“Yes.”
They got up and went into the first floor bedroom, where they undressed in companionable silence, and then eased into the water bed.
The phone rang.
Dar sighed, and reached over, picking up the receiver. “Hello?” She said, then paused. “This is Dar Roberts.”
“Uuuuuggghh.” Kerry eased over and snuggled up next to her, listening to the voice issuing from the telephone. “That doesn't sound good.”
Dar moved the phone closer to her. “Go on.”
“Okay, Ms. Roberts? Look, I know it's late, and I”m sorry, but they cut all this stuff over to the new place yesterday and we're having all kinds of problems with it. I'm getting chewed alive.”
The man's voice sounded aggravated and upset. “It's not fair, you know? They just told me to deal with it.”
“Who told you that?” Dar asked, gently.
“Night supervisor in ops, in Miami.” The man responded. “I”m sorry, I'm Jack Bueno. I'm kinda new. I forgot to introduce myself.” He added. “I know the chain of command and all that but I”m running out of things to tell these customers so I figured I'd put my cojones on the line and see if I could get some help.”
“So you want me to help you?” Dar asked, as Kerry rolled off in the other direction and got out of bed, a mild, bemused expression on her face. “For technical problems?”
“Ma'am.” Bueno said. “I don't mean to be rude or anything, but your name's all over the base configs of everything in this center. I hope that's not because someone has your login.”
Dar chuckled. “No, it's not.” She rolled out of the bed herself. “All right, hang on, and let me get some lights on here and go into my office. See what I can do to get things sorted out for you.”
“Thank you.” Bueno's voice sounded utterly relieved. “I'm real sorry to get you out of bed. I just didn't know what else to do.”
“You get points for doing it.” Dar pulled a shirt over her head and trudged from the bedroom into her office, finding the lights already on, and smelling coffee on gust of air coming across the living room. “Matter of fact, I'm sorry you had to call me. Disappoints me like you would not believe.”
“Yes ma'am, I get that.”
“Call me Dar. It's after midnight.” Dar sat down and flicked on her monitor. “By the way, welcome to ILS.”
Kerry rested her head on her hand, as she scribbled notes on a light purple notepad with a dark purple pen. It was four AM, and she'd been recording changes her harassed partner had been making in the new data center's networking. “Want more coffee, hon?”
“I want a shotgun and a concrete block construction wall.” Dar growled, making Kerry smile in pure reaction. “I am so pissed.”
“I know.” Kerry reached over and patted her arm. “How about a chocolate milkshake instead of coffee?” She watched Dar's profile, as it's tension eased and one brow rose, reading the positive reaction with no trouble at all. “Be right back.”
She put the pen down and got up, walking around behind Dar and giving her a brief hug and a kiss on the top of her head before she retreated to the kitchen with a sleepy Chino ambling after her.
Dar had every right to be pissed. Kerry considered that, as she got out the required ingredients for a milkshake. In reality, she herself should be in the trenches, getting this sorted out but she knew getting in Dar's way and trying to get between her and the staff would just end up counterproductive for both of them.
She'd learned that the hard way. Four am was no time to be getting into an argument with Dar about their respective areas of responsibility seeing that her boss had spent the last four hours untangling the configuration Kerry's staff had implemented.
Just wasn't any point in it. Dar wasn't mad at her, and she really didn't want that to change.
She had assigned the commissioning of the center out to her infrastructure teams. Apparently, there had been a screw up, or – to be fair, a design choice that had been made that had really not worked out. Dar was in the middle of doing multiple alterations of the systems to fix that, but the changes were extensive, and they impacted already upset customers and she was reserving herself to handle those phone calls to keep them off both the operations and her lover's back.
Of course they could have called in the groups in question and forced them to do the work to make the systems right. From a business and learning perspective, that might have been a better choice. But at midnight, faced with a call from a customer facing director in trouble Dar had been in no mood for a coaching moment.
It was, what it was. She scooped out some chocolate malt and scattered it over the balls of chocolate ice cream, then added milk to the blender before she started it mixing. “Want a cookie, Chi?” She fished a treat from the doggy jar for the patiently waiting dog, and offered it to her. “It's weird, huh? All dark outside and us up and doing stuff.”
Chino crunched the treat, scattering tiny crumbs on the tile floor. She sniffed after them, and licked them up, as Kerry poured out two thick milkshakes and debated adding whipped cream.
Sometimes Dar liked whipped cream, sometimes she didn't, saying it blocked access to the ice cream.
“What the hell.” She added the cream and headed back to Dar's office, coming in to find her partner studying her screen, pecking away at her keyboard in absorbed attention.
She set the shakes down and resumed her seat, picking up her pen again. “Okay, so now what did you do what that second core, Dar?”
“Made it virtual across the two chassis.” Dar muttered. “Why in the hell wouldn't they do that, Kerry? Not only is it our standard it's industry standard.”
“Don't know, hon. I will ask at the staff meeting I called first thing Monday.” Kerry scribbled down a note. “Is it getting any better?”
“Meh.”
Kerry tapped her pen on the pad. “Would it help for us to go there?”
“Peh.”
“Okay.” Kerry ticked off the items she had to do and wrote a few more notes. “Do you need to add equipment in there? So I can get that prepped?”
Dar scowled. “Let me get back to you on that.” She made another change and reviewed the results. “Holy shit what a hairball.”
“Ms. Roberts?” Jack came back on the conference bridge. “Whatever you did about five minutes ago really helped Interbank. They're running normal metrics now.”
“Oh good.” Kerry drew a small line, and made a note on one of the checklist items. “Good to hear, Jack.”
“Thanks Ms. Stuart. Sorry you had to get into this too.” Jack said, mournfully. “Getting Ms. Roberts up was bad enough.”
Kerry studied the phone, then looked at her partner. “Does he not know?” She mouthed, inclining the pen towards her own chest, then at Dar.
Dar pressed the mute button. “He's new.” She said, apparently reading her partner's mind. “I don't think they go over our relationship in new employee orientation. Yet.”
Kerry chuckled, and shook her head. She reached over to release the mute. “No problem, Jack. Let's just get this squared away so our customers are happy.” She said. “We can worry about who and when and why later.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Jack agreed instantly. “That's what my big problem was. I don't mind having arguments about doing it this way, or doing it that way, but when it starts to impact the people who depend on us we can't be sitting here arguing with each other.”
“Yup.” Dar was busy typing. “That's the whole point all right.”
“I was surprised.” Jack said, after a brief pause. “I had heard ILS wasn't like that. One reason I took the data center director job here.”