Part 2 - 5 Months Before
"There are things I want to say, but I don't know if they will be to you." Teenage Fanclub, Alcoholiday
“It’s doing it again,” Darina said with a heavy sigh, placing herself directly between myself and my office. She sipped lightly from the mug of coffee and God-knows-what-else as she slumped against the frame of the door to office.
“At 7:30 in the morning?” I replied as I continued walking, arcing myself and the machine I was carrying widely around her. “How very inconsiderate of ‘it’.”
She swung 90 degrees to her right, blocking the entrance to the only safe haven I possessed in that building. “No need to be flippant, Joe. Can you just fix it for me?” she demanded interrogatively in her trademark Irish brogue, adding a sigh for good measure.
“Sure.” I snapped. I turned myself and the computer I was carrying sideways and forced myself past her into my office. “Of course, you’re going to have to tell me what it is I need to fix.”
“The resume thing,” She replied.
“Okay,” I said as I plopped the brand new mail server into a broken recliner in the corner of my little haven. “The resume thing could be one of several things. What, specifically, are you referring to?”
“The Careerbuilder server. It’s not sending any of the resumes over.” She sighed again. Heavily. To Darina, sighs were an entirely separate language which was composed solely of soft curses and insults, and she used them liberally – almost as punctuation.
“Darina,” I grumbled, “I told you, I changed the IP address on that machine on Friday. I even emailed it to you. Did you not read the email?”
“I never GOT that email,” she quipped.
“I disagree,” I said. I had no idea what I meant by it.
“Ye
disagree? Ye can’t disagree. It’s a fact. Ye can’t disagree with facts! They’re… they’re facts!”
“BEHOLD!” I shouted, raising my arms. “Observe as I disagree with you!” I waved my hands in criss-cross patterns over my face, then extended them, palms open wide, and looked at her with eyes as big as moons. The sudden outburst startled poor Darina, causing her mug hand to jerk suddenly which sent black coffee and most likely whiskey all over her blouse. Any ordinary person would probably yell or shout or react in a similar explosive way. Not Darina… No, she simply glared at me and… Sighed.
“Ye are so very difficult to get on with, ye know that?” she quipped as she sneered.
“And you’re so very boorish,” I sneered in reply, my eyebrows raised and my lips pursed, “To borrow from your lexicon.” I ducked my head under the desk to flip on the extremely overloaded power strip servicing the six computers and associated monitors clustered around my desk. All at once, the room was filled with a dull humming as power supplies buzzed and monitors blinked to life.
“Boorish? Lexicon?” She said and actually placed her mug on my desk so that she could put her fists on her hips. “Why Joe, I didn’t think you stayed in college long enough to learn those words.”
“I didn’t,” I said without even looking at her. “Unlike you, I didn’t have to take advanced classes to learn how to read.”
“Look, it’s not MY fault you’re jealous of –“
“Darina,” I interjected, “See that door behind you? I don’t think anyone else on this floor is here yet, so feel free to slam it on the way out if you want. I won’t mind.”
And she did. Right after she sighed.
“Now that THAT’S taken care of…” I said to no one in particular. In very practiced fashion, I logged into the network and began opening a series of programs that I had opened every morning for the past year – Homesite (for authoring HTML), Borland JBuilder (for authoring Java applications), a terminal emulator (for talking to the server), and MIRC (a chat program, for use during the other seven hours I spent at work each day).
- Connecting to irc.resort.org
- Connected
*Welcome to the Resort! Keep it nice and follow the rules!
*Message Of The Day (MOTD): Congrats, KerryBob and Angeline on their new son!
*Your nick is now Patton-X
/join #resort
*joining #Resort
*There are 118 people in #Resort
*The topic in channel #resort is “Bplop’s mother doesn’t make sense, either”
*Topic set at 06:15 10/2/1997 by montague
‹blozilla› wb Patton-X
‹@antigone_Sq› Patton :)
‹artful_soul› Hey PattonPattonPattonXXX
‹Patton-X› Heya blo, antigone, arty :)
‹Mitchell› Hey Patton – where were you yesterday?
‹Craaaaay› Patton-X! WERD
‹Patton-X› Hey Cray. Mitchell – Couldn’t log in, connection at home was down :(
‹Craaaaay› Patton-X can I get that new Rollins off you today?
