It’s 3 o’clock and I’m sitting at my desk with my head in both hands. I sucked at the meeting and Manny—that is, Mr. Tedros, as I’d better be careful to call him—gave me stink-eye when we broke for lunch.
I can’t say I didn’t deserve it. First, we are behind and while that’s mainly due to factors beyond our control, I was so scattered I’d struggled to answer some basic questions. Casey had to bail me out a couple of times and prompt me on a few others. Casey did great, as always, and that helped but the investors left with pinched expressions on their faces and I’m sure I’ll hear from Mr. Tedros again before the day is out.
I’m not sure what I’ll have to say for myself. On the one hand, my revelations about being a hypocrite aren’t sitting well with me. On the other, this project is big—the final stepping stone to our IPO—and if it tanks all the crazy long days and hectic work will be for nothing. Maybe I’m having qualms about what we’re doing, but other people are counting on it. They’ve staked their futures on it. T&A is still small enough that we all have a big impact.
Do I have the right to sacrifice them for my own personal misgivings? After all, it’s not like we’re a drug cartel or selling people—
Crap. Maybe those aren’t the best comparisons…
Lobster brain. Remember you have lobster brain…
A large to-go cup of coffee plunks on my desk followed by a chocolate glazed donut. Casey lowers herself into the chair across from me. She sits back and runs her manicured fingers through her perfectly styled blond hair. Casey looks, and dresses, more like a fashion model—though not as skinny—than the tech nerd she is and it fools a lot of people. But she’s the best software architect we have and anyone who fails to take her seriously soon learns better.
She pushes the coffee and donut across to me. “So what’s up with you. Spill.”
I stare at the donut. It looks delicious but my stomach is in knots. More caffeine doesn’t seem like the best idea either. Scrubbing my palms down my face, I lean back, mirroring Casey’s pose.
“Maggie and I had a fight last night.”
“Yeah, okay.” Casey says it like that’s not news. Which it’s not.
“She accused me of cheating.”
That gets her attention. “You? Cheating? Who with?”
“Morgan. She saw us hugging at lunch.”
Her eyes roll. “Right. I mean, Morgan’s cute, so if you’re gonna cheat—”
“I think she’s cheating.”
“Wait, wait…” Casey’s eyes lock on mine. “You think Maggie’s cheating?”
I nod. “We had a big fight at La Vita è Dolce and she left without me. When I got home, she’d locked me out and then Mrs.—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. She ditched you and then locked you out?”
“Uh huh.” I punctuate it with a jerky nod. “And Mrs. Jenkins across the hall came out and said she saw Maggie come home with another woman and they went inside together.”
“Fuck,” Casey hisses.
“Shhh. I don’t want anyone to hear.”
Shaking her head, Casey ignores me. “When was this? I mean, how long before you got home?”
“I dunno. I hung out at the restaurant for a while. Two hours, maybe? I didn’t want to go home and deal with Maggie before I absolutely had to. Then she wouldn’t let me in. I haven’t talked to her since.”
“You haven’t talked?”
“Why? It doesn’t matter anyway.”
Casey looks intently at me. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter?”
“I don’t care.”
“She cheated! How can you excuse—”
“One…” I hold up a finger to cut her off. “I suspect she cheated. I don’t know for sure. Two…” I raise a second finger. “Whether she cheated or not is immaterial. We’re done. We’ve been done for… a long time. I’m just… really slow.”
“Oh.” Casey leans back, clearly processing. “You could have led with that. But, yeah. It all kinda makes sense.”
“What does?”
Casey opens her hands in an all-encompassing gesture. “The whole thing. How Maggie’s acting.”
I sharpen my gaze as my jaw tenses. “Casey. You aren’t taking—”
“Oh no, no! Fuck no!” Casey does this frantic wave-off thing that’s comical enough I have to take her seriously. “I mean, look at you, Erin. You’re super pretty, the bomb at your job and about to be a self-made multi-millionaire.”
“Sure,” I interrupt again. She might be right about two of those things. Maybe. The other… “Don’t make me laugh. And y’know nobody talks like that these days.”
