The I.T. Girl (13 page)

I burst out laughing at Ellis’ discomfort. ‘Sorry,’ I said covering
my mouth.

‘I feel like giving you a verbal warning right now,’ Felix continued.

‘A verbal warning would be preceded by a disciplinary hearing,’
Ellis said quickly. ‘You would get written notice of the hearing and you would be
entitled to bring a witness.’

I laughed more, curling in the chair.

‘What the fuck are you laughing at?’

‘I don’t feel the direction this meeting is taking is helpful.’
Ellis interrupted again, waving his hands in the air.
‘If we could
just take that step back.’

‘I think you think you’re a student here.
Partying.
Not doing your hours.’

‘That’s an outrageous accusation and I refuse to defend myself
against it.’ Anger came out of nowhere like a puff of wind.

‘We’re not trying to accuse you,
Orla
,’
Ellis said. ‘We just need to examine if there is a problem here and move on.’

‘There’s no problem. How do we move on?’ I said, still looking
at Felix.

Ellis glanced nervously at Felix and back to me. ‘We’re not going
to take disciplinary action at this time but we do think it would be good for you
to take the Ethics course again. Just so that you know what the company expects
of you and so that we feel we’ve given you all the information you need. If there
are further incidents of this nature, you could face a disciplinary hearing which
could result in a verbal or in a written warning.’

The Ethics course twice. That was another mark against me.

‘Felix, is there anything more you’d like to add at this time?’

‘I want to see a major change in your attitude.’

‘Are we done?’ I asked, brazenly.

‘Get out of my office.’

I sat at my desk reeling. Felix must want me out. Why else would
you treat someone like that? I held my shaking hand over the keyboard and hid it
again. Did he know I went to HR last week? How long had he known about the
Tradeq
party?

Sam stuck his head over the wall of my cube.

‘Jesus.’ I slapped my forehead. ‘You frightened the life out
of me.’

‘Sorry. Are you okay?’

‘Fine.’
My hand went to my throat while
the other went to the keyboard, as if I was busy.

‘I did your code review for Germany.’

‘Oh,’ I said lightly. I checked the website, to find his review.

Sam Lock

Code review complete

It wasn’t enough. ‘Would you mind updating with more detail?
Saying what you’ve looked at. What you think the risk level might be.’

‘Oh, sure... look, I saw you with Felix.’ His voice dropped.
’Is everything okay?’

‘Everything’s fine.’

‘I mean, if he’s giving you a hard time you should go to HR about
it.’

‘It’s fine Sam, really.’

‘Stern is a bully,’ he continued. ‘He’ll pick on someone if he
thinks he can.’

‘It’s fine, okay?’ My fingers spread in front of me like I was
pushing him back. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t really want to talk about Felix Stern
right now.’

Sam shook his head. ‘I wish I could do something to help.’

‘Oh, look!’ My voice broke. ‘I said I’m fine.’ The last thing
I needed was his sympathy. I wanted to shake it off like a stifling coat. I buried
my head in my hands, hiding from his surprised face until I heard him walk away.

I fell off a cliff and woke up with a jolt.

‘Fuck,’ I said, touching my face. My phone was ringing. I leaned
over the couch to pick it up. ‘
Columbus
’
read the name over the dancing phone symbol.

‘I’m outside,’ he said when I answered.

I buzzed him in and sat back on my couch, hugging my knees beneath
the rug. The T.V. was on but the sound was off. I must have turned it down at some
point. An empty wine bottle lay on the floor. It was too late to hide it. I could
hear him coming in.

He stood in the middle of the living room looking around. ‘You’ve
done a lot to the place,’ he said.

‘I guess.’

‘I think something’s wrong with your phone.’ His eyes settled
on me.

‘Oh,’ I stared at my knees. I wondered if he could tell I'd been
crying.

‘Look, we have to talk. I’m tired of these games. There’s obviously
something going on with you.’

‘There’s nothing going on. Everything’s fine.’

‘Well, you don’t seem fine. How’s work?’

I fixed my chin on my knees and closed my eyes.

