As if in cosmic synchronicity with that, her cell phone rang. Kerry fumbled it out and flipped it open, keeping her eyes on the road. "Kerry Stuart."
"Kerry, it's Eleanor."
Kerry exhaled silently. "What's up?" she asked. "I'm a little tied up at the moment."
"Yeah, me too," Eleanor replied. "Listen, aside from everyone that comes through here calling Jose every name in the book, I've got that damn CNN reporter here. Someone told him our customers were up in arms."
"Is he aware there's a power outage?" Kerry said, dodging a car stopped in the roadway. "One that isn't ILS's fault?"
"Sure," she said. "But his point is, we made a big deal about service. So now that there's a problem, where's our service? We charge a premium to make sure customers don't go down, so..."
Kerry sighed. "That's exactly the point I just made to our Bellsouth manager here," she said. "We pay a premium to make sure our customers don't go down. But the fact is, they screwed up, and we're down, so now I'm out here headed to Home Depot to find a way to fix it."
Eleanor sighed. "So I guess you can't talk to him?"
"Not right now," Kerry said. "When I get back to the office, I can."
"Okay," Eleanor sounded mollified. "Hope you have a good story for him. Ker. This guy's a skeptic."
"Yeah. Okay," Kerry muttered. "Talk to you later." She hung up the phone, and shook her head. "Jesus."
A clog of traffic at an intersection forced her to stop, and she rested her forearms on her steering wheel as the crowd sorted itself out. A queasy roll of her stomach reminded her she hadn't stopped to have dinner, and though the last thing she felt like doing was eating she knew she was asking for trouble if she didn't.
She already had a stress headache. With a sigh, she let the brake up a little and crept forward, one hand fishing in her utility well until she found a bit of cellophane. Pulling the power bar out, she used her teeth to rip it open, and took a bite without taking her eyes off the road.
It wasn't satisfying, but it was banana nut, and it took the edge off. Kerry chewed at it as she got through the dark intersection, only having to honk four or five times to keep other cars from plowing into her SUV's dark blue sides. "Bah...bah...hey! You jerk! Watch it!"
A Mustang squirted past her in a blare of horns.
Kerry felt her heart hammering in her chest as she got past the intersection, heading toward the nearby hardware store. She got into the parking lot without further incident and headed into the store, regretfully trading the cool leather interior of her car for the heat outside.
The Home Depot was also running on generators, and it was clammy inside. Kerry found it hard to breathe, between the sawdust and the smell of generator oil, but she continued on, glancing down the aisles until she found the central air supply row. She paused in front of the compressed ducting and paused, realizing suddenly she had no idea how much to get.
"Jesus." Kerry slapped herself on the side of the head, unable to believe the stupidity of not measuring the distance first. "I should have had Dar just come back. I can't handle this."
But Dar wasn't there, so after a moment of mentally kicking herself Kerry leaned against the steel shelving and closed her eyes, trying to picture the unfamiliar confines of the telephone building. "Okay." She sighed. "How many Dar's can fit with arms outstretched between the truck and the switch, Kerry. C'mon. Think."
Dar was the easiest thing she could picture, and she knew her partner's outstretched arms were just over six feet across. Mentally, she positioned that tall, lanky frame, imagining her at the truck, then at the door, then inside, then across the aisle and around the corner, just Dar after Dar after Dar, until she was smiling and she had her answer. "Mm...ten Dar's. Lucky me."
With seventy-five feet of ducting to be safe, and four rolls of tape, Kerry loaded up her wagon and then checked her cell phone. It was stubbornly silent, so she pushed the cart over to the electrical section, and started browsing the different devices herself.
What would she need? The urge to call Dar and ask almost overtook her, but Kerry firmly closed her hand away from her cell phone and concentrated on the big boxes lining the shelves. Cables? They had those. Diesel? Mark had stopped for that too. Kerry's eyes roamed over the choices until it fell on a dust-covered box on the bottom shelf labeled GAC Load Control Systems, a lonely looking item, one of its kind.
Crouching down, she tugged the box forward, releasing a cloud of ancient dust that nearly bowled her over. Stifling a sneeze, she peered at the lettering on the box, trying to make the technical terms fit concepts she was already familiar with. "Hm. Load balancing between two or more generators." She let her hands rest on the box. "Well, I guess that's what we're doing." With a grunt, she lifted the item and put it on the cart with the rest, going to the front and hauling the flatbed after in a sweaty, dusty pony-like fashion. She was standing at the counter handing over her credit card when three or four men rushed in, dashing past the entrance and heading for the same aisle she just came out of.
Kerry turned back to the cashier as she was presented with a slip to sign, giving the exhausted looking clerk behind the desk an understanding smile. "Long day."
"Honey, you ain't kidding." The woman handed her card back.
"Damn it, they had one this afternoon." The men came back, obviously frustrated. "Jesus, those damn generators won't do us a lick of good if we can't connect 'em all in series and keep the power up...hey!" He stopped, staring at Kerry's cart. "She got one! She got it!"
Hey! Kerry echoed in mildly amazed silence. I guessed right! Whoa! "That's right. Excuse me, gentlemen." She pocketed her card and started to push her flatbed past them. "Things to do, power to generate, you know how it is."
"Damn! Hey, can we buy that off you? Pay you double for it!" The man in the lead caught up with her. "C'mon, lady...I really need that!"
"No thanks. Sorry. So do I." Kerry steered toward her car with a definite purpose.
"You even know what it is?" the man yelled in frustration.
Kerry stopped, turned and looked at him, one hand on her hip.
"Yeah, yeah, okay." The man waved a hand in disgust at her, shaking his head. "Five minutes too late."
"That's right." Kerry made a shooing motion at him. "Go find another Home Depot. Scoot." A rumble sounded over head, and she glanced up, dismayed to see storm clouds gathering. "Oh, great. Just what I need." She gave the cart a shove and headed for the Lexus. "Maybe I should have gotten a tent."
The thunder rumbled again, as though she was being laughed at.
DAR'S CELL PHONE rang as she entered the hotel lobby, and she found a quiet corner to drop into a leather chair and answer it. "Yeah?"
"Dar!" Alastair's voice belted through the phone. "Good grief, woman! Where are you!"
"New York," Dar answered. "Saving one of our client's asses. Why?"
"Do you know what's going on down in Florida? Dar! We've got half the network down!" Alastair said. "I've got twenty customers on hold on my damn phone screaming their heads off!"
The silent anchors of CNN faced Dar from the bar's big television, the outline of a darkened Miami prominent in the background. "We're page one on CNN. Of course I know what's going on, Alastair," she snapped. "Kerry's handling it."
"What?" her boss almost squealed. "Dar! This is serious!"
"And I'm 2,000 miles away!" Dar yelled back, only in a soft tone, since three men at the bar had turned around to look at her. "What would you like me to do about it? Jesus, calm down!"
"Calm down." Alastair fumed. "I have an international board meeting in two hours, in case you forgot, Dar. One where I have to explain all the calls I've been getting from every big name account we have in the US."