Talking to Phoebe on Monday morning:
"So what did you tell your father? About staying over, I mean."
"I just said I'd been feeling sad about Yaya, so I was going to catch up with Jill and Elen during the day, then you and I were going to have a girls' night out and take my mind off things."
"Uh-huh."
"Hey, it's true, as far as it goes. So, Yvonne, what do you want to do? Hit the movies and see what's showing?"
"What time do you have to be home?"
"I don't. Told Dad I might be staying at your place. I need to be up at six for my flight, but that's it."
"Well, then. I can probably finish work at five... let's try to meet up in town for dinner at six, then catch a movie. Or movie first and dinner after, whichever. And my place after that."
"It's a date."
But our carefully-laid plans were derailed at 4:55 when Janelle called on me, looking more than a little upset. "Yvonne, I need help with a document."
"Sure, what's the problem?"
The problem, as it turned out, was our tender for the Redmond Barry deal. Peter had drawn up our bid, all eighty pages of legalese, and had gone out for the night with his phone switched off leaving instructions for Janelle to tidy up the bid for a final draft.
"But I can't get it to open. It just sits there."
"Let's have a look."
She took me into Peter's office, unlocked his computer and showed me. Just as she'd said, when she tried to open the document, nothing happened. At least, nothing useful: I could hear the telltale sounds of the disk drive spinning like a berserk hamster, but the word-processor just sat there stubbornly refusing to load. More than that, the whole computer was sluggish; when I moved the mouse and tried to click on anything, it took a couple of seconds just to respond.
"Okay, I think there's something wrong with this computer. I'll see to that later, but for now let's go use your PC, pull it up from the network drive." But even as I suggested it, I started to smell trouble: Janelle wasn't stupid, and if she hadn't tried that already, there was probably a reason why not.
"It's not on the network drive. Peter said it was safer to keep it on his own C drive, so nobody else could access it who wasn't supposed to."
"Oh, f-for goodness' sakes..." I've never had a problem working with people who know nothing about computers; it's the ones who think they're experts who drive me nuts.
One thing my predecessor did right was setting up a network drive. Everybody gets their own personal folder — nobody else can access it without the right password — and it gets backed up every night. Everything work-related is supposed to go there, so we can recover it in an emergency.
From what Janelle was telling me, Peter had saved the tender on the hard drive of his office PC. Which meant that if that drive got corrupted or he accidentally overwrote the document, there was no way to recover it. But apparently Peter, being the sort of control freak who spends too much of his time looking over his shoulder for enemy action, had decided that this was a small price to pay in order to protect it from our rivals.
"Okay, I'll see what I can do. Just let me make a phone call first."
Janelle backed off and stood in the corner, radiating fretfulness, while I phoned Phoebe. Her phone went straight to voicemail — probably on the train, in an tunnel — so I left a message. "Hey sweetie, just have to fix something at work, I might be a bit late. I'll let you know when I'm done." And I hung up.
Janelle came back and stood beside the desk. "Your boyfriend? Er, girlfriend?"
So the gossip had made it that far. "Yep."
"Know the feeling. I told mine he needs to be home by six-thirty, we've got a dinner date tonight. He's going to sulk if he's home by then and I'm not."
"Well, we'll see." I hit Control-Alt-Delete and muttered at the computer: "Tell me what you're doing."
Quite a lot, it seemed, but none of it useful. The CPU was running flat out, there were dozens of unfamiliar-looking processes running, and the word-processor was still spinning its wheels. All in all, not a healthy-looking machine.
"I take it you tried rebooting already."
"Yep. No luck."
I tried rebooting anyway, and soon regretted it. The machine took a good ten minutes just to boot up, and it didn't behave any better than last time around. "Janelle, when do you need this by?"
"Tender deadline's six pm tomorrow. I don't think there's a lot to do on it, but Peter and RJ will want to check it over before they submit it."
"Well."
Shit fuck bugger damn poo.
"I'll see what I can do, but this isn't going to be quick. You might as well go to dinner. Give me your phone number so I can let you know how I go. If I can get you the document by tomorrow morning, is that enough?"
"I think so. Are you... what about your girlfriend?"
"I'll sort something out." Although I wasn't sure what. My job description included out-of-hours support work 'as needed', and this certainly qualified. Besides, Janelle was looking miserable and stressed already, and she was likely to be Peter's scapegoat if this fell apart. But to let Phoebe down, after she'd changed her tickets just for me...
"Look, no promises, but I'll see what I can do. Go have fun, but keep your phone handy so I can call if I need to."
"Oh, thank you, Yvonne. You're a lifesaver."
After she was gone, I spent five minutes trying to clear my head and figure out a plan of action before I called Phoebe. I half-hoped she wouldn't pick up so I wouldn't have to tell her in person, but she answered almost immediately.
"Hey, just got your message."
"Hey sweetie. Look, this is a real mess here..."
I explained the situation as best I could, telling her it could take several hours to fix, telling her how rotten I felt about it, bracing for her disappointment.
"So, when were you planning on having dinner?"
"I don't — look, you're going to have to eat without me. I'm really sorry."
"Uh-huh.
Or
, if you tell me what you like, I could bring it to you."
"What?"
"Takeout. But you'll have to pay me back, I'm nearly broke."
I felt like I'd just stepped into a lift shaft and somehow found it stuffed full of marshmallows. "You're on. I owe you bigtime for this."