‘You know, a lot of people have a hard time working for
CouperDaye
,’ he pleaded. ‘You know how I feel about working
there. You shouldn’t feel bad if –’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘You know what? You don’t have to be in control of everything
all the time. It’s okay to ask for help!’

‘I don’t need any help!’ What was he going to do? Ride into
CouperDaye
on a white horse and be outraged on my behalf?

‘God,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘I’m not suggesting you
need
help.’ He pinched the bridge of his
nose.

The T.V. flashed us silently with a black and white movie. The
woman on screen turned away from the man in disgust. But he said something beseeching
and her hand fluttered against her forehead until she collapsed into his arms. Was
that the only way to make up, I wondered.

‘Jesus, what is that smell?’ He went towards the kitchen.

‘
Er
, hello?’ I hopped off the couch.

‘How long has this pizza been here?’ He raised the half-empty
pizza box on the floor.

‘Is none of your business,’ I spat.

‘Fine.
Have all the space you want.’
He dropped the box and bolted for the door. ‘But this is a tacky way to end it.’

‘I’m not trying to end it,’ I shouted as the door rattled shut.

In the morning I carefully broke my position and stretched out
the creaks in my body. My apartment looked like an abandoned makeover. Shiny new
walls and lumps of packaged furniture waiting to be cut open. I curled back up on
the couch and switched on the T.V.
A helplessness
unfolded
around me like a heavy blanket and I sulked beneath its weight.

Another Monday morning meeting came around and
BelOpt
still wasn’t working. ‘Everything’s going fine. Just
finishing up,’ I lied. I wasn’t about to expose something that could be used against
me now. Besides, I couldn’t stomach Boris’ fit in front of everyone.

‘Good, good, everyone more or less on track then. Glad to hear
it. Because, need I remind you, Jerome Ross is arriving tomorrow for the opening
of the CPR Data Centre. So, we want to be ship-shape and shiny.’

‘They’re going ahead with the opening?’ I said, ‘I thought they
had loads of problems. Why aren’t they postponing?’

‘Did I mention JR is coming over for the ceremony?’ Boris laughed,
‘Failure is not an option. That goes for project rollouts before the Data Centre
move as well. Cameron and
Orla
you both have deadlines
this week so do let me know if you have any issues A.S.A.P.
Orla
,
I assume you’re aware of the Data Centre schedule?’

‘Why should I be aware of it?’

‘Because you’re signed up.
You’re supervising
the move of our feeds over the weekend and you’re doing a five-minute snap interview
with JR.
CPR – What you can do for your company.
’

‘Fuck!’ I shouted, making everyone jump.

‘
Er
, the schedule will be on the CPR
website. You should probably familiarise yourself with it,’ Boris said.

The doors of the lift closed in my face, its occupants staring
over my head. I jabbed the button again and waited for a lift to the next floor.
There were stairs but they were locked behind an automatic fire door and chasing
up a request with Desktop was not the kind of emergency that would make it open.

I stepped out of the lifts to a luminous sign that read Desktop.

‘Hi, I’m
Orla
.’ I approached the row
of desks recognising Gordon. ‘We’ve spoken before, when I was working on
AsiaCap
?’

‘Hi,’ he said, straightening in his chair. His hair stood straight
up and looked wet with gel.

‘I raised an investigation request to your group last week. Can
you tell me if someone has taken a look at it please?’

‘When did you raise it?’

‘Last week.’

‘Well it’s probably going to be allocated to someone shortly.’
His phone rang and he picked it up.

‘Excuse me.’ I insisted.

‘Call you back,’ he said hanging up the phone.

‘I need to know when it will be looked at. I’m rolling out my
feed this week and the data is not displaying correctly. I provided your team
with a spec weeks
ago.’

‘What’s your project? I’m not sure I care for your tone.’

‘Belgium Options.’

He typed some keys, looked at his screen and brought up a list.
‘It’s not on the high priority list and we’re extremely busy, but we will get to
it as soon as we can.’

‘But it’s a high priority for me. You can’t just leave it.’ His
row of team mates began to turn around. ‘Look, this is just not good enough. On
my team if someone provides you with a spec then you make sure you get the job done.’

