2

The van drove past the tall gates of the fence, that slid open to let us into the campus.

It was another world in there, where the pandemic had no room and everybody followed the safety rules more out of excess of caution than real necessity.

Pretty lanes wound about, connecting the Square with the smaller buildings of the campus. Our ride drove on to leave us right at the Square main gates, behind one of the vans waiting to take the night shift home.

I glided down the hall to the east side, where the IT department was. The other three sides of the ground floor were the main department of the company: Operations.

It’d been such a lucky strike, finding that job six months earlier, just arrived in the city. Steph had gotten there a few weeks before me, in time to find us a place to live and a job for herself.

She’d insisted I didn’t need to work, because she would make enough money for both of us, but I’d refused to become a secluded househusband. I’d always been kind of a computer geek, and I’d did my best to keep up over my years away. So I had the skills to apply for the job, not to mention I really needed to do it. Maybe to prove myself I was back, and the last awful years were definitely behind.

So I’d submitted my CV to this logistics company, which had only a few years in the market but kept growing like a parasite spider plant. It’d already achieved the unicorn status, and rumor had it that Big Ellie, the founder and CEO, was raking Benjamins by the zillions ever since he’d started the company all alone, with his computer from his living room, connecting so many small transportation companies the pandemic had shut down with so many home businesses in need of cheap shipping for their goods.

On the way to get a coffee while my systems loaded, I waved hi at Tom, my supervisor, in his fishbowl in the middle of the open office. He’d been at the helm since six am and he still looked like just out of bed. Back to my desk with a steamy mug, I took off my mask and logged in at nine sharp.

The small video window popped up on the right bottom corner of my screen as I finished setting the new password for a Marketing guy upstairs, who got kicked out of the systems at least once a week. Maybe he was among our top graphic designers, but he just couldn’t type ten characters in the right order.

“Hey, Dean,” Tom said from his fishbowl when I clicked on the video window. “I need a hand.”

“Forgot your email address?” I replied.

He shook his head, chuckling. “I wish. Listen, Jane T. just called. Her child woke up with a little fever.”

I didn’t know who Tom was talking about, but I guessed it was one of the junior ITs in the noon or the afternoon shift.

“Need me to cover for her?” I volunteered. Whoever she was, this Jane T. couldn’t come to work until her kid and she herself were cleared, after a one-week quarantine and three negative tests.

Tom’s smile widened. “Thank you. Only half her shift, though. You’ll be free at six, and somebody from the evening shift will take it from there.”

“Great. My girl doesn’t like dining late.”

“I owe you. I’m sending your number upstairs right away, so they process the extra hours.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“You know me. I stink of nice.”

We disconnected still laughing and I turned to my next world-saving quest: retrieving some Word files a secretary had deleted by mistake.

At noon, back from my lunch break, I saw Tom handing the baton to Aisha, the afternoon supervisor, a big lady in her mid-forties I liked a lot. They were talking by the fishbowl while a janitor disinfected everything before letting Aisha take over.

With shipments moving all over the country all the time, the company had operators working around the clock, and they always needed ITs at hand. While the big shots upstairs and their minions did weekdays nine to five, the ground floor of the Square was a sleepless hive twenty-four/seven. To stick to sanitary regulations, Operators and ITs worked in rolling six-hour shifts that started every three hours, so the open offices never surpassed two thirds of capacity.

For some reason, the afternoon was easier than the morning, and I wasn’t tired when I logged out at six. My phone buzzed before I could grab my stuff. A smile pursed my lips as I opened the message, like every time Steph texted me.

“Coming? Dinner at seven.”

“You cooked for me?”

“Me? Cook? Share whatever you’re having, please. I ordered pasta with meat balls.”

“I’m all but done here. See you in a while.”

I was heading for the exit when Aisha called me out loud. I turned around and found her waving me over from the fishbowl.

“Hey, Dean, they have some trouble processing your hours. Why don’t you go upstairs and fix it yourself on your way out?” she said.

“Sure.” I looked around. “You not leaving yet? Where’s Sam?”

Aisha rolled her eyes. “Stuck in traffic.”

“Late again. You should make him cover your whole shift some day.”

“Yeah, I totally should. Thanks, D. See you tomorrow.”

“Have a good one.”

Instead of heading to the lobby, I turned to the stairs in the corner. The stairwells were located on the inner side of the Square, and on my way to the second floor, I had a chance to admire the one-acre inner garden in the center of the Square, enclosed by huge windows on each floor to provide better fresh air circulation and daylight to the whole building. I frigging loved that job. Not only because I liked what I did, and my colleagues, but because no matter in what side of what floor of the Square you worked, you had those window walls to a relaxing green view. Something I’d sorely missed of late.