‘Jack boy, you have so nailed this,’ John Michael Robertson, Jack to his friends, thought to himself as he finished reading the report on his computer screen for the third time.

A recent graduate ofNorthernCaliforniaState, the twenty-one year old was one of six interns vying for a permanent position atCornwall, Dunmoreand Frost, and while his performance the last few months had made him the front runner, one other candidate, Rebecca Blackwood, had turned in equally impressive work. It was all going to come down to their reports on the Red Star Electronics merger, scheduled to be presented to their department head come Monday morning.

‘There is no way that Rebecca’s report is going to be better than this,’ Jack further thought as he leaned back in his chair, reaching down to pick up the beer he’d bought when he’d run out to grab dinner. With a great sense of satisfaction, he popped off the top and took a drink from the cold bottle.

Drinking in the office was generally frowned upon, especially if you were as far down in the pecking order as an intern was, and normally Jack wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so. But it was after eight on a Friday night, with even the cleaning crews having come and gone, and there really wasn’t anyone around to object. This was the fifth night this week that Jack had worked late, not that he was getting paid for the extra hours, so he felt justified in bending the rules to have a little celebration.

‘I can’t wait to see Rebecca’s face when I win the competition,’ Jack thought as he savored the pleasing brew.

The two interns had taken a dislike to each other almost from day one, possibly because each recognized the other as their only real competition. The best the other four participants in the program could hope for was third place, and all that got you was a few lines on your resume when you applied for your next position. In fact, the same also held true for second place.

With the stakes that high, there was little Jack wouldn’t do to make sure that, when all was said and done, his name was on the top of the list. It was beyond his thinking that Rebecca might not feel the same way. It wasn’t enough to make sure that you won, you also had to make sure everyone else lost – even if you had to help them do so by sabotaging their work. It was a belief that had been reinforced by the events of the last few months.

The way the internship worked, in addition to the regular duties that were designed to give you real world business experience, each intern was given an assignment to write an evaluation of a proposed business deal and was then judged on how closely their report mirrored that of the professionals. To make it more of a competition, two or more of them were given the same assignment.

That had been the case during the first month, when both Jack and Rebecca were given the Northstar Electronics deal, and key elements of Jack’s argument against the proposed acquisition had also turned up in Rebecca’s report – the result being that his presentation appeared far less original than he’d expected it to be. It was possible, he had to admit, that the long haired blonde might have come to the same conclusions on her own – after all, it really wasn’t that complex a deal and they’d both had access to the same information.

But then a month later, on their second assignment, it happened again, and Jack wasn’t that much of a believer in coincidences. That she might be as good at the job as he was, or possibly even better, wasn’t something he was willing to even consider. Somehow, Jack concluded, Rebecca had to be getting a look at his work beforehand and adjusting hers accordingly.

How she was doing it was a mystery, but it was clear to anyone who cared to notice how men in the office went out of their way to be helpful to the curvaceous twenty-two year old. To say nothing of the fact that not a week had gone by without one of them asking Rebecca either out to lunch or for drinks after work. One, or even a few of them, could very well be helping her undermine him.

That an equal number of women in the office had done the same for him never entered his thinking. In his case it would more likely be drinks after work than lunch, and some of the favors done for him would definitely not be found in their job descriptions.

‘Well, however she did it before, she’s not going to be able to do it this time,’ Jack assured himself as he took another long drink from the bottle.

A musical ringtone from his cell phone interrupted that thought and, in order to free his hand to get the phone out of his pocket, Jack put the beer bottle down next to his computer monitor.

“Yo dude, what’s up?” he said after glancing at the caller id.

Intently, he listened to the story his friend felt was so important that it had to be shared immediately. The story was indeed funny, so much that Jack laughed so hard that he hit the edge of his cubicle table, the impact hard enough to topple the beer bottle, spilling the contents across the countertop and through the cable openings to the tower below.

