Well, I was going to submit this for the Halloween competition but I didn't get it finished in time. So what the heck, here it is anyhow. Hope you enjoy...
*****
Being on call is the worst. Being on call on Halloween night is worse than the worst. I'd really been looking forward to the work Halloween Party. I'd made sure it wasn't me on call weeks earlier. But then Pat was in a car accident and he was still in hospital. There were only two of us DBA's and that made me on-call support 24/7 until Pat came back. And Halloween coincided with our month-end financial runs. We always had problems with the month-end financials. Crappy data. Poor programming. Forty year old spaghetti code. Half of it undocumented.
I wanted to cry.
I wanted a new job.
But the pay was too good to quit.
Also, one of the reasons I was still sticking around was my immediate boss. The company might have been a pain in the butt but like I said, the pay was good, they paid overtime and an allowance for on-call, the company was growing and my immediate boss, Eric, was a bit of a hunk even if he was on the older side and already married with a daughter almost my age.
I was sure he was interested in me but I might have been biased. I had a crush on him. It made me feel like a teenager at High School, which I knew was just plain silly. But I'd planned to use the Halloween Party to check out just how interested he was. I knew his wife wasn't coming, she hated work parties. Eric had told me that. Anyhow, I was interested enough to make sure my boyfriend had other plans with his buddies for the night of the party. I'd encouraged him to make other plans.
If things with Eric worked out, married or not, my boyfriend would be ex pretty quickly. He was going to be ex pretty soon anyhow, I'd made up my mind on that one. Not that I planned anything permanent with Eric. I wasn't a home- wrecker or anything like that. He was way too old besides. Nope, what I wanted was to satisfy that crush I had and then move on. If it didn't work out, nothing lost. If it did, well, it'd be fun. My friends all told me I was far too serious anyhow, that I needed to get out and get wild now and then. I never had at university. Heck, I was still a virgin for god sakes. Not through conscious choice but just, the right guy had never come along. My boyfriend was definitely NOT the right guy, I was sure of that. Which was why he was going to become ex pretty soon.
So there I was, a couple of nights away from the work Halloween Party, and on call. Shit! I'd spent a lot of time in my head planning for this party. I'd picked my costume long ago as well. Weeks ago. It wasn't wildly original or anything, just another variation on a sexy little cheongsam. When you look like me, five foot six, slender, pretty (if I say so myself) and Chinese with hair that falls half way down my back, a cheongsam is just perfect.
Especially the one I'd bought for the Halloween Party.
To start with, it was black. Black with lots of Chinese flowers in red and gold and silver. Also, it was short. As in, it was the shortest dress I'd ever worn, not quite micro-short, but as close as made no difference and it made my legs, which were already long and slender, look even longer and more slender. Especially when I wore the strappy high-heeled sandals I was going to wear. That little cheongsam also revealed rather more of me than I'd intended when I'd ordered it. The sides were slit up the thighs to my hips, high enough that the sides of my panties showed. I'd tried it with my new thong panties, just a narrow strap across my hips. They didn't show so I guess I was wearing them.
Last of course was the cutout back and front. I hadn't really noticed that little feature when I'd bought the cheongsam. I'd seen the usual high collar and that looked fine. It was a not so insignificant miss, given that most of the back was cut out, along with a good portion of the front. More than enough to reveal my bust.
If I'd had one of course.
Not that I did. Not much of one anyhow. Typical southern Chinese girl, that was me. Slender and flat. "FΔijΔ« chΗng" (as flat as the airport runway) as they say. Not that I worried about that much either.
I was what I was.
The work Halloween Party was always on a Saturday night and it was always at work. The IT Department's financial systems might have been old but the company was doing well and the Big Boss owned it lock, stock and barrel. No shareholders to worry about and say what you will about him, while he was tight with the company's money, he never begrudged paying for work parties and dinners and stuff like that. The dΓ©cor in the cafeteria was something else. Professionally spooky probably summed it up. The cobwebs and giant spiders sent shivers up and down my spine. The rest was just great. And the clouds of dry ice and thousands of black balloons were a nice touch.
I turned up sans boyfriend. Eric turned up sans wife. We hooked up almost immediately, me sipping on a cocktail, using the crutch of alcohol to be a bit more outgoing than I normally was. Eric knocking back the beers. Neither of us even pretended to talk work right from the moment Eric walked over to join me with a "Hi Jessica." He flirted with me. I flirted back as best I could, which wasn't really very good but I tried.
There was that crush thing you see.
Things were going well when my cell chirped. I looked. Damn! It was Operations. When I called them back, it was an abend to one of the big Financial batch jobs. Ops thought it was a data issue. Damn, damn, double damn. Just when Eric was starting to really come on to me. He was listening to me talk. When I ended the call, he shrugged and smiled. "I'll come with you, don't want you up there on your own."
"Thanks." I was grateful for that. Usually I did on-call from home. Coming into the office at night was pretty spooky. I'd done it once or twice, working late, and I hated it. Eric picked up a couple of bottles from the bar. Beer. Then he grabbed a cocktail for me. I gave him a grateful smile as we headed for the door. The big boss noticed us leaving.
"You two skipping on us?"
"Month-end problem," Eric told him. "Jessica's on-call at the moment, don't want her up there on her own so I'm going with her. We'll be back as soon as it's fixed."
"Okay, good luck." He gave me a smile. "Thanks Jessica. I really appreciate all the work you're doing while Pat's off."
Well, that was nice of him, but thanks didn't fix abends due to crappy data and old cobol code that should have been replaced twenty years ago.
I didn't say that though. Neither of us said anything as we rode the elevator down to our floor. It was only when we went to use our passcards to access our floor that I even realized we were holding hands.
When did that happen?
I had no idea but after the door opened Eric took my hand again and I didn't remove it. We walked to my desk, Eric pulled up a chair as I logged on and checked what had happened. It was easy to find and Ops were right. One line of bad data. Crap! Really, I should have paged one of the Business team and have then come in and fix the data through the front-end app. But I'd run into this one before, I knew exactly what the issue was and what needed to be changed. If I called the Business we'd be here for another two or three hours. I explained to Eric.
"Can you fix it?" He looked at me.