“So sue me,” Casey retorts. “I’m thirty-five. I can be out of date. The point is, she’s a bitchy washed-up legal secretary who treated you like a pet. As long as you stayed in her box, she pretended to be cool. But you blew up the box and thank God for that. You deserve so much better.”
Yeah, when she puts it that way… “That seems to be the consensus, yes.”
“What? Who else have you talked about this with? Wait…” She stares hard at me and I see a light bulb go off above her head, just like in a cartoon. Okay, not literally but it sure feels like it. Her eyes narrow to slits. “Where’d you spend the night? Those aren’t your clothes.”
True, we’ve been in and out of each other’s closets for years so she’d know that. I’m even a bit surprised she hadn’t noticed right off.
“No, I had to borrow them.”
“Hold on.” Casey shakes her head again. “Can we rewind? You had a big fight with Maggie. She ditched you. Then what? Where’d you go?”
I close my eyes and rub my temples. Savannah’s face swims behind my eyelids… “I went home with this waitress—”
“A waitress?” Casey’s voice is climbing again.
“Keep your voice down.” I rub harder. “She was our server. She saw the fight and we chatted a bit.” And shared dessert—irrelevant detail. “When I got up to leave my phone was dead so I asked them to call me a taxi. But she said she was off in a few minutes and offered me a ride. It was late, so I accepted.”
“Okayyy.”
“I got back to our apartment and Maggie had locked me out. I left, thinking maybe I could walk to the Silver Cloud and they’d let me call someone.” Cleverly editing out my meltdown in the elevator.
Casey snorts. “I hope I was on your short list.”
I snort back. “You were. But when I got outside, Savannah was still waiting there.”
“Savannah?”
“The waitress.”
“Oh? On a first name basis already, huh?”
I resist the urge to stick my tongue out at her smirk. “Anyway… I thought about calling you or finding a hotel”—not a lie, just a redacted truth—“but she offered to take me to her place instead.”
Casey’s eyebrows arch to unexpected heights. “And?”
“And I said yes. It was close and I just… it was really late. I was wiped. I did think of calling you,” I emphasized, “but as late as it was, I couldn’t be sure you’d be… unoccupied.”
“Ohhh…” Casey laughs. “Burn.”
That merits a wink. “I know you.”
“Okay, okay. You got me. Go on.”
“So I expected to sleep on her couch but she wanted me to take the bed and I couldn’t have that, so we slept together.”
“You mean…”
“Sleep. Just sleep. Not a euphemism.” I’m also not about to say anything about unconscious spooning, butt rubbing and boob grabbing. And certainly nothing about her roommate’s nocturnal activities. Never that, even to my best friend. “Then we got up, she lent me this outfit so I’d have something clean to wear, made me coffee and drove me here.” I sit back and cross my arms over my chest. “The end.”
“Well, fuck. You slept with her, you’re borrowing her clothes, she’s making you coffee…” Casey blinks and shakes her head like she’s coming out of a daze. “What does she look like?”
“Who?”—unartfully dodging the question. I shouldn’t have mentioned coffee. In Casey’s mind that means we’re practically engaged. If I’d told her about dessert, we’d be all-but-legally married.
“This Savannah, obviously.”
My lips tighten. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You get this funny look on your face when you talk about her. Is she hot?”
Shit. Busted…
“She’s sweet. She’s a nice caring person who wanted to help out a person stuck in a shitty situation. It just happened to be me. She’s selfless.”
“And super-hot.”
“She’s like… eleven years younger than us, Casey.”
That gets me snorted at again, followed by a far-too-cheeky grin for my mood. “Age is just a number. Isn’t that right?”
Not what I wanna hear right now…
An incoming call from a number I don’t recognize the number that flashes on my desk phone, saving me from coming up with a retort I don’t have.
“I’ve gotta take this. Let’s get back to work. You can take the coffee.”
She picks it up and gives me a look that tells me we aren’t done with this conversation. “What about the donut?”
I still don’t think I can stomach it but I don’t want to worry her that much. Lifting the handset and poising my finger over the answer button, I return a disarming wink. At least, I hope it is.