Even as he began to react, reaching outward in a futile attempt to catch the bottle, the air filled with a loud popping sound and the image on his monitor flashed brightly before going totally blank.

“Fuck!” Jack cried out in alarm.

He stared at the dead screen for a few seconds until the sound of his friend’s voice from the phone he had dropped reminded him that he was still on the line.

“Man, I gotta call you back,” Jack quickly said once he picked up the phone and ended the call.

Taking a deep breath, Jack tried to reboot the computer, but none of the power lights came on. He tried it two more times before admitting to himself that the machine was truly dead.

“Okay, now is not the time to panic,” he said out loud to himself. “Machines get toasted all the time,” he added, recalling several that had unexpectedly died during his time at the firm. The important thing was, his report was safe and sound on his personal flash drive.

Slipping the small keychain drive from the usb port, he slid his chair over to the computer of the intern that shared his cubicle and powered it up. Thankfully, he didn’t need a password to boot up any of the computers, just to log onto the server. He waited anxiously while the computer came to life. Once it did, he slid his flash drive into a usb port and waited for it to appear in the directory.

Long seconds passed but nothing happened.

“Oh fuck, no,” Jack said, his words mixed with a groan.

Desperately, he tried the drive in the computer’s other two usb ports, with equal results. There was no denying that the flash drive was also dead.

“Fuck, I am so fucked,” he again said out loud.

Not trusting the other interns any more than he trusted Rebecca, Jack had not backed up his work to anything but his personal drive, which never left his person. Now indeed was the time to panic, as there was no way he could ever reconstruct his report from scratch before Monday. Especially since most of the people he would need to obtain information from were gone for the weekend.

‘There’s got to be something I can do,’ he thought, holding the flash drive and his quickly vanishing future in his hand. ‘Hard drives go bad,’ he recalled, ‘but they can sometimes still get files off them.’

The only problem with that comforting thought was that he didn’t know the first thing about how to even go about trying. The only thing he knew about computers was how to use software related to his work; fixing the damn things was someone else’s job.

Again he glanced at the clock on the wall, noting the time and the slim possibility that any of the IT geeks would still be downstairs. Still, it was worth a try.

The phone rang enough times for him to lose even that slim hope, but then, just as he was about to give up, a voice came on the line.

“Tech support, Martinez,” a female voice said.

Jack quickly explained what had happened, well maybe not exactly what happened. In the version he gave to the woman on the phone, he had no idea why his workstation had suddenly exploded.

“Well, just put a ticket in and someone will take a look at it Monday morning,” the woman said, adding that everyone else was already gone and she was also about to leave.

“Couldn’t you just take quick look at it?” Jack asked. “It might be something really minor, just a quick fix.”

“It doesn’t sound like it,” the woman said, “but I guess I can spare a few minutes to take a look.”

“Thank you,” Jack said, hoping she was wrong.

When Carla Martinez appeared at the doorway of his cubicle ten minutes later, Jack couldn’t say he recognized her. Which was surprising since she was usually on the floor at least twice a day attending to one problem or another. But to anyone who really knew Jack, it was quite understandable. In his world, unless he had to deal with them directly, women over thirty barely registered on his radar.

The five foot one Hispanic woman was definitely over thirty, but hardly looked the forty-two years her company file showed her to be. Short curly brown hair, mixed with a few streaks of grey, framed features that most would describe as pleasant but not beautiful – average being the word most often used. Even her most striking feature, emerald green eyes, was hidden behind black, plastic framed glasses. Slim, but not skinny, Carla had small breasts that, hidden beneath the loosely fitting sleeveless white button-down blouse she wore over black slacks, could easily go unnoticed.

“I’ve got friends waiting for me down at MacDouglas’ Grill, so let’s get this over with,” Carla said as she stepped into the cubicle. “Which terminal is it?”

Jack indicated the one to his left and Carla stepped past him and sat down at the damaged workstation. As she attempted to boot the system, she was already regretting having agreed to come up and take a look at the computer. If she’d recognized the voice, or even the name, on the other end of the phone, she’d already be on the way to MacDouglas’.

