The Herd(17)

The light from the elevator’s floor indicator flickered, casting dim shadows along the entryway; wind pressed against the windows, and a single hanging pothos plant swayed. I leaned way over in my seat—Eleanor’s door was open a crack. I watched, waiting for movement.

Farther in, something crashed. I let out a clipped scream. Eleanor jetted out of her office, her head whipping back and forth, then spotted me.

“Did you just yell? What’s going on?”

“I heard something. Between a crack and a thud.” I pointed into the darkness of the two adjoining rooms, and she stepped behind the front desk; suddenly all the lights blared on anew, leaving us squinting.

“Maybe something just fell off a bookshelf. Or a window ledge.” She grabbed my arm and strode forward, ignoring my mousy fear.

We searched beneath the bookshelves, behind them, the shelves themselves; all the ledges along the wide glass windows and every table, big and small. Nothing was out of place.

“I bet a bird flew into the window,” she said finally, but she seemed less certain.

“Can we check back there?” I asked.

She frowned at me, opened her mouth to answer, and then our heads snapped toward the entryway: a single phone was ringing, louder and louder.

“Shit.” She clattered off toward the front desk and I dashed after her, my heart thumping.

“What?”

“I forgot he’s coming tonight,” she replied as she reached the front desk and lifted the vintage-looking phone there. “This is Eleanor.”

She listened for a moment, nodding, then said, “Right, the router. Actually”—she looked up—“Katie, the Wi-Fi hasn’t been working for you, right? What’s that?” She leaned away, listening again. “Oh, perfect. I’ll buzz you in.” She replaced the handset and felt for a button under the desk. Then she dropped into the chair there, forgetting, it seemed, the confused and antsy hamster of a woman standing over her.

“Ted’s coming up—did you ever meet him? When you visited us at Harvard?”

“I don’t think so. His name’s familiar though.”

“We’ve been friends since we were born. He’s our handyman. And good with IT stuff too.”

I let out a bark of laughter. “I thought the best man for the job is a woman!”

Her shoulders tensed, and instantly I regretted it.

“There are amazing women in every field of IT, obviously, but I haven’t had the energy to seek out and hire one when Ted is so great. Low-hanging fruit, you know?”

“Low-hanging fruit, huh?” We’d both missed the sough of the elevator doors sweeping open, and now a man stood just outside them, tall and lanky with a baseball cap set at a jaunty angle. He smiled through a thick brown beard. “Tell me how you really feel, Eleanor.”

“Just bragging about my one and only secret male employee!” She trotted over and he pulled her into a big bear hug. So big, in fact, I’d be waggling my eyebrows were she not a married woman.

“She’s referring to my manual labor services, by the way. I’m not an escort.”

“Hey, manual labor’s just a connotation away from hand job,” I blurted out, then blushed hot pink. Shut. The fuck. Up, Katie Bradley.

Eleanor’s brow levitated from puzzled to surprised while Ted burst out laughing—a big, booming guffaw.

“Can I hug you too?” He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me. It felt like hugging an old friend. He smelled like fabric softener and cedar.

“Ted, Katie; Katie, Ted,” Eleanor called. “She’s writing a book about a weird backwoods tech company, and you do weird backwoods tech stuff, so you’ll get along just fine.”

She reiterated the router issue and cheerfully he set about fixing it, murmuring things about firmware and caching and packet overload, which also sounded at least a little dirty. In a dramatic climax, we all gathered around my laptop as I toggled Wi-Fi off and on (please don’t let anything embarrassing be visible on my screen), and then we cheered when CNN.com appeared in my browser.

“Should we get a drink to celebrate?” I asked. Ted said he couldn’t, though he really wished he could, holding my gaze as he answered.

Eleanor checked the time. “I could do a quick drink,” she announced. “Daniel and I have dinner reservations at seven-thirty, but just around the corner. Actually, there’s a bar in the front—let’s go there.”

In the dim bar, Eleanor expertly commandeered two stools. The hook placement under the bar meant I had to straddle my laptop bag, and the chair’s dimensions were a poor fit, the lower dowel too high for my heels. I flopped around as Eleanor sat like a damn queen, smiling from her throne until the bartender approached. She ordered Prosecco and I followed suit, and they arrived in pretty coupe glasses.

“To your triumphant return to New York!” she called. She held my eyes as we clinked glasses, which is of course how you’re supposed to toast, but while meeting her gaze I sloshed bubbly onto her knee.

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” She giggled, snatching napkins from a stack.

“Well, now I’m definitely not getting into the Herd,” I joked.

She looked up from her lap and made sort of an empathy pout. “I’m sorry! I hate that you’re still coming in as a guest. I’ve been so bad about processing paperwork this week—I’ve got that event on Tuesday. You’re coming, right?”