‘Hey. You can’t just come over here and talk to me like that.
Okay, this is happening. I’m going to ask you to leave.’

‘Unbelievable.
Muppets.’
I blurted and
walked away knowing I had gone too far.

He’ll probably make a complaint, I thought. Guys like that are
only good at one thing: covering their arse. I blinked at my screen. My strategy
XML file was open next to another project with similar functionality. I was trying
to compare layout to see if there were any differences but I might as well have
been trying to spot errors in a foreign language.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ I slapped my hand on the desk and then squeezed
it into a fist.

‘Easy, tiger,’ Paul from Quants leaned over my cube.

‘Oh!
Hey, Paul.
Sorry.’ My voice automatically
dropped to match his. He always spoke quietly and deliberately as if he wanted you
to come into his world. An aura deepened by his unkempt beard and wide sideburns,
too scraggly for his young face.

‘You okay?’ His hazel eyes crinkled.

 
‘Yeah, sorry, how are
you?’

‘Good, good. I have some news for you. Maybe this isn’t a good
time,’ he chuckled, ‘but you asked me a few months ago about transfers to our team?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, we’ll be advertising a position internally from next week.
Thought I’d give you the heads up.’

‘That’s great, thanks, Paul. I’ll look it up.’ I nodded.

‘Cool. Yeah, think you might like it with us. I know you’re keen
to get into algorithmic programming. Obviously there’s a training period as well.
You wouldn’t just be expected to hit the ground running.’

‘It’s exactly what I’m looking for.’ I nodded again.

‘So, how’s it going here?
Stressful?’

‘You know, busy, as always.’

‘Sure. Well, I’ll leave you to it.
Er
...
you know, we’re not allowed to poach so we never had this conversation.’

‘What conversation?’ I chuckled with him until he was gone and
then let my smile drop. I couldn’t move teams while I was on a revision programme.
It was one of the rules. I’d totally forgotten about approaching Paul. It was towards
the end of METX. With METX and
AsiaCap
under my belt,
I thought I would be in a good position to move into Quants. I stood up slowly and
went in to the toilets and locked myself into a cubicle. They’ve
won,
I thought and promptly broke my record of having never cried
in a work place. I was stuck here doing an impossible job I no longer wanted, and
if they wanted me out sooner or later I’d give them the ammunition they needed.
My forehead fell against the cold hand of the white wall and I stayed there until
I felt drained. In the mirror over the sinks, mascara streamed
down
my cheeks like railway tracks. I splashed cold water on
my face and dabbed with a paper towel, pressing it into my eyes. I looked at the
face again, puffy and red and unfolded the towel covered in mascara and tears. It
was printed with the CPR logo. More like RIP.

Chapter Nine

Jerome Ross seemed smaller in real life. For a man with a large
reputation, his arrival happened quietly. He appeared on our floor with his head
stuck in a video camera and went around saying ‘Hi, how you doing?’ to people he
wanted to film. Into his late forties, he was bald on top with neat white hair in
a strip, around the back of his head and a round, well-worn face. Shiny cufflinks
flashed as he worked and a wide-collar shirt hinted at his flamboyant side. The
cause of his reputation was obvious when he occasionally shouted, ‘I love that.
Keep going’, as he caught something interesting for his documentary. Sometimes there’d
be a smacking sound that meant a high-five moment. Most people intended to avoid
him by taking different routes on and off the R&D floor but some were unlucky,
attracting his attention and some, like me, were signed up for a formal interview.

Desktop closed my query. They were correctly processing everything
they received. The Exchange confirmed their sample was correct. The problem, still
unsolved, was mine.

I carried a sick feeling in my stomach on the way to a Buddy
meeting with Boris. He wasn’t alone when I arrived outside the room. Sam was in
there too, obviously shouting and Boris was raising his hands in defence. I waited,
clutching my folder as Sam flew open the door and stormed out passed me. Boris came
out after him. He stopped dead and glanced around the floor. Then he looked at me
and went back inside.