I grit my teeth and grimace in frustration. Damn that kid…
‹blozilla› Cray, go buy the damn record and quit asking for it
‹artful_soul› Yeah, Cray, you ask him every single day! Go buy it!
‹Patton-X› Hehe, Cray, I’ll get it to you someday :) Just not now, I’m at work.
‹Patton-X› Hey, any of you guys seen AgentOrange this morning?
‹@antigone_Sq› Yah, she was in here a few mins ago, looking for you, actually
‹@antigone_Sq› BRB
*antigone_Sq has been marked as AWAY (BRB)
‹artful_soul› AWOOOOOOOO! Do I sense a love connection taking place, PattyPoo?
I chuckled aloud and took a sip from my morning coffee.
‹artful_soul› WELLLL?
‹Patton-X› NOOOOOOOOOOO
‹blozilla› arty, you jealous?
‹Patton-X› Come on now, don’t be silly. I just sent her a CD and wanted to see if she got it.
‹Mitchell› What CD Patton
‹Craaaaaay› Was it the new Rollins cause I want that too
‹Mitchell› Cray, leave him alone about the fucking Rollins cd.
‹blozilla› Man, I’m hungry
‹Patton-X› Mitchell – nah, new Helmet and some Teenage Fanclub
‹blozilla› I’m gonna go fix waffles, bbl
*blozilla has left #resort (WAFFLESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS)
‹Patton-X› and some jazz.
‹artful_soul› You never send me jazz, Patton :( :( :(
‹Mitchell› What jazz?
‹Patton-X› You never ask for jazz, Arty :)
‹Patton-X› Mitchell – Sonny Rollins, mostly. Some Thelonious Monk.
‹@antigone_Sq› Back
*antigone_Sq has returned
‹artful_soul› I thought his name was Henry Rollins
‹Mitchell› It is, artful. This is Sonny, his father :P
I cracked up laughing, nearly losing my mouthful of coffee through my nose.
‹artful_soul› Henry Rollins’s father sings jazz?
‹Patton-X› No, artful, Mitch HELL is just messing with you. Sonny Rollins is a famous sax player :)
‹@antigone_Sq› LOL
‹Craaaaaay› It would be cool if it was Rollins’s dad cause ROLLINS RULZ
‹artful_soul› so Patton now you’re giving other girls sax! You never give me sax!!!!
Just then, I was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Come,” I said in my best Captain Picard voice. The door creaked open, revealing the stern face of my boss Gary.
“Joe,” he said as he stepped in and closed the door behind him. “Look – we have to talk.”
I quickly minimized the chat window and turned to face my manager. “Sure, Gary, what’s up?”
He groaned an old man’s groan as he picked up an empty laptop case which occupied the chair in which he wanted to sit. He tossed it onto the pile of magazines sitting on the old couch resting against the far wall of the office. “It’s Darina,” he said, pinching the pleats on his pants and hiking them up slightly so that he could sit without ruining the crease.
“What now…” I groaned.
“Look – I wasn’t here for what transpired this morning – and frankly, I don’t really care about any of it. I just need the two of you to work together.”
“We DO work together, Gary.”
“Nicely.”
My shoulders slumped. “Oh.” I reached forward and typed a little on my keyboard, pulling up the remote administration tool on my machine. “That’s something altogether different.”
“Look,” he said, resting his arm on the rest of the chair, “I know she can be a little…”
“Stuck up?” I offered.
“Well…”
“Snobbish? Rude? Demanding? Stupid?”
“Come on now.”
“You can pick any one of those. They all work,” I said as I typed Darina’s IP address into the connection window and hit ‘Enter’.
“Joe, you’re being unfair. I know Darina can be a bit much to handle sometimes, but you’ve got to understand – she’s from an entirely different station in life…”
“Gary, she’s a recruiter, for godssake. I’m the webmaster. I don’t answer to her.” I saw that the mouse on her machine was moving. I sent a lockout command, causing the machine to yield completely over to me. “She treats me like I’m a kid, but I’m only three years younger than her.” I pulled up the Careerbuilder client and made the changes so that it would connect to the new server. “She refuses to read my emails, she ignores everything I tell her….” I then maneuvered the mouse to the ‘Start’ menu and brought up Notepad. Very quickly, I typed the words ‘You’re a boorish prude, and you smell like coffee.’
“You’re both young,” he interjected. “You’re both very… career-oriented. You don’t like people to challenge you.” He offered both hands forth with palms facing up. “Naturally, there’s going to be some… Tension between the both of –“
“Gary!” I heard with a Doppler-style echo from behind the door as Darina began marching the hall looking for our manager.
