The Trade (11 page)

After a quiet dinner at a six table
ristorante in the Village they cabbed back to Jay's place. Tonia
stood beside her car and gave Jay a long kiss, running her hands
gently up and down his back. He responded the way a young man will,
with heat washing over him in feverish waves.

"I can't see you again until Saturday,” she
said.

"Saturday's good for me,” Jay answered though
he ached to ask why and to beg her to see him tomorrow and the next
day. He wondered why she said “can't”. "Saturday's fine,” he
repeated, trying to control his voice.

"What do you want to do? Go for a run?”
Tonia's eyes widened in excitement and acceptance of the idea.

"That sounds great and I know just the place.
Meet me in the long term parking just outside the front gate to
Islip McArthur airport on Long Island at 5 am next Saturday? Okay?
Wait right by the gate so I don’t have to drive in to get you."

"Where?" he asked incredulously.

"Islip. It's a small airport about 50 miles
out on Long Island. You might even want to stay over at a hotel
nearby if you can't get up that early,” she teased, reminding him
of their last morning date when she'd had to haul his butt out of
bed.

"Don't be late. Not even a minute late. We'll
have somewhere to go and we'll have to be there exactly on time so
don't be late!" she repeated. One last kiss and she was in her
convertible, top up, and gone into the Sunday night blackness.

Back in his apartment, Jay put on the Sunday
night baseball and ironed his shirts and called his mother.

"Yes she's nice mom.”

(pause)

"No she's not Jewish mom.”

(pause)

"Yes she's done college mom.”

(pause)

"No she's not older mom.”

"Yes I like her Mom.”

"No I don't know that Mom.”

"Yes I'm going to see her again Mom.”

"Next Saturday Mom.”

"We're going running.”

"We went to a baseball game.”

"No. It was her idea. She really likes it,
she knows the players and everything.”

"No she's not a tomboy.”

"Mom, mom, MOM.”

"Relax. Inhale. Take a breath. That's better.
Now one last question okay?"

"NO! And it's none of your business if we did
anyway,” Jay said firmly. There was a pause while his mother
thought up another of the questions that would form her
harangue.

"She's in sales so she travels a lot. Listen.
I gotta go ok?"

"No she's not here, I'm ironing. Why should I
pay a dollar and a quarter a shirt at the laundry when I can do
them myself right?"

"Yes.”

"No.”

"Yes.”

"No.”

"Yes.”

"Okay. I'll call you later this week.
Good-bye.”

Monday and Tuesday came and went. Jay worked
12 hours a day and jogged more miles than usual. His life was
attaining the level of focus it required to remain stable and keep
him from his bouts of childhood depression. Wednesday afternoon
arrived and brought Bill Beck with it. Jay had some news for
him.

"Bill there's something in this system that
doesn't make any sense. There's a data sink here that I can't
figure out.”

"A data sink?"

"Yeah. There's a flow of data into a place
where it is never used and from whence it never flows. A data sink.
I can't tell if there's supposed to be a backup tape drive there or
what? Probably someone just forgot to take it out. It could be
slowing down the whole system significantly while it waits to do
these meaningless writes. And, wherever the repository is it’s got
to be filling up and causing a whole bunch of other problems."

Bill leaned in close to look at the diagrams.
After a few minutes he picked up Jay's phone, dialed and machine
gunned some orders.

"Come on,” Bill ordered.

"Where are we going?"

"To talk to some programmers.”

"Oh,” Jay said. He suddenly realized that he
and Bill were going to talk to the people who were likely
responsible for the data sink. Twenty minutes later they were in a
conference room on the 8th floor at the head of a hastily convened
meeting. A dozen casually dressed programmers and two managers in
three piece suits were seated around the table.

"Jay. Why don't you start us off,” Bill
ordered. The room hushed. Most of the people focused on Jay. One of
the managers feigned indifference.

"Alright Bill. I've been reviewing these
design documents and...”

One of the 'suits' snapped his head up from
his notes.

"You've what? He's been what?” Shooting to
his feet, the surly looking manager spoke directly to Bill. "Who's
this guy to be reviewing our design documents and code? Who the
hell do you think you are?"

