"Great." Dar leaned back in her chair. "What's his angle?"

"That we're being pushed over by some startup with guts and innovation."

"Nice," Dar grunted.

"He thinks he's got a good yarn, what can I tell you, Dar?" Eleanor said. "Want me to push him over to Kerry? We'd probably get milder sound bites that way."

Dar sighed. "No, I'm not asking Kerry to clean up my mess. Give him my contact info. I'll talk to him." She rubbed her temples.

"Okay," Eleanor said. "Do me a favor though, huh? Try not to get us into more trouble?"

"No promises," Dar answered briefly. "Later." She cut off the phone, and then hit the button again when it buzzed a second later. "Yeah?"

"Okay, got the sniffer on." Mark said. "I'm gonna output to your share okay? I've got a couple of hot potatoes on right now."

"Sure," Dar agreed. "Thanks. I got it." She hung up again, and then glanced up as her intercom buzzed. "Now what?"

"Jefa, I have a customer, Mr. Godson on linea uno. He says he must speak with you urgently."

Godson. Godson...oh. "Okay, put him through," Dar said. "I'll talk to him."

"Si, I will do so." Maria's voice clicked off, then her internal line buzzed.

Dar picked it up. "Hello Stewart."

"Dar, that you? Oh, of course it is," a man's voice answered. "Glad I caught you in. Listen, I've got a big problem I need some help with."

Of course he did. Customers rarely called Dar just to pass the time of day, or compliment her on their service metrics. Godson was the CIO of Betadyne, a very high-powered sales and marketing group that provided fulfillment and call center services for a host of clients.

A big, and influential account. Ergo, why Dar was speaking to him without hesitation. "Sure, Stewart. What can we do for you?"

She spun her trackball again, and studied her mail screen as he started talking, stifling a yawn and wishing the day was moving faster.

"Well, see, Dar, we recently moved to this new application of ours, a real corker," Godson said. "It's fabulous. We love it. It does a hell of a lot more for us than the last thing we were using did, and we can see it's going to really move us ahead in business."

Dar glanced at the phone. "Glad to hear that, Stewart," she remarked. "I didn't know you were moving platforms."

Godson cleared his throat. "Wasn't going to, you know? Change isn't the best route sometimes, but we got a good deal from this company, and our new VP Ops here brought the deal home, said it would revolutionize us."

Uh huh. "Okay, so...what's the problem? Sounds like you're happy with it." Dar leaned her elbow on her desk and rested her head on her hand.

"Well, it's not performing," Godson said. "It's slow as hell, and Meyer, that's my VP, thinks it's the network causing the problem."

Dar turned her head and looked at the phone. "I see."

"Says he's got some people he can bring in to fix everything." Godson sounded a trifle abashed. "You know, consultants or what not. Friends of his, I guess."

"Uh huh."

"But I told him, before we go spending money on that, let's see what you can find out about it." The man cleared his throat. "After all, we've been doing business for a long time, right?"

"We have." Dar now turned her full attention to the phone, turning in her seat and leaning on her elbows, ignoring the screen. "I'm sorry you didn't come to me sooner, Stewart. I didn't know you were having an issue, much less that you considered it to be our fault."

"Now, Dar," Stewart said. "Let's not talk about fault huh? Maybe it's something simple, if you can look at it and see what it is?"

"Absolutely." Dar folded her hands. "I'll look at it right away and let you know."

"Great." Godson sounded relieved. "Looking forward to hearing from you, Dar. Thanks!"

He hung up and left Dar pondering her phone with a dour expression. Then she turned and minimized her mail, calling up her network monitoring program with a shake of her head.

A soft beep made her look up again to see Mark's file transfer completed, the box flashing for her attention.

"Yeah yeah." She shifted in her seat and resisted the urge to open her analyzer program, focusing on Godson's issue instead. "This better the hell not be a capacity problem I missed." Her hand flicked the mouse pointer impatiently. "If it is I'm gonna fire my ass."

KERRY WHISTLED UNDER her breath as she removed a last load of laundry from the washer and tossed it into the dryer. She set the machine and started it running, then took her basketful of already dried clothes and ambled back through the kitchen toward Dar's bedroom, closely followed by an attentive Chino.

