Chapter 50: Conversations

May 11, 1987, Chicago, Illinois

"Steve?" Kaitlin said, coming to my door.

"Yes?" I said, wary as always.

"I wanted to thank you for the chance to do sales."

"You're welcome. Cindi said that the first week went well. Keep up the good work!"

"You know, I could properly thank you if you let me," she said in a very sexy voice.

I sighed.

"Kaitlin, sit down, please."

She sat in the chair next to my desk.

"Look," I continued. "Ignoring for a moment the fact that I'm married, there's still a big issue — you work for NIKA. I can't get involved with any of the staff. It would present too many potential problems."

"But what about Elyse? She's having your baby, and she works here!"

"That's true. We've had a relationship since we were sixteen. And we've had our agreement to have kids together since before I graduated from college. It's totally different."

"But I'd never complain to anyone! If I don't complain, you can't get in trouble!"

"Kaitlin, that's not the point. I can't sleep with my employees. And even if that wasn't an issue, why in the world would you want to sleep with a married man?"

"For fun, silly!" she giggled. "If you have two wives, and Elyse, and a son by another girl, you must be lots and lots of fun. I like to have fun! It's not like I'm asking you to be my boyfriend or anything! And I promise never to tell anyone."

"Let's keep it to a working relationship, please," I said. "It's best for all of us."

She frowned slightly, "OK, I guess. But remember, I'm here if you want me!"

"OK. Go on, get back to work."

She winked and gave me a stunning smile, and then went back to the reception desk. Ten minutes later, she was back.

"Yes? Now what?" I asked tersely.

"Wow! Don't bite my head off! I just came to tell you that you had a phone call."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have used that tone of voice. Who's on the phone?"

"A gentleman named Bruce Grady. He says he's a CPA."

"Never heard of him, but which line?"

"Two."

"Thanks. And I am sorry about biting your head off."

"As long as I don't do that to you! THAT would be painful!" she smirked.

I chuckled, "Yes, it would!"

She smiled as I picked up the phone, and then she turned and left.

"Hi, this is Steve Adams," I said.

"My name is Bruce Grady. I'm a friend of Jamie Ferguson. He gave me your name and number."

"What can I do for you, Mr. Grady?"

"I have a problem. We hired someone to install a Novell network for us, and it's not working. Jamie says that your company installed the one at his firm, and that you're an authorized Novell dealer."

"The first part is true, but I can't claim to be an authorized dealer just yet, though we're working on it. There is a lot of paperwork and some official training courses that my staff has to go through first. It'll happen, but we're not official at this point. On the other hand, we have dozens of clients for whom we've installed Novell and we've been successful every time."

"You come highly recommended by Jamie. I'm wondering if you would come and take a look and tell us what it would take to get this working right. We have two servers, and about twenty computers to connect to them."

This was a personal referral, so I figured that I needed to go to the first meeting and that I'd take Zeke with me.

"Of course. I'll bring our guy who does most of our Novell installations and a good part of the support. When would be good for you?"

"Tomorrow or Thursday," he said.

"Let me check Zeke's calendar. Hold for a moment, please."

I pressed the hold button and went to see Kaitlin to check Zeke's schedule. He was free on Tuesday morning, so I asked her to write in the appointment, and page him to let him know because the calendar showed that he wasn't going to be in the office for the rest of the day, then went back to my desk.

"Tomorrow morning at 10:30am will work for us. Is that good for you?"

"It is. See you then."

I thanked him and hung up. I saw Julia walk in and went to tell her about the call. I also let her know that I'd be going out with Zeke because it was a personal referral. Because it was almost time for the staff meeting, we both went out to the main office to wait for everyone else to arrive. The meeting was short, and I was happy to get back to work.

May 12, 1987, Chicago, Illinois

I did a double-take when Zeke and I stepped off the elevator on the 32nd floor of the Sears Tower and saw the receptionist.

"Steve? Steve Adams?" she said with a surprised expression.

"Hi, Stacey! You're the last person I expected to see sitting at the reception desk!"

