Unfashionably Interrupted

Daniel was listening to recordings of thunderstorms and ephemeral music, connected to the womb of nature sounds by the umbilical cable of his headphones, waiting for his happy pill to kick in, when he noticed a motion in his peripheral vision. Like all the cubicles, his was arranged so that he had to sit with his back to the entrance or with his side jammed against the space where the keyboard was supposed to be. The choice was to be startled by visitors or be in pain. He had chosen pain.

The motion turned out to be Vishnu, one of the other inhabitants of the Dungeon. Daniel sighed and removed his headphones, prematurely birthing himself into the harsh fluorescence of reality.

“Hey, Vishnu,” he said. “Nice, uhm, skirt.”

The visitor smiled indulgently. “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, don’t you recognize a kilt when you see one?” For effect, he twirled so the pool of fabric fanned out around him. “It’s a modern fusion of an Irish design with influences of India. This is a traditional Indian pattern,” he explained, “in shades of black and gray. To make it both modern and stylish. See?”

Vishnu smiled and struck a pose. Daniel supposed he could see where Vishnu was coming from. The white shirt with its banded collar seemed vaguely Asian to him. However, no matter how hard he tried, he failed to see how the knee length, black suede boots, with their many straps and buckles derived from either Irish or Indian influences. A jacket of similar material and styling seemed to complete the ensemble.

“Very modern and stylish, Vishnu,” he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. “I don’t know how you come up with these things.”

The visitor squinted his eyes and searched Daniel’s face for a few moments before speaking. “I read, Daniel. You should try it some time.”

Daniel sighed inwardly and tried to think of something to say to sooth his colleague’s easily ruffled sensibilities. Vishnu had been raised in New York City in the eighties by parents originally from India. He had told Daniel that he had been so impressed by the strong personalities of Cher and Madonna in his teen years, that he had changed his legal name to Vishnu—just Vishnu—on his eighteenth birthday. His college years had been spent in a demanding double major in computer science and fashion. Apparently the drama of the New York fashion scene had been enough to send him running for the American heartland, where he had been programming for the last few years. He still seemed to bring some of that New York drama to work, Daniel thought.

“Look, Vishnu, I was just saying,” Daniel began.

Vishnu waved dismissively. “Never mind,” he said. “I came over to ask if you noticed what Carol was wearing in the meeting this morning.” He made an exaggerated effort to determine if anyone was nearby who might be listening. As if anyone would care, Daniel thought.

Leaning further into the cube, he continued in a loud whisper, “I mean that quilted vest, and that skirt, with that enormous floral print.” He feigned shock. “Really, what was she thinking? If a farmer and a librarian had a love child, that is what she would look like.”

Daniel smiled in spite of himself. As much as he hated to be interrupted for Vishnu’s fashion column conversations, he took a bit of delight in the mild assassination of Carol’s wardrobe choices. The woman could be unbearable. In fact, the morning’s spontaneous meeting had been the very thing that had sent Daniel in search of his happy pills.

She had appeared at his cubicle, long hair severely braided, holding her glasses in one hand while squinting at the disorganized paperwork in the other hand. Dressed as she was, with her wiry frame and absent minded countenance, Carol did conjure memories of grade school librarians and farmers.

As the main project manager for the Dungeon’s programmers, she seemed to be propelled by the winds of chaos. If missed deadlines and unhappy customers were the Division’s top priority, Daniel figured Carol Birdhauser was the woman for the job. No one could hamstring a developer in front of the customer like Carol. She would make promises without any understanding of what was possible from a technical standpoint. When deadlines whooshed past, Carol would be the first person to ask pointed questions.

That morning’s meeting had been with the demanding ladies from the Department of Temporary Services. They had a database that was based on technology no one understood any more. It was running on a computer that had been sitting forgotten on top of a file cabinet in a janitor’s closet until a disastrous event involving a wasp and a can of spray disinfectant caused the immediate need for a fleet of hardware specialists to be dispatched. The system was currently limping along but could perish at any moment. Time was of the essence.

In spite of the urgency of the matter, Vishnu and Daniel, the developers assigned to work on the new version of the database and the web application to be attached to it, were constantly being required to attend meetings for other projects. Then there were the meetings about who had to enter what into the project management system. Then there were the meetings about how much time was being spent on administrative tasks, such as e-mail and entering time into the project management system. And meetings about how the Division was being asked to do more with less. The meetings were unceasing drains on the thing Daniel and his peers needed in order to do their job: Time.

During the meeting with the Temporary Services folks, Carol had practically insinuated that developers were overpaid monkeys. When it was mentioned that she herself had scheduled many of the meetings that were causing the delays, she allowed that perhaps monkeys were far too sophisticated for the work that developers had to do.

As if reading his thoughts, Vishnu stepped even further into Daniel’s cube. “And did you see the look on her face when someone said that thing about drunks?,” he whispered.

Daniel smiled again. Someone—he suspected it was Bethany but could not be sure—had wondered aloud what life form it would take to do a drunken project manager’s job. The meeting had ended in a flurry of ruffling paper and swirling floral print. That might have been the highlight of his day.

Vishnu’s next snarky comment brought on uncharacteristic and involuntary laughter. Daniel was briefly aware that the happy pill had kicked in. He rode the chemically induced relaxation of organic pharmacological bliss until he started giggling to himself. Fitting his noise cancelling headphones snugly about his ears, he re-entered the womb of summer storms and forgot entirely about the Indian programmer whose gestures were growing more pronounced and impatient by the moment.