Dar snickered, but held her silence.
"Well," Cynthia sighed. "I'm not sure really what to do at this point. What I am truly afraid of is that some of my colleagues will use this as an excuse to put in place some ideas that might not have found wide acceptance before."
Kerry put the menu down and sat back, picking up her Mojito and taking a sip of it. The cool minty sweetness almost hid the bite of rum and she licked her lips and put it back down on the table. The waitress came back, and Kerry pointed at both herself and Dar. "Sundae." She glanced at Andrew, who nodded, then at her mother. "Mother?"
Cynthia frowned then shrugged. "Why not?"
"Four." Kerry felt her second wind kicking in. Or perhaps it was her third or fourth by this time. "Dar, can you let us in on what the issue is with Gerry?"
Dar glanced at Kerry's mother, then at Kerry. One brow twitched then she half shrugged. "Sure," she said. "Take this with a grain of salt, since I haven't talked to anyone but Gerry about this, and he was pretty vague."
She paused, and glanced around, but they were quite alone in their corner of the bar, the television providing an irresistible draw to everyone else including the staff. "The problem is they lost all the local feeds into the stock exchanges and the banking centers down on the tip of Manhattan."
Kerry nodded. Cynthia nodded. Andrew grunted. "Okay," Kerry added, after Dar paused. "And?"
"And, they need to get them back online, and not let out how damaging that is to our financial infrastructure," Dar supplied.
Everyone nodded again. "Well, that's understandable," Cynthia ventured. "But I'm not quite sure--I mean, surely everyone knows that, and by now it's being worked on," she paused. "Isn't it?"
Kerry folded her arms across her chest. "Probably not yet," she said. "The place where all those connections were is buried under the debris from the South tower."
"Oh," Kerry's mother murmured. "Well, then--"
"Where do we come in to this?" Kerry looked at Dar. "None of that's ours," she added. "We've got some customers down there, sure, and I'm already working on plans to get them rerouted, but we don't touch the markets. I remember them saying how we were locked out of those contracts."
"Someone told someone we could fix it," Dar said, succinctly. "That's what Gerry wants me to talk to that someone about. "
Cynthia was looking from one of them to the other. "I don't understand. What is this about locked contracts? "
"Politics," Dar and Kerry said together. Then Kerry half turned to face her partner. "They think we can fix it? Dar that makes no sense. We don't have anything down there. No contacts, nothing. You remember what happened the last time we tried to put a bid in?"
"It doesn't make sense," Dar agreed. "That's why we need to talk to them. Find out why they think that. Alastair said I should get in and do whatever I needed to--but Ker, he doesn't get it. He doesn't know what the score is there. I think he's just not thinking straight."
Kerry shook her head. "Well, okay," she said. "On one hand we've got part of the government pissed off because we know everything, and on the other, we've got part of the government thinking we're Thor, god of the Internets. Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow."
"Thor, god of the internet," Dar mused. "I'm going to get a T-shirt that says that."
Andrew chuckled. Cynthia paused, then she laughed as well, and the mood lightened a little.
"Really, it should wait for tomorrow," Kerry's mother said. "It's very late, and I'm sure we're all very tired. I hope the morning will bring some return to normal. I hear airplane flights are resuming." She looked over at Dar. "I am glad you arranged to arrive this evening, however, Dar. I know Kerrison missed you terribly."
"Mother," Kerry sighed.
"Didn't you?" Dar reached over and took Kerry's hand in her own. "I sure as hell missed you."
"Of course I did." Kerry felt a little flustered. "But sheesh--you came for other reasons." She eyed her partner, who had a faint smile on her face. "Didn't you?"
Dar shook her head.
"Dar."
Dar shrugged. "I'm too tired to lie," she said. "It just so happened that Gerry's plan coincided with where I needed to be. If it hadn't, I'd have told him he had to wait." She gazed back at three sets of eyes then looked over at Kerry. "Don't give me that look. You were going to start driving for Houston yesterday."
Kerry scratched her nose, and looked faintly abashed.
"Anyway--" Dar sipped her coffee with her free hand, the fingers of the other tangled with Kerry's. "You and I will go down to the offices of whoever it is Gerry talked to and straighten it all out tomorrow. "
"The other sat trucks are holding outside Newark," Kerry informed her. "Not sure if you got that on the call. They won't let anyone down into lower Manhattan yet."
Dar nodded. "We can compare notes tomorrow morning. See where we want the plan to go from here."
"I know what my intentions are," Cynthia spoke up suddenly. "I have decided to return home, as early as I can. We have many things back in Michigan that I'm worried about," she said. "I realize there is much debate going on here, but there are people there that might be in danger."
Kerry nodded. "I think that's a good decision."
"I already know what will happen here," her mother said, in a quieter tone. "I already know speaking against it will do nothing. One of my colleagues spoke with me earlier today, she's afraid even to ask questions. Everyone is so angry."
"Ah get that," Andrew said. "Ah know what that feels like. Someone done kicked you and all you want to do is get up and kick back." He folded both arms over his broad chest. "That whole turn t'other cheek business never did much take hold in this here country."
Cynthia sighed.
Kerry took a swallow of her Mojito, glad of the warmth of Dar's fingers around hers. From the corner of her eye she could see ice cream heading their way, and she could sense the end of the evening coming as well, when she'd walk with Dar across the lobby and take the elevator to her-no their-suite.
Everything was changing around her. The world, her family, her relationships with people--the one constant being the hand holding hers, the steady confidence in Dar's eyes, the knowledge that she would sleep tonight wrapped in the warm comfort of love.
She had no idea what tomorrow would bring. But for tonight, life was doing the best it could and she was glad enough to take what she could get.
"Want my cherry?"
And then again.
KERRY LAY FLAT on her back on the bed, her arms outstretched and her legs hanging off the edge with her bare feet on the floor. She wasn't doing much of anything except listening to Dar prowl around the suite, the faint snickers and sounds of things moving making her smile.
She'd teased Dar, of course, about the suite. Dar had scoffed at her, accusing her of blowing the place out of proportion until she opened the door and stepped back to let her skeptical partner enter.
Dar had, stopping in the lobby and looking around with an honestly startled expression. "Holy crap."
Kerry had merely smirked and strolled past her, securing a piece of chocolate from the waiting basket before heading for the bedroom and the waiting, already turned down, comfortable looking bed leaving her partner to explore their miniature palace. "Tolja."
"Holy crap."
Kerry smiled benignly at the ceiling. She was totally spaced, and totally exhausted. She studied the tiles for a while, then drifted off for a while, then started as a sound at the doorway made her turn her head and lift it up off the surface to look toward the opening. "Uh?"
Dar was in it, leaning casually against the frame, her body now draped in a clean T-shirt and a glass of milk in her hand. "Okay, you're right," her partner said. "You're going to have to bust your ass to beat this one," she said. "It's got three bathrooms. I had an entire shower and didn't make enough noise to wake you up."