It wasn’t that she had anything against Jack personally; in fact, she didn’t think she’d even spoken to him before today, other than a quick introduction a few months back during the intern orientation tours. No, it was his type that had always infuriated her. Six foot tall with a muscular frame and devilish good looks, Jack was one of those guys who always expected everything to go his way. She’d heard more than one woman in the office express a desire to know him in a biblical sense. Three of those who’d expressed such sentiments were rumored to have done just that, and Carla knew that in at least one case, it was a lot more than just a rumor.

Not that Carla had anything against sex, or people enjoying each other’s company, even on the job. It was the arrogant sense of entitlement that ticked her off. The belief that they could bed any girl they wanted, whenever they wanted. The frustrating thing was, more often than not that was true.

“Just as I thought, it’s fried,” Carla said after two failed attempts to get the machine to respond. “Put the ticket in and I’ll see that you get a new one on Monday morning.”

“My flash drive was in it when it went,” Jack said, “now I can’t get that to open either.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Carla said as she got up from the chair.

Spotting the half empty bottle of beer off to the side, Carla combined the dampness she’d felt on the table and quickly surmised what had happened. It was an accident she’d once had herself with a can of Coke. Feeling a bit of empathy, and deciding that she really had no reason to judge the kid as harshly as she was doing, Carla told him that she’d mark the incident up to a defective drive so that he wouldn’t get in trouble for having the beer in the office.

“But what about my files?” Jack asked, ignoring the fact that she was offering to cover for him.

“You’ll just have to download back-up copies from the company server,” Carla said matter of factly, as she reached into her bag to get her phone so she could text her friends that she was finally on her way.

“I ... I didn’t back them up to the server,” Jack said.

“You didn’t what?” Carla asked, sure she had heard him wrong.

“I said I didn’t back them up to the server,” he repeated. “I didn’t want anyone else to see what I was working on.”

“Are you an idiot?” Carla asked in disbelief. “Aside from the fact that it’s company policy, the whole point of backing up your files to the server is in case of mishaps like this.”

“I figured the flash drive would be enough,” Jack said, his tone reflecting a feeling of who did she think she was. After all, she was just a lowly computer tech and he had a degree from a prestigious college.

“Well, obviously it wasn’t,” Carla replied sarcastically, not missing the inflection in his voice.

“What good did it do to call you if you can’t get my files back?” Jack lashed out, preferring to snap at her rather than face his own complicity in the disaster. “Now what the fuck do I do?”

Carla thought about it a few moments, her natural desire to help only slightly winning out over her now rapidly fading feeling of sympathy.

“Were you at least logged onto the server?” Carla asked, considering a possibility.

“I don’t remember,” Jack replied, “but what difference would that make? I told you I didn’t save it there.”

“Well, if you’re luckier than you ought to be, I might still be able to save your sorry ass,” Carla said, reminding herself she should still try and be professional. “What’s the tag number on your PC?”

“Tag number?” Jack repeated, confusion in his voice.

“Never mind, I’ll look without it,” Carla said as she pushed him aside and sat down at the still working computer on the other side of the cubicle.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

Her fingers moved too fast for Jack to follow as she logged onto the server and put in a series of requests. A number of documents flashed across the screen, until she finally stopped at one in particular. Then she slid her chair back to give him a good look at it.

“Omigod!” he exclaimed as he looked on the screen.

“Look familiar?” Carla asked, a smile on her face, his reaction already giving her an answer.

“That’s my report,” Jack said in disbelief. “How did you...”

“One of the projects I’ve been working on is a program that automatically copies everything done on any computer connected to the server, whether you back it up or not,” Carla explained. “It’s still in the beta stage but I took the chance that your PC might’ve been one of the test platforms, and luckily it was.”

“You mean you’ve been copying everything I do?” Jack asked.

