I didn’t see Kate again for nearly three weeks. The work package I was expecting landed on my doorstep on the following Tuesday, ten days ahead of schedule, along with demands for it to be completed asap, plus undertakings of a mega-bonus for every day it was finished ahead of time. So, for the next twenty days I worked non-stop, fifteen to eighteen hours a day, and living off caffeine, take-out pizzas, Chop Suey and adrenaline. It was a shit of a lifestyle, but it paid like no other in my line of business. And I was only doing it because I knew that I could semi-retire in three years time, at forty years of age, and do my own thing forever – if I lived that long.
I was near the end, but I had a problem. One piece of code kept crashing the program and I was that spaced out I was having trouble figuring out why. For the first time in days I went out into the back yard and took in some fresh air, walking up and down, thinking of nothing and kicking the weeds, while I let my subconscious deal with the riddle.
“Hi Greg.” I didn’t need to look round to know that Kate, my Princess, was halfway up the tree that overhung the wall that separated our properties. It was a favourite spot of hers when she was a young kid, where she would climb up and call to me to get my attention. But I didn’t really want to turn around and let her see the state I was in. I felt like crap and knew I looked like it too. I was taking three or four showers a day to keep fresh, but I hadn’t shaved in over a week and had huge dark circles under my eyes from lack of sleep. Plus, I had lost several pounds in weight thanks to my long hours and poor diet. Seeing as I wasn’t Mr Universe to start off with, the effect was noticeable. But, eventually, my need to see her overtook all other considerations and I had to turn and face her.
Her shock at seeing me looking like that was apparent, but Kate controlled it well. She took a deep breath; “Greg, I love you…for what it’s worth…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.
“It means everything to me Kate. Believe me, it really does.”
“Have you been avoiding me, because of the other night?”
“No, I’ve been working. Two more days and it’s finished… I’ll call you.”
“You look like hell.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Call me then.”
“I will…” Just then, the probable solution to my coding problem came flooding into my brain – a stupid logic mistake on my part, caused through fatigue! “Kate, I’ve gotta go!”
“Okay, but don’t forget.”
“I promise…!” But I was already on my way back to work.
I had the right answer. Then, to my delight, the rest of the program just fell into place and I was finished by 10.00pm the next day. I sent off an email to my clients to let them know the stage I was at. Then I started the final debugging using their test data. There wasn’t much I could do now for several hours, so I diverted my telephone to my message service and fell into bed. I slept solidly, only getting up to go to the bathroom, drink litres of water, and check that the test programs were going alright. There were only one or two minor glitches, which I fixed very quickly, and then went back to bed.
After nearly two days of almost continuous sleep I surfaced. After restoring the telephone to normal operation and going to the bathroom for a luxurious shave and a long, long hot shower I was beginning to feel human again. But I was as hungry as hell! I was just about to call my favourite pizza man for the biggest Quatro Stagione he could muster when the telephone rang. It was Corinne. “Greg, are you okay? Kate is going frantic with worry. She’s left message after message with your answering service and you’ve never called back. And we haven’t even seen your usual take-out deliveries arriving!”
“Hey look, I’m sorry. I’ve finished the contract and I’ve been asleep for nearly two days. Everything’s fine. Tell Kate for me please.”
It seemed like only seconds after I’d placed my pizza order that there came a loud hammering on my back door. It was Kate, and she looked madder that a cornered dingo! She pushed past me and into the house without saying a word and started going from room to room throwing the windows open to let some air in. “This place is a pigsty, Gregory Monk! Just look at it!”
I had to admit it didn’t look good. It was early summer and I hadn’t needed to wear too many garments while I was working. So the soiled clothing was scattered around the place, wherever I had dropped it when an idea had come into my head. It was mainly T-shirts and underwear, but, nevertheless, there were plenty of them. And there were several Leaning Tower of Pisa columns of used crockery on the kitchen bench and piles of empty cardboard pizza and Chinese take-out boxes stacked in the kitchen corners. The piece de resistance was my office, in reality the master bedroom because it was the biggest room in the house apart from the lounge, with its reefs of discarded working notes crumpled on the floor and dozens of empty Pepsi cans perched on every horizontal surface. The only pristine areas were those around my computers and their associated peripherals. In comparison to the rest of the rooms I used in the house, there were three other bedrooms totally devoid of furniture and two further bathrooms, only my bedroom and bathroom were clean… by male standards, anyway.