"I moved to Chicago about a year ago. I needed to get away from Cincinnati," she said, and I detected a bit of fear in her voice.

Zeke was looking a bit confused.

"Zeke, this is Stacey Nelson. Stacey, this is Zeke Woods. I knew Stacey back in Milford, Ohio. We both went to Milford High, though we were mostly in different circles because she was a couple of years ahead of me."

"I'll let Mr. Grady know that you're here. He just told me to expect a Mr. Adams from NIKA Consulting. I had no idea that it might be you!"

She picked up the phone and dialed a number, announced us, and said that Mr. Grady would be right out. Stacey was looking very good, but I wondered why she was working as a receptionist when she'd gone to the University of Cincinnati. I didn't have time to ask before Bruce Grady arrived in the lobby. We shook hands, and he led us to a small room where two servers sat on a desk.

"These are the servers. None of the PCs can access them, and none of our printers are working except when they are connected directly to PCs. We mostly use Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, and right now we're using floppy disks to share files or print them and it's a real inconvenience."

"OK. If you give us about thirty minutes, we should have an idea of what's going on," I said.

He nodded and told us that we could go anywhere in the office that we needed to. Zeke sat down and started checking the Novell servers and immediately discovered configuration errors. There was no data on the servers, so he said he thought we should just blow away the install and start over. We went to look at the workstations and discovered that the drivers were not properly installed.

"Do you think the ThinNet wiring is OK?" I asked.

"Let me put my tester on a couple of workstation cables and check," Zeke said.

He attached one unit of his tester to the BNC connector in the wall, then walked to the server room and connected the other end and immediately got a green light.

"Well, that's a good sign. It's hard to screw up coax, though they could have had the cables mislabeled. At least they DID label them. Thank heaven for small favors!"

"So, what do you think?" I asked.

"Two days. One to reinstall the servers, one to fix the drivers on the PCs. It's simple. I know the mistakes they made, and it's what happens when you don't know what you're doing. Mario showed me how to do this and it's not hard."

"Cool. Let's go tell Mr. Grady."

"One sec, I want to say something privately. I don't know why they have two servers. For a setup with 20 PCs, one is enough, and both servers have plenty of disk storage. One of them has a tape drive for backups."

"So you think that the other company over-configured this?" I asked.

"I suspect so. And I would be willing to bet that they charged an arm and a leg for all of this. I hope Mr. Grady has taken whatever steps he can to get some of his money back. Should we tell him?"

"Good question. The issue is really between him and the other company. I guess the question is about the second server. Let's go talk to him about everything."

We went to Bruce Grady's office and explained the situation to him. I explained our rates for Novell installation and our support fees, and he asked about Zeke's schedule. They worked out that Zeke would work on their network on Monday and Tuesday of the following week.

"We do have one question about the second server," I said. "Zeke isn't sure why you have it."

"The other company said it was necessary. Something about a standard configuration."

"Sir, it's completely unnecessary at this point," Zeke said. "Maybe if your CPA firm grew bigger, or you exceed the capacity of the disks that we could put in the server, then you might need it. But it's serious overkill. You should try to return it."

"It was pretty damned expensive," Mr. Grady said.

"Novell isn't cheap," I said. "But I'm willing to bet we could give you a better price on a second server when it's time to get it. Also, if that's a couple of years from now, you'll be able to get a better computer for about the same price. This one will just sit here unused for years."

"Thanks. I think I'll have my attorney look over the contract again and see what I can do. I appreciate your honesty."

"You're welcome," I said. "Nobody benefits if we screw our customers. The only thing we have going for us is our reputation."

"Jamie said that you were the best. I can see why."

We shook hands, and he walked us back to the reception area.

"I'm heading over to the SOB," Zeke said. "I'll grab lunch on the way."

I chuckled, "Isn't it the Amoco Building?"

"Yeah, but come on! SOB is perfect! And seriously, you can't change the name of an iconic building like the Standard Oil Building. Would you change the name of the Sears Tower?"

"Hell no!"

"Exactly!"

"See you back at the office," I said.

