Sweater Weather

Jorge sighed as he watched people scurry between buildings, bundled in drab layers of wool. It was unseasonably warm for January but still cold enough to encourage a sense of purpose in one’s movement.

It had been another long day. The governor had decided to withhold an unprecedented amount of pledged financial support from the Collegium — ostensibly to balance state budgets, but one had to wonder in an election year. An article about the withholding was mysteriously leaked to the campus newspaper on Sunday. The reporting was thorough and insightful when it came to how much damage would be done to services and departments that were straining under nearly a decade of withholdings and cutbacks from the government. The outlook was grim.

Jorge’s phone had been ringing for three days. People were understandably concerned about the status of January promotions. They wanted to know if they should make emergency equipment purchases before accounts were emptied into the general fund. Mostly, though, they were scared about the future. He could not muster the energy to reassure them.

He only had to make it through six more months. Then he would be retired. He could hardly wait.

When the phone rang, he locked it in his desk, locked his office, and strode purposefully toward the elevator. He tried not to look too guilty when he told his assistant he had an urgent meeting with Cindy. It was a half-hearted and useless fiction. She kept his calendar and knew as well as he did that Cindy probably was not in her office. She almost never was.

Cindy could have had a promising career ahead of her. She was well spoken and personable. From the beginning, she had been driven to succeed. It seemed obvious she was aiming to take Jorge’s job when he retired. Then the problems started.

There were complaints from customers about deadlines being missed. Most of the problems seemed to be the unavoidable sort that plagued information technology. Vendors failed to deliver promised features, reassuring everyone those features would be in the next release. Cindy seemed to take it as a personal failing when the delays caused her team to fail. Eventually she began skipping meetings with key customers if projects were behind schedule. Jorge had to step in on more than one occasion to save her from being walked out of the building with her things in a cardboard box.

When he moved her into the Dungeon and put her in charge of the developers, things improved immediately. Things started getting done. Customers were happy. There was once again talk of a shining star in the ranks. He had saved her career by the thinnest of margins.

Gradually, Cindy's attendance became a problem again. She was teaching criminal law courses for another college. Then there were mysterious health issues that had her recuperating for weeks at a time. Rumors were circulating that she was working on a writing project. Whether this project involved movie rights was a subject of great speculation among the film geeks. No one seemed to know where she was going to be at any given time. Without someone to do it for them, the developers had to interact with customers. No one was happy about that.

Jorge abruptly exited his musings on Cindy's failures when he found himself outside her office. Through the open door, he heard her talking to someone. “Come on. You can do this. Just look at the video. That looks fun, right? Just give it a try.” There was music softly playing somewhere. It sounded like bad jazz with a night club beat. It reminded him of porn.

As he stepped into Cindy's office, he was unprepared to see her leaning over a pair of poodles on her desk. She seemed to be trying to focus their attention on the screen of her laptop. There, with almost perfect porn lighting, two chihuahuas were apparently mating. The poodles were dazed, like a couple of deer seeing a truck round the bend thirty feet away.

“Cindy, have you got a minute?”

Her head snapped up so quickly, he thought it was a wonder she did not crack something in her neck. Her eyes were wide with panic as she slammed the laptop closed to stop the video. The cheesy porn music continued to play through the speakers.

“Can it wait, Jorge? I am in the middle of something just now.”

“Sure,” he replied with a smirk. “I will schedule something with you tomorrow.” As he headed back into the land of beige cubicles, he added, “It is just a lawsuit from one of your clients because you built them a website that wasn’t ADA compliant. No big deal, right?”

He was almost out of earshot when he heard her call him back.

“Look, Jorge, things have been stressful lately. If you could just hold this guy’s butt in the air long enough for him to get plugged in, we can talk about whatever you want.”

Jorge never could recall the order of what happened next. The dog bit him. As he pulled his hand away from the angry cloud of fluff, Cindy dodged his flailing limbs. In the process she unbalanced herself, landing heavily on the couch’s Italian leather. Something happened to cause Jorge to fall on top of her, which elicited a stream of profanity from both of them. His watch clasp was hopeless snarled in her expensive looking sweater.

Vic was there almost immediately. There was no emergency too small for his personal attention. “Cindy, are you okay? I heard…”

“Oh my god! You really got it stuck in there, you bastard!” Cindy was yelling at Director Regalado, her legs clamped behind his back. "Hold still, goddammit! You are going to rip it so badly I can never use it again."

Vic averted his eyes from the spectacle. Was he going to have to report this to Human Resources? His gaze landed on the poodles, themselves watching the humans and copulating with abandon. He needed vodka.

The phone rang. Vic was red-faced, making full eye contact with Cindy. “Can I get that for you?”