"Sit down Hal,” Bill ordered. His voice left
no doubt who had seniority in the room. "He is Dr. Jay Calloway. At
my direction he has put fresh eyes on this long-standing problem.
Go on Jay.”

"Well. I was reviewing these documents and
this code and I was wondering about this data sink?” Programmers
looked at each other, towards their papers, at their feet. No-one
answered.

"Hal. Let's go for a walk. You guys figure
this out,” Bill indicated to the programmers and Jay. Half an hour
later, when Bill and the now calmer looking Hal returned, Jay and
the programmers had indeed figured it out. It had been an honest
mistake, one anybody could have made under the pressure the firm
put on its programmers. It was supposed to have been a portal to an
offline tape backup storage system that had been replaced by a high
speed RAID system. But the tape writes had never been removed and
apparently a virtual tape system had been patched in. A quick look
at the virtual tape system showed it had been at capacity for over
a month and had been thrashing to try to make room for new
writes.

Bill and Jay walked back to their offices.
"What happened?" Bill asked.

"Somebody forgot to take it out. That's all,”
Jay answered. He was speaking protectively of the programmers. Bill
caught the tone. He knew techno geeks stuck together against
management. It was like an unwritten rule, the code of the
playground, the honor of the programmer. Bill let it go. Jay filed
away for a mental note that Bill only cared about fixing the
problem, not the blame.

On Friday, Bill came back to Jay's office,
scuffling his feet and speaking loudly so as not to sneak up on the
jumpy Jay.

"Yeah Bill. I hear you coming,” Jay called
out. The routine was getting to be a running gag around the
office.

"Come with me,” Bill said.

"Where are we going?"

Bill didn't answer. They walked in silence to
the elevators, rode up to the 22nd floor and into a room that
looked like mission control in Houston. Jay's eyes lit up as he
took in all the equipment.

"Where are we?" Jay asked.

"Currency Trading. Your fix went live this
morning. Today's stats are just coming in. Thought you might want
to see the result of your work,” Bill said.

Jay's blood started racing. The two men
positioned themselves behind a bank of monitors. At exactly 4
o'clock a bell sounded and twenty analysts rolled their chairs back
from their video displays.

"Ought to be up in a minute Big Bill,” the
serious looking analyst announced. "Here it comes now. Holy SHIT!
We won 23% more today. For a net gain of, wait, wait, $1,900,000.
Nice work Bill.” The short spectacled man turned and shook hands
with Bill. "This the kid?" he asked.

"Yeah. Jay Calloway.”

"Nice to meet you
Doctor
Calloway.
Doctor Calloway the code doctor.” Jay recognized the Carnegie
technique. "Good work code doctor.”

"Thanks,” Jay answered. Bill led him away
from the busy man. Back to the elevators. They made a stop at the
cafeteria for a diet coke. By the time they got back to Jay's
office, there was a small crowd, including Hal, waiting for
them.

"Twenty three percent. 1.9 million. We heard
already,” Hal said. He shook Jay's hand. "Sorry I jumped on you
kid.”

Dan Landford drifted by. He stared at Jay.
"Nice work Bill,” he said, directing his comments away from Jay, as
though he had had nothing to do with the day's coup. Bill and Dan
walked down the hall, talking quietly.

From somewhere, champagne and beer appeared
and the late workday gathering turned into an impromptu party. Jay,
remembering his plans to get to the hotel beside the Islip airport
tonight, only sipped at his diet Coke. After a few minutes Bill
returned and quieted the small crowd.

"Jay. You've set a tough pace to keep up. But
we like it. Good work.” Bill reached into his pocket and pulled out
a wad of bills. He stripped off ten $100 bills and counted them
into Jay's hand. "Take Monday off with pay and have a nice time
this weekend.” There were whistles and cheers all round. The
whistles and applause kept increasing as Bill kept stripping off
bills and distributing them, along with Monday off, to Jay’s
co-workers.

As the booze ran out the party waned even as
people tried to figure out what to do with their newly acquired
long weekend. Finally Jay was able to shut everything down and get
home. By the time he got to the hotel in Islip, it was 9:30. Jay
was exhausted from both the excitement of the day and from fighting
the Long Island getaway traffic. He phoned the front desk for a
wakeup call, set his watch and the room's alarm clock for an hour
before his date with Tonia and lay down to sleep. Minutes later he
was out. Dreaming of his big day at the office and what he hoped
would be a good day with Tonia.