She put the basket down on the edge of the waterbed and started sorting its contents out. "You know what, Chino?" she addressed their pet. "Don't tell anyone, but sometimes I actually like doing this stuff."

"Gruff?"

Kerry opened Dar's underwear drawer and began to store neatly folded pairs of underwear inside it. She'd gotten two of them inside when the phone rang, and she reached across the dresser to pick up the portable resting there. "Hello?"

"Hi, is this Ms. Stuart?" a man's voice asked. "This is Bob, from South Beach Lexus."

"Yup, it's me," Kerry agreed. "The buggy ready?"

"Not quite yet, ma'am, we really want to replace the brake pads. You've been kinda tough on 'em."

Kerry frowned at the phone. "I have?"

"Well, they're showing a lot of wear. We can let them go for a while but..."

"No, go ahead, by all means replace them," Kerry interrupted him. "I just didn't think I jammed them that much. Guess I'll have to pay more attention to how I'm driving, huh?"

The man cleared his throat. "Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people have the same problem...must be the traffic down here. Anyway, we'll get them changed, and my guy's gonna deliver the car to you round dinnertime, if that's okay."

"Great," Kerry answered readily. "Sounds perfect. Thanks!" She put the phone down and went back to her folding, inspecting each item for possible holes before she tucked it away. Most of Dar's briefs were plain, and somewhat ordinary, but she did have a selection of whimsical ones, most of which Kerry had purchased for her.

And of course, the red silk ones. Kerry smiled as she put those in the drawer, glancing at herself in the mirror as she finished. A hand lifted and riffled through her newly cut hair, and she gave the results an approving nod, pleased with her day so far.

The phone rang again, and she gave it a look of mild exasperation before she picked up the receiver and answered it. "Hello?"

"Hi," Dar's voice responded. "You're not answering your cell phone."

Kerry sucked in breath. "Oops...sorry. It's upstairs charging," she said. "And I'm downstairs playing with your undies. What's up?"

"Ahh...glad I finally learned my lesson and don't keep you on speaker," Dar chuckled. "Listen, I had to put the afternoon session on delay. Stewart Godson up in New York called, with a brand new project they just threw together. It's maxing their bandwidth out and I have to take a look at it."

"Is that our problem?" Kerry asked.

"Well, he's being told it's our problem," Dar sighed. "Somehow we managed to miss the capacity being pushed there. I've got someone checking the alerter system, but I think we just missed adding an alert for it."

"Ugh." Kerry grimaced. "You're not going to cause me a bottleneck up there, are you? I've got a lot of very touchy accounts up in those parts."

"Would I do that to you?" Dar's voice sounded bemused. "I may have to fly up there and meet with them, though, and I heard from Quest. He's pulling together a meeting of all the bidders at the Intercontinental on Wednesday."

Kerry nodded, even though her partner could not see her. "Well, you said I'd be spearheading that anyway," she remarked. "So forward the info on to me, boss, and I'll take care of it."

"Already done," Dar replied. "Looks like I'll be late. We're just going to start the sales meeting in an hour."

"I'll be waiting for you." There was a momentary silence, bringing a knowing smile to Kerry's face. "Give me a buzz before you leave, okay?"

"I will," Dar answered softly. "See you later."

Kerry put the phone down, her smile still lingering as she picked up her now empty basket and walked back through the living room, her mind busy with planning her strategy for Quest's meeting. A bright flash on the television broke her concentration, however, and she turned to look at the afternoon news blurb. "Oh." She paused, as they seemed to be continuing the news report from the previous night, now showing a picture of the man the police were looking for.

Kerry blinked, and then she simply stared at the picture, matching the somewhat blurry details with a memory from the previous day, from the car across from theirs, in the lazy afternoon sunlight of a summer day.

Was it the same jerk?

She squinted at the picture, which seemed to be from a passport. "Son of a bitch," she whispered. "I think it is."

"SO." THE LOW, powerful voice rolled out over the room. "As you can see, the capacity will remain relatively constant across the board, throughout the international and national grids, but our focus is going to be on refining the bandwidth usage and streamlining demand service."

A grid flashed onto the screen. "The net effect of that project will be for us to be able to add another fifty percent in capacity without increasing the hardware." Dar paused and leaned on the lectern. "Any further questions?"