Sandra Pame decided that, for once in her life, she'd take the long way home.
Since she could hardly come back from somewhere she hadn't gone, Sandra elected to take the long way there as well, the upshot of which was that she arrived at Elcon Industrial Concerns, Inc. no less than three hours later than she was meant, two hours later than the arrival of their old and trusted client Mr. Charles Fairwell of Northport, proud owner of six Northrip 2401s the repair of which he entrusted exclusively to Elcon Instruail. He, in fact, did so continuously, as no more than three of the 2401s were in order at any given blink, and the precise malfunctioners always changed between two.
Sandra was not concerned that Mr. Fairwell might take his business elsewhere, because any man willing to overlook the fact that his machine repairmen were actually failing to repair his machines is willing to forgive a slight discrepancy in mental scheduling.
When she arrived, Sanda was at once besieged by despondent scheduling clerks, whom she waved to the side with a vague promise of getting it straight with their supervisors, and then proceeded to straight away promise herself to never step within a hundred feet of their bosses for the remainder of her career.
Her secretary waved frantically at her from the gossip pool, that day congregated near her office, and chased at her from the coffee machine with news of grave important and scandalous tone.
"You," she shot, "forgot your meeting with Mr. Fairwell, Miss Pame."
Lightly, the reply was negative. Wavering, the secretary returned resentfully, "You missed the meeting with Mr. Fairwell."
With a look and a hand came the answer "I couldn't attend," and as Sandra flushed into her nice office with a bad view her puzzled assistant stepped out the door. She couldn't have attended, really. She'd been fifty miles away at the time.
Sandra had just buttered her toast some three hours after the generally accepted time for such activites, when a young man of her age who generously considered her his type strolled wareful through the senseless gates of Ilium, proferring words of friendship and esteem.
"Hey, Sandy, missed you at the Fairwell meeting today."
"Oh, well," she said evenly, "I wasn't able to attend."
"Hmm." he commented intelligently, and paused. "What happened?"
She considered. "The Toyota broke down," and the hesitant response was true, it had broken down, not five months before in Tranderston when she was visiting her brother for Thanksgiving, actually when she was coming home and Orientalis brushed the dewey leaves in the way of a thousand songbirds, when the colors bled dried and luscious to the earth, when the breath of a cricket snapped lustily across the valleys as if twenty lyrics were singing the sweet praises of the Queen Mother. The man nodded and made a nuisance of his condolences for the next ten minutes.
"I needed you to be there for me this morning, Sandra," came Paul's voice from the door, and Sandra looked up at once, shocked from her daze, muttering something to him, something unconvincing about not having been able to attend.
"I'm sorry, Sandra, but I need for you to be behind me when I go in front of our clients. I didn't hae the cost figures for the Fairwell account, not prepared for me to use, and it looked bad – Elcon looked bad."
She paused and murmured weakly about her car until the voice again cut her off. "I could have sent someone around to pick you up. That wouldn't have been any trouble at all. But we didn't know where you were." He softened. "You're an important part of our team, Sandra. We need you on board, or else the train's stuck in the station."
Sandra sipped her tea and looked over the cost figures. They could be sent over to Fairwell this afternoon, and she'd call Michael DeShawn and sort things out. Paul would forget about it by next week if she kept her head down. There wasn't any permanent damage done from the morning's silliness.
She looked out her window at the hanger-garage, and then glanced down at her watch and remembered. She'd better take the expressway home, or else she'd be eating a late supper, and then she wouldn't get to sleep until ten. She sighed softly, like the wind through the forest behind the condo – and stepped back from the open air to gaze at numbers once more.