Chapter 3

My phone had been off for less than two hours when I was woken up, not by the phone but by the doorbell. Whoever was out there rang it four times in a row like the building was on fire.

I dragged myself out of bed half-asleep, shoved my feet into my slippers, and opened the door. A delivery guy was standing in the hallway holding up a bag.

"Perry Carver? Got a delivery for you."

"I didn't order anything."

"It's already paid for. Note says 'Perry Carver must sign for it.'"

I took the bag and looked inside. There were two containers of pasta and some soup. There was a message scrawled in the delivery instructions.

"Eat, turn on your phone, and send me the Verant backend password. - Russ."

I stared at it for three seconds, set the bag down on the shelf by the door, walked back to the bedroom, and went back to sleep.

I could not fall asleep. I kept tossing and turning, not because of Russ but because I was hungry. The smell of food had made its way into the bedroom.

I gave up, brought the containers to the table, and ate. The pasta was mediocre and the portions were stingy. Russ was the kind of person who could not even order delivery without being cheap about it.

When I finished I checked the clock. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. I hesitated for a moment but turned my phone back on. It was not because I had gone soft. I just wanted to see how badly they were floundering.

The moment the phone powered up, over 20 messages flooded in. The earliest one from Russ had come in at noon. "Perry, what's the Verant backend password? Urgent."

By 12:15pm he was already prodding. "Hello? You there? Text me back."

The 12:40pm message was longer. "Why's your phone off? Gwen Aldridge at Verant needs the Q2 ad performance data. Just send me the backend password and I'll pull it myself."

At 1:00pm, the irritation had set in. "Perry, what the hell? I ordered you food and you can't even pick up? Ms. Aldridge is breathing down my neck. Are you doing this on purpose?"

By 1:30pm, the tone had shifted entirely. "Perry, look, I know you've got feelings about the retreat thing. I'll explain when I'm back. Admin handled the headcount and I didn't even check. Can we just deal with the work first? Verant is a major account. Don't make this into something it's not."

I almost laughed at that last part. "Don't make this into something it's not." When they had left me off the trip, that was not making it into something, yet the moment I stopped answering my phone, suddenly I was the one being difficult.

Right after that, there was a message from Franklin. "Perry, Russ says he can't reach you? Verant is pressing us. Handle it."

Franklin had even put a period at the end. He never bothered with punctuation when he messaged anyone else. A period from Franklin meant he was already losing patience.

I put the phone down and stood by the window for a while. The sun was blazing white outside and the complex was deserted. Everyone was somewhere else for the holiday.

Six years, yet every single time it was the same story. Whenever Ms. Aldridge at Verant needed something on a holiday, her first call went to Russ, and Russ could never take it.

He was always in a meeting or out entertaining someone, so Ms. Aldridge would call me instead. I would pick up, take care of it, and afterward Russ would send me a "thanks, man."

This time was no different. They were out at Osprey Lake on the water, the client called mid-trip, and the moment Russ realized he could not handle anything himself, his first thought was to look for me.

It was not because he had remembered I existed, but because there was no one left to do the work.

I glanced at my phone again. Russ had just sent a new one. "Perry, just give me the backend password and I'll figure out the rest. Go do your thing or whatever. Deal?"

Figure it out himself? Him? He could not even tell which page in the backend corresponded to which data table.

The last time someone asked him to export a basic report, he sent the client a blank spreadsheet and had the nerve to blame it on a system bug.

I started typing a reply. In six years I had never taken more than three seconds to respond to him. This time I spent a full minute typing, and then I deleted every last word of it. I did not send anything.

I shoved the phone under my pillow and left it there. They had been perfectly happy at Osprey Lake without me, so they could keep right on being happy.

Every piece of it was stored in my head, the Verant passwords, the backend system, the full database, even Ms. Aldridge's personal phone number. And as of right now, my head was officially off the clock. They could figure it out themselves.

I pulled the curtains shut, buried myself under the covers, and this time I actually fell asleep.

I slept like the dead.