“Well, not me personally,” Carla replied. “The software does it automatically. I’m not the only one working on the test; that’s why I wasn’t sure if your terminal was part of the test program.”

“That’s how that fucking bitch got my work,” Jack snapped unexpectedly, oblivious to the here and now for a moment as he added two and two together and come up Rebecca.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but a thank you might have been nice,” Carla said, her own tone now a bit perturbed.

“Rebecca Blackwood, do you know her?” he asked, a bit of accusation in the question.

“Only in the sense that I met her on the same orientation tour that I met you,” Carla replied, remembering that the young woman had the same sense of entitlement she’d observed in Jack.

“Yeah, right,” Jack said.

“Look, kid, whatever your problem is, don’t take it out on me,” Carla replied, her patience now nearing its end.

“She probably has copies of this report already too,” Jack said. “I’ve seen how the women in this place go out of the way to make the female interns look better than the guys.”

‘That’s it,’ Carla thought, anger now replacing professionalism. ‘This kid needs to be taken down a peg or two.’

Swinging back around toward the computer, she quickly typed in a few keystrokes and then backed away.

“What did you do?” Jack asked, seeing that the screen was now once again blank. “Did you delete it?”

“No, it’s still there,” Carla said as she got up out of the chair. “Take a look.”

Jack sat down in the now vacant seat and tried to bring his file back up, only to have the cover sheet appear as a ghostly image with a request to enter his password. Automatically, he typed it in, only to have a new window pop up saying invalid password.

“What’s the password?” he asked, turning his head back towards Carla.

Carla just shrugged, making a gesture with her hands as if she didn’t know.

Jack thought about it for a few moments, then tried the password his supervisor had given him to access more restrictive files. The result, unfortunately, was the same.

“Come on, I don’t think this is funny,” Jack said, frustration replacing anger.

“That’s a pity cause I think it’s very funny,” Carla replied, a snide grin on her face.

“What’s the password?” Jack repeated.

“Say the secret word and win a hundred dollars,” Carla quipped.

“What?” Jack said in a confused tone.

‘I guess that reference is too far before even my time,’ Carla thought, not imagining that a guy like Jack spent any time watching old game shows on cable.

“I’ll tell you what,” she offered. “I know you’re supposed to be a bright boy, but I’ll give you a little help. You can find it in that little book over there.”

Jack turned his head in the direction she indicated, only to find a four inch thick, hard cover dictionary sitting on the counter. Staring at the book for a few long seconds, he finally got it.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” Jack said, trying to sound contrite.

“Why do I find that so hard to believe?” Carla asked, her arms now crossed across her chest.

“No, really, I am sorry,” Jack repeated, pausing a moment before adding, “May I have the password, please?”

Carla stood silent for a few moments, appearing to be considering the sincerity of his apology. He was tempted to add to it, but was uncertain if that would help or hinder his case.

“Idiot,” she simply said, the tone of her voice and a slight shaking of her head telling Jack that she hadn’t bought his penitent act.

As was his wont to do, Jack reacted instantly and angrily. A response that took Carla completely by surprise.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Jack called out, his faux contrition turning back to anger. “You know, when Mrs. Swan hears about this on Monday morning, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had you fired.”

“What?” Carla said, unable to believe he was going there.

“That’s right, you’re fucking around with the wrong guy here,” Jack added, pumped up so much by his sense of self-importance that he actually believed what he was saying.

In response to which, Carla could only laugh, which threw Jack totally off balance.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” he said.

“I don’t think you would,” Carla replied, a small chuckle still in her voice, “but I think the fact that you actually believe what you just said is simply hilarious.”

That was definitely not what Jack wanted to hear.

“I want you to think about it for a moment,” she said in a now fully serious tone. “I’m a senior IT rep who was doing this job back when you still needed someone to change your dirty diapers. You, well, you’re just some snotty-nosed kid right out of college who, although he might think he’s God’s gift to women among other things, won’t even be remembered a week after you walk out that door.”