"He made the company 1.9 million dollars
today,” the one man said.

"He's cost us nearly that much in security
and surveillance so far,” another replied. They'd been debating the
merits of the new kid for days.

“
Yeah. But you know that
1.9 million from today? That’s going to be around 1.9 million EVERY
day… So keep a close eye on him. We need him. And if we’re going to
pull of what we want to pull off, we're going to need him and the
others.”

"Yes sir.”

"How are things with him and you know
who?"

"About to get a lot more intimate.”

"Be sure of it.”

Chapter

At exactly five am Tonia Taggert pulled up to
where Jay Calloway stood shivering in the dark summer morning. Jay
clambered into her BMW.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Patience," was all she said.

The road from Islip McArthur airport went
west for a short bit then plunged south, toward the Atlantic Ocean,
passing through ever larger stands of trees that formed into a
park. They drove through the National Forest in the dark. Here they
saw pines and spruce clinging to the sandy soil of Long Island.
Visions of the remote wildness of the Island's yesterdays were all
around them. Miles later the friends emerged from the forest and
burst onto a narrow causeway perched precariously high above the
still, dark waters of the south shore salt water bays. Jay didn't
even know this beauty existed on Long Island. Tonia threw her
windows open and the salt air came rushing in, attacking their
senses. She shook her long blonde hair free from its ties and
breathed deeply of the pure, fresh air. Jay's every sense seemed to
arrive at a new level of awareness.

The road stretched out before them. It seemed
to go off endlessly into the near-dawn. Jay had no idea where they
were headed until they suddenly rumbled over an old steel grated
bridge and dove down off the causeway to a thin sand spit that
seemed to barely rise out of the water. Tonia braked and turned
east. The sky was just beginning to lighten. She parked and got out
of the car. She pulled off her sweat suit and called to Jay who was
just staring at the sky and sand and water.

"Come on,” she urged him. "We can't miss it.”
Tonia started jogging east.

Jay got out of his sweats and set off after
her. The surf lapped gently and deliciously to his right, the rye
grass waved and whisked at the dunes to his left. The plaintiff cry
of an unseen seagull drifted in from somewhere off the ocean.

Jay's heart beat in his ears as they picked
up the pace. He slowly closed the distance between himself and
Tonia. His new level of fitness was evident in his stride. As he
came upon her from behind, he was struck yet again by her
incredible fitness and stunning beauty. Every muscle was toned and
in harmonious proportion with the other.

"Just a few more minutes,” she said. “I grew
up not far from here. My parents had a small house just on the
other side of the bay. I still have it. It’s the only place I can
ever get away, just by myself. I come here once in a while when I
need to be reborn. No-one knows about it.”

Jay knew now that they were running to the
sunrise. A glorious, soul-lifting sunrise it became. Fingers of
salmon reached up to touch the few clouds that clung to the remnant
of the night sky. Ribbons of honey and wheat and gold stretched up
over the horizon and gilded the tops of the gentle ocean swells.
The slow dance from night to morning twirled around the salmon and
gold and insisted on picking up the tempo and rising to a crescendo
of flame and ruby. The runners coasted to a stop, their hands
finding each other's. Their bodies slowly coming together. They
stood and gathered in the growing dawn together, easy friends in
the manifest presence of their creator.

Tonia gently led Jay towards the dunes,
guiding him between the tall grass until they came to a sheltered
quiet spot. She pulled him towards her and gently kissed his lips,
his cheeks, his forehead, his eyes. Jay caressed her face,
returning her kisses, yielding to her soft yet persistent lead.

She pulled him down onto the sand and lay
beside him, continuing to kiss him, to talk gently to him. He felt
as though the glory and passion of the gift of the rising sun were
being revisited on him in this summer sun shower of love. His eyes
closed in complete surrender to the beauty who led him further,
ever further. The intensity of her kisses, and the urgency of her
touches grew. She rolled onto her back and pulled him on top of
her. Their shoes and shirts and shorts dotted the sand around them.
As the sun crested over the eastern horizon, Tonia Taggert lay
naked, pastry dusted with powdery sand beneath the glistening,
gleaming, panting body of Jay Calloway.