Page 27 of Excitable Boy
Chapter Eight
Tuesday morning when Tony arrived at work, he found something on his desk—a cobalt blue glass disk approximately three inches across, hanging from a blue cord. In the center of the blue disk was a white circle, with a light blue one inside that, and a dark blue dot within that at the very center.
He recognized it from seeing them all over in Tarpon Springs and elsewhere, and knew immediately where it’d come from.
He walked out of his office and into the bullpen where the monitor stations were, holding it up as he approached Mike, where he sat at his desk. “Do I thank you for the nazar?” he asked, the evil eye ward hanging from his finger.
Mike grinned and sat back. “Hey, can’t hurt, can it? Maybe you should hang it in your new car.”
Loren had wasted no time telling Jenny the latest bad-luck story, and Mike had giggled at the retelling yesterday when he’d asked Tony for the deets.
Tony sighed and rolled his eyes. “Thanks. I think.” He carried it back into his office and hung it from a push pin on his bulletin board.
He wasn’t superstitious. At all.
But it definitely felt like his mojo was out of whack, and had been especially ever since learning about his ex-wife’s suicide while he was in Denver.
One good thing?
Their crew in Denver was settling into their new jobs. That data center was only being used as a backup, not their primary one right now, until they had run it a few weeks and had a solid burn-in time to reassure Tony it was ready for full production loads.
Besides, the call center portion of the Denver facility wasn’t finished yet.
Darren stopped in his doorway. “So, hey, how are you?”
Tony sat back in his chair, now feeling wary from Darren’s weaselly tone. “I’mnotgiving up my vacation.”
“No, no no no,” Darren quickly said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”
Tony glared at him.
Darren actually swallowed hard. “I need you to go with me to a VP meeting.”
“Why?”
“Because they want to hear from you what happened out in Denver.”
“Why do you look like you think I’m going to choke you for this?”
“Because it’s going to probably take a couple of hours.”
Tony internally grumbled. “That doesn’t sound bad. I mean, it’s going to put me behind—”
“It starts at seven tonight, because two of the VPs are flying in from being out of town.”
Aaaannnnd there it is.
Tony glared at him. “I have to stay here until at least nine tonight after all the shi-stuff I went through?”
“I know. Sorry. I’mreallysorry, Tony.”
“You’re fricking buying me dinner. I want takeout from Outback. Steak, rare, all the fixings. Bleu cheese dressing on my salad.” He sat forward and shook his mouse to wake up his computer.
“Oh, sure.” He laughed. “I mean, hey, least I can do.”
“You do realize they’re going to get a piece of my mind tonight, right? Had that idiot not red-lined my budget—without telling me at the time—we would’ve had the resources and manpower to have that data center fully online and staffed over twomonthsago.”
“I know, I know. It’s not your fault, no one’s blaming you—”