Carla paused for a second to give him a moment to think about that; then she made it a bit more personal.

“Brenda Swan might find you charming as all hell, but how much weight do you think that is going to carry when you try and explain how, not only did you spill a beer, that you shouldn’t have had in the office in the first place, on the computer, but you also violated company protocols on data retention. Not too bright, honey. In fact, hardly the sort of thing she expected from the boy wonder she was pushing for them to hire permanently. She’s going to change her mind so fast that your head is going to spin.”

Jack’s face dropped. That certainly wasn’t the response he had expected, but it was one that, now that he really thought about it, he had to admit was definitely true.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Carla said as she picked up her bag, “I have things to do and places to go, as they say.”

She only made it as far as the door to the hallway when Jack called after her. The now believable change in his voice caused her to pause.

“Please, I am really sorry,” he said. “You’re right, I can be an idiot at times, I know that. You offered to save my ass when you really had no reason to and I should’ve been more appreciative.”

“And...” Carla said after a moment’s silence.

“And what?” Jack asked.

“And that’s it?” she replied. “You add a bit of real sincerity and I’m supposed to just bail out your ass?”

Actually, that was pretty much what Jack thought. After all, it always worked in the past. It was quickly becoming obvious that this time that wasn’t going to be the case.

“What else do you want?” Jack asked, wondering, as he did so, how much his arrogance had raised the price of her help.

That was a question Carla didn’t really have an answer for. Five minutes ago, a genuine apology and a thank you would’ve probably satisfied her, but suddenly that didn’t seem enough. And the thing of it was, she didn’t know why that had changed.

No, that wasn’t true, she had to admit to herself, she knew the reason why. It had been Jack’s invocation of Brenda’s name that had set her off, prompting her own remark about his thinking himself God’s gift to women. The combination had gotten her thinking about matters that really weren’t public knowledge – well, at least not to most of the public.

Brenda Swan was the office manager responsible for the intern program, and the one woman Carla knew for certain had enjoyed Jack’s company after hours. A decade older than the twenty-something secretaries about whom there had also been rumors, the large breasted blonde was also that much younger than the darker haired Hispanic woman. It was her much commented on assets that drew the attention of most men in the office – including Jack.

Despite the difference in their ages and positions in the company, the two women were, if not close friends, sometime drinking buddies, and it had been on one of those nights that Carla had directly asked her younger companion if the rumor about her and Jack was true.

A long pause followed, after which Brenda’s only reply was to point out that if such a thing were true, admitting to it would likely get her in a great deal of trouble, since she was technically his supervisor. Trying another track, Carla then asked her to simply deny it if it wasn’t true. In response to that, the blonde had simply turned her attention back to her drink, saying not a word. The knowing smile on her face, however, spoke volumes, both as to the truth of the rumor and as a post-orgasmic critique.

“So what is it that you want?” Jack repeated, snapping Carla out of her musings.

“What are you willing to give?” Carla heard herself say.

“Well, aside from money, which I really don’t have much of, you can have anything you want,” Jack replied, desperation clear in his tone.

Carla gave the appearance of thinking the offer over, even though she already knew what she wanted. The question was, was she really the kind of person who would take advantage of a situation like this? Almost a long minute passed, and then she decided, why the hell not.

“You know, I’m actually a very good friend of Brenda’s, we go back quite a ways,” Carla said, stretching the truth as she watched for a reaction on Jack’s face. “In fact, there’s little we don’t share with each other.”

It took a few moments’ thought for Jack to connect the dots, but the expression on his face slowly began to change. There was no doubt in his mind exactly what it was that Carla wanted in exchange for the password.

“Well?” Carla asked, her arms again crossed as she waited for his response.

Ten long seconds passed, then thirty, as Jack considered his options and what he had to lose. Finally, as the second hand on the wall clock completed three fourths of its journey around the dial, Carla shrugged her shoulders, turned and again headed for the door.

