
Dar wandered in from the kitchen and sprawled on the love seat, pulling over her own box. “She was never that bad to you. I think you just hated her because she hated me.”
Kerry considered that. “Well.” She opened her box and studied the sleek machine inside. “That
certainly pissed me off, hon, but even beside that, she’s a viper.”
“Mm.” Dar had her new laptop out and on her lap. “These are nice.” She opened the top and pressed the power button, her brows lifting at the piano like chord sound that resulted. “Huh.”
Chino came over and jumped up next to her, turning around twice and then curling up in a ball. She exhaled with an almost human expression, her eyebrows twitching as Mocha came over and stood up, putting his nose against hers.
“Aw.” Kerry looked up over her new screen. “They’re so cute.” She reached over and grabbed the camera on the table and lifted it up, switching it on and snapping a picture of the two dogs, and her beloved in her sweatpants and very white socks. “So are you.”
Dar looked up at her. “Me?”
“You.” Kerry smiled and set the camera back down. The laptop had booted and she ran her fingers over the touch pad. The screen was somewhat similar to what she was used to but the interface was sleeker. She connected the laptop to the condo’s Wi-Fi and opened a browser.
Dar was busy pecking away at the keyboard. “Huh...there’s a Darwin version of my compiler. Let me go grab that, and see if I can bring up my analytics on this thing.” She settled with her back against the love seat arm, and one leg slung up over the back of it, with the other propping up the laptop.
Kerry was doing some browsing. “You going to write a mail server or are we going to go commercial?”
“Let’s run an IMAP server. If the firewalls and all that get there next week I can work on that,” Dar said. “Actually, Mark can work on that, and we need to get some Linux admins in because I’d rather use lamp stacks than IIS.”
“I love it when you talk all sexy like that,” Kerry said. “Want some cherries?”
“Already have yours. What more do I need?”
Kerry started laughing. “I got a call back from that employment service. They’d totally love to work with us, and can bring in a turnkey package.”
“Good.” Dar tapped away. “Hey, Ker? Thanks for getting that thing next weekend together. Be good to go and say hello to everyone, but in a neutral place.”