Behind Iron Lace

The offices of
Y not ask Y!
were like an oven. Strike that, the temperature in the offices of
Y not ask Y!
was unbearably close to sauna level, if said sauna just happened to be located in hell. What a day for the damned air conditioning unit to die. Wiping sweat from his forehead before it could drip into his eyes, Darcy Butler glanced up toward the ceiling fans almost in supplication. He prayed for a hint of cool air. Just a hint. One slight breeze, was it too much to ask?

One hundred degrees in the shade, with a heat index of nearly one-ten, according to the radio.
God, how did people live like this
, he wondered, and not for the first time since moving to New Orleans last winter. It was too hot to do anything but lie naked in a tub of ice. Shit, it was only June, early June at that, still spring. Summer was still to come and, if spring was any indication, he was not going to survive to see the fall.

“I absolutely can
not
do this today,” he said to the two people sitting across from his desk. He couldn’t focus on the budget or any other trivial little detail. Irritated, he tossed a pencil on his blotter and peeled his sodden shirt away from his body. “I’m afraid someone might die of heat exhaustion if we don’t get out of here.”

“Why don’t we call it a day then, Dar? The repair crew can’t get here until tomorrow anyway.” His partner, Bailey, flashed him a suggestive smile that he studiously ignored. “I, for one, wouldn’t mind finding a nice cool pool to slip into.”

He and Bailey went all the way back to freshman year at college when they were dreaming of setting the world on fire. Now it looked as if they would spontaneously combust before they ever got the chance. Or worse, melt clean away. “I will gladly settle for an air conditioned bar and a cold beer. Okay, yeah, send everyone home, we’re not going to get anything done today. Tomorrow either,” he paused for a moment, there was something he had to do today, he just couldn’t remember. Then that something dawned on him, “Oh crap, I have an appointment with a new graphic artist in an hour.”

“What’s the name?” Bailey spun his phone around and, with a few deft finger jabs, she paged through his appointments. “Caleb Mitchell?” She raised a questioning brow, to which Darcy nodded and she shot off a text in seconds flat. “I told him to meet you at O’Doul’s down the street instead of here.”

“Thanks, Bailey.” Darcy hated the damned phone, hated text messaging, hated technology. Sometimes he wondered how he’d ended up in a technology based field at all. Publisher of his very own e-magazine that, thanks largely to Bailey and Chester, her secretary, they’d somehow managed to go international, even in a tanking economy.

Moving to New Orleans last Christmas had been a money-saver he reluctantly admitted, though he still wasn’t entirely happy about the move. The building was in the heart of the French Quarter and because of the damage to the lower floor, it had been a steal. With a little time and a little more money, Darcy had managed to find a talented group of contractors who made quick work of bringing the building back to life.

During the winter and the gorgeous spring, Darcy had been quite happy with his new home, then June and this ridiculous heat wave hit. Now he just wanted to go back to Oregon and the tranquility of a mild heat-free summer. He tried not to panic whenever some well-meaning local assured him this was nothing, that he should wait until summer really got here in August. He wasn’t going to make it to August.

“Aw, shucks, boss, twernt nuthin.” She laughed, not at him as much as because he was a hopeless technophobe. Darcy just took the teasing in stride, mostly because it was funny as hell. He’d long ago decided Bailey could have the gadgets all to herself. He’d stick with words and content, thank you very much.

Glancing over to the man sitting beside her, Darcy caught Chester smirking. Chester seemed to smirk a great deal, Darcy thought briefly before wondering for the millionth or so time what sort of pseudo-symbiotic relationship the two of them had.

His longtime best friend and sometimes lover, Bailey was taller than him, taller than Chester too, nearly six-foot-one in her bare feet, and slender as the proverbial reed. She kept her straight hair short, in one of those weird Japanese comic book styles, very short in back with longish bangs framing her face. She dressed like a super model, preferring anything couture she could get for bottom basement prices off the internet. Today was no exception, except she was dressed for the weather while he wasn’t.

Chester… did the man even have a last name? Chester was prime grade emo kid all grown up and graduated to hipster. He was so thin Darcy wondered if he actually ate at all. His hair stood in chopped spikes, the tips blond and whatever color he liked for the day, today they were turquoise to match his surfer tee. He was younger than either of them, maybe twenty-three at the most. He’d started out as an intern last fall and followed them down to be Bailey’s secretary.

To Darcy, Chester was just a glorified gopher groupie and a major pain in his ass. However, Bailey loved him; swore she couldn’t get along without him. Darcy wasn’t quite so enamored. Sometimes when he was especially homesick, like now, his imagination liked to run amok. During these times, he imagined Chester was plotting his demise behind those huge emo eyes of his. The smirk he wore so often seemed to lend credence to the suspicion.

Despite the heat and the sweat, Darcy shivered when Chester’s gaze cut through him, almost dismissively, to land on Bailey.

“Okay, I guess that’s a day then, gang. Free the horde and lets all go find someplace cool before we stroke out.” He shook off the momentary miasma of paranoia and shooed them out of his office. Remembering something, he shouted, “Oh and don’t forget, bright and early Thursday morning, air conditioning willing, we are going to put up the galleys for next week’s mag. So be here with bells on.”

“Okay boss,” Bailey stuck her head in through the doorway. Waving a quick little pinkie in the air, she disappeared. A couple of minutes later, Darcy heard a mass, almost hysterical, chorus of relieved cheers as the sweaty employees were told to take the party elsewhere.

As minutes passed, Darcy went about closing his office down. He transferred data to his phone from his computer, the task taking him longer than it would Bailey, or anyone else in the office, for that matter. While he worked, the outer office began to grow quiet as people put their workstations to sleep and left for cooler atmospheres and an unscheduled vacation.