“I’ll throw myself on that grenade.”
She laughs on her way out and I answer the call. “Hello, this is Erin Lancaster.”
“Erin—”
My stomach heaves. “Maggie? Why are you calling from this number?”
“I… I was worried you wouldn’t pick up if you knew it was me.”
And you’re right about that. “Maggie—”
“Erin, I’m so sorry about last night. I was out of line—so far out of line. I want to make it up to you. I want to talk—”
“Maggie, there’s nothing to talk about.”
“Please don’t say that. I mean it. I really mean it—”
“Maggie—”
“Let’s talk, Erin. Please—”
“Maggie, I ran into Mrs. Jenkins last night. She told me you brought a woman home.”
“That’s… that’s not what it seems.”
“I don’t care, Maggie. It—”
“Erin, let me explain. I let you explain about Morgan…”
Like fuck you did. “Maggie, it doesn’t matter.”
“She’s just a friend, Erin. A work friend. When I got outside, I realized I shouldn’t be driving so I called her to take me home. She came up to talk. We just talked. I swear—”
“Maggie. Stop. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you did fuck her. I don’t care who you fuck. You said it yourself—we’re done. We’ve been done for years. I just didn’t see it. Now I do. If you cheated or didn’t cheat makes no difference. It’s over.”
“Erin… You can’t say that—please don’t say that. We’re getting married. I didn’t mean what I said. I was just—”
“I’ll be by to get some of my things. I’m moving out while we decide what to do about the apartment. We’ll do that later.”
“Erin, please—”
“Maggie—”
“I saved you, Erin! I saved you when nobody else would! You wouldn’t exist without me! You owe me!”
Fuck! Was she really going to play that card after all these years? It’s not that she was wrong—she did save me—but she did it because no one else would? Is that all I’d ever been to her? Some thing that only had worth because she bestowed it on me? No wonder being around Maggie made me feel like I was nothing.
You wouldn’t exist without me!?
Fuck that. Maybe I did owe Maggie for helping me… But I didn’t owe her my existence.
My mind ricochets back to last night in the elevator. No. No matter what she did for me when we met, I’m not nothing.
“Erin! Answer me!”
I suck in a deep breath and work some moisture back into my mouth. “Maggie. I’m hanging up now. Manny will be by any moment.”
“Er—”
I drop the handset into its cradle, killing the call. The donut taunts me from my desktop.
Fucking donut. I sweep it into the trash.
The sound of a throat clearing spears me. My head snaps up and there he is, all rumpled five-foot-two of him, waiting in my office doorway like the nastiest of nasty omens.
Manny—my boss. The boss. How long has he been standing there? How much has he heard?
“Mr. Tedros.” My mouth is suddenly sticky and it shows.
“Miss Lancaster. May I see you in my office, please.”
“Of course.” I do my best to blank my expression as I stand up. In addition to calling all the unmarried female staff Miss instead of Ms—for reasons he never gave—he pronounces my last name Lanc-aster, not Lan-cas-ter like most people. I think he thought it made him sound vaguely British and that makes him cooler. Or something. I might’ve found it cute from somebody else—if Savannah did it I’d giggle and probably love it—but from him it’s just affected and annoying.
Stop thinking about Savannah. She doesn’t even know your last name!
And come to think of it, I don’t know hers. Should we fix that?
Wait. She does know my last name—the credit card. But what if she’s already forgotten it?
What’s the matter with you? Are you twelve? Get it together, for fuck’s sake…
Lobster brain. Can I blame this on lobster brain?
Fat chance.
Is that a hard no?
Yes—
“Have a seat, Miss Lancaster.”
Oh shit…
I can’t believe I’d spent the whole trip to Manny’s corner office having an idiotic mental tiff between my rational decision maker and my petulant inner child.
I am so screwed.
I sit.
Aside from his habit of wearing expensive rumpled suits—which is just strange—Manny always reminded me of Wallace Shawn’s character in Pixar’s The Incredibles (such an awesome movie—I still love it). I guess it’s his stature (or lack of same), the way he spoke (Manny doesn’t talk, he speaks) and while he doesn’t line up pencils precisely on his desk pad, he does fiddle with stuff while he speaks. Clicking pens is a favorite. He’s clicking a pen now.