We shook hands, and he went on his way.

"Steve?" Stacey said.

I walked back to the reception desk.

"I have my lunch break in ten minutes. Would you like to have lunch and catch up?"

I had let Beverly know that I might not be back for lunch, so getting Jesse wasn't an issue — Beverly would take him to the park. And I was really curious as to what happened that Stacey had ended up in Chicago.

"Sure," I said. "There's a deli on Wacker. Will that work?"

"There's an Italian place on Wacker, Venice Café, that's really good for lunch. I'd rather go there."

"Sure, Italian is fine. Should I wait here?"

"Just grab a seat. When one of the secretaries comes to cover reception, we can go."

I sat down in one of the comfortable chairs to wait, and about ten minutes later, someone came to relieve Stacey. She grabbed her purse and a sweater, because the temperature outside was in the mid 50s, and we took the elevator down to street level, then walked three blocks to the restaurant. After reviewing the options on the posted menu, I decided on a calzone, and got in line to order. Stacey opted for pasta and got in a different line. When we both had our food, we carried it to a table and sat down. I chuckled when I heard the background music — the theme to The Godfather.

"Seriously? The Godfather?"

Stacey laughed, "They play that all the time. I figured that you would get a kick out of it!"

"So, what are you doing in Chicago? The last I heard was that you were going to the University of Cincinnati. That was about six years ago."

"Well, I was putting myself through college part-time. I finished last year with a degree in English and a minor in secondary education. I was going to be a teacher. I had an agreement that I could leave the business when I graduated. But then this new kid, Anthony, took over and threatened to tell any school board where I applied about what I'd been doing if I didn't keep working. So I called a friend here, packed up and moved to Chicago that day. I applied for my teaching license, but I needed a job right away. Mr. Grady was nice enough to hire me, even though he knew I'd leave as soon as I got a full-time job teaching."

Anthony! That kid was a menace. If it wasn't for Joyce and her legitimate businesses, I'd have found a way to turn that kid in and save a whole lot of people a whole lot of grief. I half expected him to make another play to get me to work for him. I hadn't heard from him or any of his thugs in quite some time, and that was a good thing. And thinking of that, and having Stacey in front of me, made me wonder how Alyson was doing.

"Have you found a job?" I asked.

"Yes. I'll be teaching in Plainfield. I share an apartment in Naperville with my friend, and it's an easy drive from there. Right now, I take the Metra train into the city every day. I see you're still into computers. I take it you went to college and got a good job right out of school?"

"I graduated from IIT on the South Side, and NIKA is my company. I started it with a few friends when we graduated."

"Wow! You had a company back in High School, too, didn't you?"

"I did. But I sold that one."

"Do you live in the city?" she asked.

"Down in Hyde Park. Well, technically, it's in Kenwood, but close enough."

"That's a really nice area. You must be doing quite well. Are you renting?"

"No, I own my house."

"You really ARE doing quite well! I see a wedding ring on your left hand, too. What's with the ring on the right?"

"It's also a wedding ring of a different sort. I have two wives," I smirked.

Stacey laughed, "You used to tell tall tales about all the girls you were with and the things you did with them. I wondered if there might be some truth to it, despite the obvious exaggeration. But two wives? Just how gullible do you think I am?"

"Everything that I've ever told you was true. I think the last time I saw you was the Summer of '81, so the tally was probably around 40," I said with a smirk. "Now it's around 80. And as for having two wives, I most certainly do. Obviously, I couldn't legally marry both of them, but they're my wives, nonetheless."

"You're joking!" she said, but then she cocked her head, "No, you're not! Wow. Any kids?"

"One, a son, Jesse, who's one. And another one that's due in a few weeks."

"Wow! You got both your wives pregnant that quickly?"

I chuckled, "No. Jesse was born to my friend Jennifer, who's in a committed relationship with another girl. My second son will be born to my friend Elyse."

Stacey laughed hard, "OK. OK. You had me going there for a minute. Nice one. Come on, tell me the truth."

"Ma'am, that is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," I said with a huge grin.