“Oh, what does she want now…” he groaned as he stood and opened the door to my office, revealing Darina with her hand raised; poised to knock.
“Gary, can I see ye for a moment?” She said gruffly.
“Darina,” he said kindly, “Joe and I are talking at the moment.”
“I understand that,” she said. “But I need to show ye something. On my computer.”
“Surely this can wait just a –“
“Please.” She demanded.
“Oh, alright… Joe, we’ll talk later,” he said with an irate tone as he followed Darina down the hallway to her office.
How Darina thought she’d be able to bring our boss back in time to see what I typed mystified me. With but one motion, I clicked the “X” in the upper right hand corner of Notepad and *poof* - the evidence was gone. Satisfied that I’d completely ruffled her feathers, I went back to my IRC session.
‹Patton-X› Back.
‹Patton-X› Sorry about that, all. I got bossed.
‹Mitchell› WB Patton
‹@antigone_Sq› Welcome back, and BRB
*antigone_Sq has been marked as AWAY (BRB AGAIN)
‹artful_soul› YAY Patton’s back!!!!!!!
‹AgentOrange› Yeah… about time :)
My heart skipped a beat.
‹Patton-X› Hey Orangie!
‹AgentOrange› :)
‹Patton-X› How are ya?
‹artful_soul› Oh man, Patton’s girlfriend is here, now he won’t talk to any of us.
‹Mitchell› LOL artful_soul
‹Patton-X› Come on…
‹AgentOrange› Heh… you’re too nice, Patton-X. You should say it my way.
*AgentOrange flips all of you off!!!!
‹Mitchell› LOL
‹Patton-X› hehe
‹@antigone_Sq› Now now… be nice, or I’ll boot ya.
*antigone_Sq has returned.
Suddenly, a little tab appeared, indicating a private message. It was from AgentOrange.
‹AgentOrange› Hey Joe.
‹AgentOrange› Got your letter yesterday!
The width of the smile that adorned my face could not be measured by standard instrumentation. Anyone in the hallway would have seen a halo of light pour from the cracks in my doorway, I was beaming so brightly.
‹Patton-X› Kayte! I was wondering if it had gotten there yet.
‹Patton-X› Listen to the CD yet?
‹AgentOrange› Not yet. It’s so cool that you can make your own CD’s!
‹Patton-X› Yeah, I guess work is useful for something after all!
‹AgentOrange› So, what will I find on the CD?
‹Patton-X› You should listen to it and find out.
‹AgentOrange› I really liked that you sent me little toys. I opened the envelope to find a miniature X-wing. I was like “OK, this boy rocks.”
We have liftoff.
‹Patton-X› I was hoping you’d dig that and not think I was just some nerd :)
‹AgentOrange› Of COURSE I dug it. It rocked :) And the letter was great, too. I’m gonna be hard pressed to match 12 pages when I write back, but I’ll try!
‹Patton-X› No need. Just writing back is plenty enough.
‹AgentOrange› You know…
YES?
‹AgentOrange› We’ve been talking online for what, like, a year now?
‹Patton-X› Something like that.
‹AgentOrange› Well, I’ve been thinking…
YES??????
‹AgentOrange› The internet is nice and all. And the letters – they’re great! But… I dunno.
‹AgentOrange› They always leave me…
WHAT? Leave you what?
(seconds go by)
WHAT??? Tell me!
‹AgentOrange› unfulfilled.
‹AgentOrange› We should really talk sometime.
I balled my fists and clinched my eyes, then shook wildly in celebration. While I was engaged in this little micro-orgasmic fit of happiness, the door to my office swung open.
It was Darina.
“Feeling alright?” she said, catching me in mid-happy-dance.
“No,” I said, leaving my fists in the air and looking at her with only one eye. “This is the reaction my body makes when I get the psychic premonitions that you’re about to show up.”
“HA HA,” she said. “You’re a real riot, you know?”
“Nothing compared to the sort you’re probably used to back home,” I replied snottily. “I’m sure you’ve seen your share of villagers with pitchforks looking to cast out the evil monster known only as Darina.”
“Look, cut the crap, okay?” She demanded, her green eyes flashing with anger. “You made me look like a bloody fool in front of Gary, with that little Notepad stunt. I don’t know how you did it –“
“What?” I said in mock shock. “With your degree and everything? Gee… that’s surprising.”