“I’m concerned, Miss Lancaster.”
I leap straight into the breach. The best defense is a good offense, isn’t it? Or in this case, a good grovel. “Yes and I’m sorry, Mr. Tedros. I’m aware of the policies regarding personal phone calls. Unfortunately, I was a bit blindsided by this one and—”
“Miss Lancaster,” he interrupts and I shut my mouth like a trap. Appropriate, since I’d just stepped into one. “I’m not concerned about your personal phone call.” His gaze sharpens and the pen clicks. “But should I be?”
“Ah… no.” Crap, stammering is not a good look but I forge ahead. “You shouldn’t. I have it under control and it won’t happen again.” What a lie…
“Good. Now what I am concerned about…” He twirls the pen around his knuckles. That’s a new flourish. “Your presentation this morning was sub-par. I’m afraid our investors left here not convinced we can make the schedule. Their lack of confidence is impacting my confidence as well. Can you assure me their concerns—and mine—are without merit?”
I suck in a breath—quietly—and dig deep for my program-manager self. “Yes. I am aware I was not on-point this morning and I apologize. I’ve dealt with that and I’m focused going forward.” God, just listen to me… “The schedule is not in jeopardy. We’ve regrouped from the delays the bug imposed and I’m adjusting the schedule and shifting resources to prioritize the mission-critical modules and get them into beta on plan, or even ahead of plan. We can demo them for the investors without the Tier-2 functionality and that should reassure them. Then we’ll refocus on integrating Tier-2 and wrap things up as per the schedule.”
I pause to inhale. Yes, I can talk shit with the best of them when my job’s on the line. I hope it’s not complete BS, though. We aren’t behind because of anything on our end. The code development platform we’d selected, which was widely used throughout our industry for its power and flexibility, turned out to have an obscure bug in it. Casey found it and even dug up an old BugTrac documenting it. The platform’s developers hadn’t rated it serious enough to fix in their latest release, but—just our luck—Manny’s algorithms depend critically on the few functions the bug affects.
The bug hadn’t been present in the version of the platform we’d done our initial development on. That was three versions ago, so we didn’t get hit until the platform’s developers announced they weren’t supporting our version anymore, but were moving to a whole new architecture, and we had to upgrade—or in this case, downgrade—to the latest version.
Even more irritating, the bug is one of those intermittent things and drove us nuts for weeks until Casey figured it out. We complained, but—typically—the platform’s developers were useless. They’re busy with their revamp and would only assure us the bug wouldn’t be an issue. Yeah, right. That didn’t help because the scheduled release of their new version is months too late for our launch. So we’re having to write our own run-time patch to get around it. While far from ideal, we could at least get the product out the door with it, and then smooth things out for the new platform, when it’s ready.
I don’t intend for that to be my problem, though. Current events are convincing me to update my “exit strategy”—codewords for “take the money and run.” On top of that, I have no confidence in the new platform, given those jerks’ lack of respect for backwards compatibility, and that could mean porting to a whole new codebase. I want no part in that movie—my brain-state be damned.
But under no circumstances am I going to breathe the slightest hint of any of this. Nope, it’s gonna be sunshine city from me from here on out.
With that in mind, I ready my final shot to appease Manny. Sitting up in the chair, I do my best impression of a perky employee. “I was also going to propose backburnering enhancements that haven’t been publicized yet. That would give us margin and, in any case, it would be best to wait so we can ensure compatibility with the new platform’s rollout. That’s not on us, so even if there are questions, there’d be minimal blowback. I’ll have all the details for next week’s meeting.”
Manny pauses in his pen clicking, wrinkles his chin, and sets it down. “Very well, Miss Lancaster. We shall await next week’s meeting. Until then.”
Yay! I do a mental fist pump. I’d won! Go me and my bad self!
“Thank you, Mr. Tedros.” And I scurry out of his office as fast as I decently can. In the greater scheme of things, it’s not much of a win. But after the last twenty-four hours, I’ll definitely take it.