She got no further than she had before when Jack urgently called out his agreement, deciding how bad could it be? A quick in and out and his problem would be a thing of the past.

Carla excused herself for a moment to text her friends that she wasn’t going to be able to make it at all. An unexpected opportunity had arisen, she told them, impressing herself with her witticism. As she read their response, she took one last moment to think about what she was doing.

She was after all, a married woman, as the ring on her finger made clear. That that fact wouldn’t bother Jack was evident, because Brenda wore a gold band as well. But in Carla’s case at least, it didn’t have the weight it once carried.

Two and a half years before, Carla had come home unexpectedly to find her husband David, a high school teacher who also taught remedial courses at a local community college, “in flagrante delicto“ with one of his college students. The tryst had, by his own admission, not been the first.

The revelation of David’s infidelities might have led to divorce court, but that hadn’t happened. The reasons why had been several, but the primary one had been their dual realization that, somewhere over the years since they’d gone lustily to their conjugal bed, they’d transitioned from bedmates to roommates. So with a sort of don’t ask, don’t tell arrangement in place, they simply went on as before.

Then, about a year later, Carla had attended a technical symposium inChicagowhere she’d run into Michael Reyes, an old friend from her high school days. His own marriage had ended in divorce, and the two of them had gotten together for drinks one night and, without much forethought, found themselves in the same bed come morning.

Afterwards, Carla had chalked it up to remembered adolescent fantasies and an overindulgence in alcohol. Pleasant as the night had been, she couldn’t imagine a set of circumstances where it might be repeated. That had been true right up until about five minutes ago.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Carla asked, stepping back into the cubicle to find Jack undoing his pants.

“I thought you wanted to...” he started to say, confusion on his face.

“Not here!” Carla cut him off. “Did you think I was just going to drop my panties and bend over the desk?”

From the reaction on his face, it was obvious to Carla that he had expected just that. Evidently, at least one of his conquests hadn’t been all that particular as to the where and how of it.

She slowly shook her head in disbelief, unable to understand how anyone could do something like that. If she was going to do this, she promised herself, she was going to make the most of it – and on her terms.

“Let’s make this perfectly clear,” Carla quickly said. “I don’t know what any of the other ladies were willing to settle for, but it takes more than a little “wham bam” to put a smile on my face. If you’re going to ring my bell, you’re going to have to work at it.”

Carla’s declaration left Jack a bit stunned. He definitely wasn’t used to having a woman call the shots, at least not in this aspect of his life. Still, if he wanted that password, it wasn’t like he had a lot of choice in the matter.

“Okay,” Jack acknowledged as he tightened the buckle on his pants. “Where do we go?”

‘That’s a good question,’ Carla thought, so wrapped up in the excitement of the moment that she hadn’t really thought that part out yet.

Home was out of the question. Aside from the fact that she really couldn’t envision calling David and asking him to go out to the movies or something, it was also at least a thirty minute drive. To say nothing of having to get the kid back here afterwards. There were of course a few hotels in the area, but she doubted the kid could afford one and she certainly wasn’t going to pay for it, however indirectly. Then, in a flash, it came to her.

“Follow me,” she told Jack, coupling the instruction with a motion of her hand.

Jack followed Carla down the hall to what he recognized as the office belonging to Brenda Swan. Since it was the only one on the floor with any real privacy, he assumed that was where Carla had in mind. Especially since he knew from past experience that it also held a couch.

That notion passed, however, when Carla told him to wait outside while, using the key Brenda had once given her, ostensibly to use that couch on late nights, she disappeared into the office for just a minute. Once she reemerged, he noticed a different key in her hand, one with a six inch block of wood attached to it.

Again motioning for him to follow, Carla retraced their steps back down the hall until they reached the elevators. There they took a car up two floors to an area of the company Jack had only seen during his orientation tour. He felt more than a bit nervous being on the executive level, but since Carla seemed to know exactly where she was going he just went with it.