“Enough!” She shouted. “Look – just – GOD. I can’t even have a civil conversation with you!”
“Not my fault,” I replied as I lazily took a sip from my coffee mug. The liquid inside had grown cold and my face must have reflected that fact as the disgusting sludge washed over my tongue. With all the determination present in my system, I forced myself to gulp down the brown death.
“Oh, my,” Darina said with a smug look. “But that WAS fun to watch.”
“Get out,” I demanded. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Enjoying the last laugh, she backed out of my office and pulled the door to. Smacking my lips in disgust, I returned to the monitor to find a very frantic series of messages from AgentOrange.
‹AgentOrange› Do you agree?
‹AgentOrange› Hello?
‹AgentOrange› Helllooooooooooo…
‹AgentOrange› Um
‹AgentOrange› Okay… I guess you don’t agree…
‹AgentOrange› Um, okay, so now that I’ve made a complete fool out of myself, I’m gonna go.
‹AgentOrange› See you around.
*AgentOrange has left the conversation
“SHIT!” I said audibly.
“That’s a strange way to invite your manager into your office…” Gary said.
“Oh! Um… Crap. Sorry Gary,” I said as my face began burning off of my skull. “I didn’t mean you… I meant… Um… How can I help you?”
“I was just going to finish up our conversation from earlier,” He said calmly. “But I can see that you’re a bit preoccupied. Basically – just get along with Darina. You have to work together. That isn’t going to change for either of you in the near future, so you might as well act as adults and work it out.”
“Okay, I’ll do my best,” I replied, forcing my head to look at Gary instead of whipping back to the monitor to see if she’d shown back up yet.
“Okay. That’s all I can ask for, is your best,” he said with a nod.
My neck was beginning to hurt from the strain of my brain’s insistence that it not allow my head to move away from my manager. “Yes, sir. I suppose it is.”
He looked at me strangely. “Alright. So we have an understanding?”
“Absolutely,” I said, sweat beginning to form on my brow. “I understand.”
He stood looking at me. I guess he wanted to hear more.
“One hundred percent understanding here. Between us. You and me.”
His look did not change.
“If you said, ‘Are we clear? I’d say ‘Crystal’. Such is the level of understanding here. In this room.”
His face remained still.
“Between us. Here. Now.” I grinned wide, hoping he'd let it end.
He tilted his head slightly. “Well, alright. Good.” And with that, he left.
I nearly gave myself whiplash as I whipped around to see what had taken place during the Great Interruption of 1997. It was with great glee that I saw that she had returned to the conversation.
‹AgentOrange› Okay, I changed my mind.
‹AgentOrange› You can’t just leave me hanging like that.
‹AgentOrange› If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine, but dammit, you’re going to TELL me.
‹AgentOrange› I hope.
‹AgentOrange› I think.
My fingers flew into a fury as I attempted to reply in a manner somewhat resembling coherence.
‹Patton-X› OF COURSE I WANT TO TALK TO YOU!!!
‹Patton-X› I’m at work. My most hated coworker came in, and my boss came in, and both wanted to discuss irrelevant things
‹Patton-X› So I couldn’t reply.
‹Patton-X› But I’m here now.
‹Patton-X› Replying.
‹Patton-X› See?
‹Patton-X› Reply Reply Reply.
‹Patton-X› *sigh*
I stared at the screen. Is this how desperate I was to catch her? I actually typed the word “SIGH!” With star-things around it! Jesus… she had to understand. She simply had to. It wasn’t that I didn’t WANT to talk to her – I was hoping beyond belief that she’d suggest that! I just couldn’t reply in time. Oh, man, I hoped and I hoped that I hadn’t just blown this –
‹AgentOrange› Okay.
Okay! Okay is good. I like okay. Tell me more.
‹AgentOrange› I forgive you.
Great! I’m forgiven. Now, just tell me you still want to talk to me.
‹AgentOrange› SO. Talk. Yes or no?
‹Patton-X› oh, HELL yes.
‹AgentOrange› !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
‹Patton-X› What?
‹AgentOrange› I was hoping for just a simple ‘yes’. Getting a ‘HELL yes’ is like extra bonus points.
‹Patton-X› Yay, I win :)
‹AgentOrange› Not yet, you haven’t. You don’t have my number :)
I laughed. Out loud, even.
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