Cold. Numbingly, blindingly, utterly cold. It had been cold the day before, it would be cold tomorrow. The sun peeked out just above the horizon, barely throwing any light on the dismal white landscape that he called home. No, home was where you lived, this was just the ether between where he slept and home. The ephemeral netherworld that he used to live in and find enjoyable.
"Mornin'," the clerk behind the counter said as he plunked his diet soda down next to the register. He looked at the rags on the racks, but didn't see his guy on any of them. Thank God. 'His guy,' he smirked at himself. When did that happen?
"Yeah it is," he mumbled. He wasn't a morning person. Anymore he wasn't a day person, or night person, or anything in between. The labels that people gave to the position of the sun in the sky seemed to blur into one fluorescent mass of abysmal light, that is until he'd removed the lights in his tiny office. He would have felt like a vampire, if he'd actually gotten out at night, but he didn't.
The clerk took his money, when he'd gotten it from an ATM was a distant memory now. Lunch wasn't it? Yesterday? The day before. He couldn't really remember, just a vague notion that Jay had been there with him, and the pager had gone off half way through his szechuan something or other. At least they'd been served. It was bad when the damned thing went off before the food came out. He sighed and blinked as the clerk handed him back his change. He pocketed it numbly and ventured out into the dawning morning and the bitter cold. Nothing on the front page of the rags. Maybe it would be a slow day. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. No. He refused to believe it as he got into his run down little beater of a car. He jabbed the key in the ignition and ignored the pager. He didn't care about it. It would wait the five minutes it took him to drive the rest of the way in. Chirp. Christ.
"Tony." he answered his cell phone as he navigated downtown Rochester. It was a sleepy little town, much slower paced than he was used to, and it suited him just fine. It was one of the reason he'd let Brenda talk him into this. Come up to Massachusetts, it's just like New Hampshire, it's quiet, we can be together and away from it all. Right.
"No, just restart the Tomcat server," he said. "No, no you don't need to restart Apache. I'll be there in a few minutes. Restart Tomcat and we'll figure it out when I get in." He grumbled and dropped his phone in the passenger's seat. It had been months of this now. It was one thing to do this for a startup that was paying him well and lying to him about the value of his stock options, it was another to do this for basically charity and the fervor that came with the whole deal. How had he ever gotten conned into doing tech work for Gerald Higgs?