The Server Error

I'm Willa. Sixty-two years old, been waiting tables for most of my life. Divorced a long time back, one bad relationship since, and then a string of dinners with men who talked about their boats. That's my history. Not much to it.

So when my catering agency called on a Friday and asked if I could cover a late shift, I said yes before they finished the sentence. Money is money.

"It's a tech thing," the dispatcher said. "Some startup doing a hackathon. Forty-eight hours, they want food all night. You up for it?"

"I've worked worse," I said. I had worked worse. Weddings mostly.

The address was a converted loft downtown. Fourth floor, freight elevator, the kind of building where the rent eats a startup alive. I carried up a stack of pizza boxes and a tray of coffees, eight cups, balancing the whole thing like a circus act. I'm good at that part. Twenty years of practice.

The loft door was open. Inside was chaos. Monitors everywhere, cables snaking across the floor like weeds, four or five laptops lit up at a long table. Two pizza boxes already empty. The air smelled like burnt coffee and old cheese. It was eleven at night.

And there was a cable across the doorway.

I didn't see it. Or I saw it too late. Either way my foot caught it and I lurched forward and the iced latte, one of the cups I'd made special for somebody's order, went up in the air and came down.

It came down on a laptop keyboard.

The guy sitting at that laptop jumped up so fast his chair rolled back and hit a desk. He was maybe forty-seven, dark hair going gray at the temples, shirt untucked, holding a phone in one hand. He looked at the keyboard. I looked at the keyboard. Coffee was pooling between the keys.

"Oh no," I said. "Oh no, no. Sir, I am so sorry."

"It's fine," he said.

"It is not fine. That's a computer."

"It's fine. Really." He grabbed a napkin off the table and started dabbing at the keys like that would fix anything. "It's, uh. It's probably fine."

It was not fine. The screen flickered. Then some letters started typing themselves, which I did not know computers could do. Then it went black.

"That's not fine," I said.

The guy sat back down and pressed the power button. Nothing. He pressed it again. Nothing. He turned and looked at me, and I braced for it. I've dumped drinks on people before. It's always the same speech. You'll hear from my lawyer, watch where you're going, etcetera.

Instead he said, "It's okay. Honestly. I've been meaning to buy a new one anyway."

"That thing just died."

"Yeah." He winced. "Yeah, it did."

I set the pizza boxes down and got to work. I had paper towels in the cart, spare ones, because I plan for disasters. I was on my knees wiping coffee off the table and the floor, and he stood over me holding napkins and doing basically nothing useful.

"Here, let me," he said.

"You don't have to do that."

"No, I want to!" He took the paper towels from my hand and then just stood there. He didn't wipe anything. He held them like he'd forgotten what paper towels are for.

"Sir," I said. "You could dab."

"Oh. Right. Dabbing!" He dabbed.

Two other people came over. A young guy, late twenties maybe, with a beard and a hoodie, and a woman about thirty-four with her hair in a bun and a pencil behind her ear.

"Leon," the bearded guy said. "Your keyboard is dead."

"I know, Mario."

"Dead dead. That's the demo machine. That's the machine with the demo on it."

"I know, Mario."

The woman leaned over the dead laptop and whistled. "Ooh. That's a lot of latte." She looked at me. "No offense. It smells great!"

"None taken," I said. "It was meant for somebody."

"It was for me," Mario said. "That was my oat milk latte."

"I'll make you another one," I said. "On me."

"That's the spirit," the woman said. She stuck out her hand. "Tabby. Junior dev. You're the caterer?"

"Willa. Same name on the invoice."

"Best thing that's happened to this office all night," she said. "And I mean that. We've been debugging a memory leak since six."

Leon was still dabbing at the dead laptop. I took the paper towels back from him gently, the way you'd take scissors from a toddler, and finished the job myself. He hovered.

"Really, I've got it," I said.

"I know. I just. Sorry. I'm Leon." He stuck out his hand. His palm was damp. "I run this place."

"Willa." I shook it. His grip was careful, like he was afraid of squeezing.

"We've met," Mario said. "Sort of. You did the lunch order two weeks ago. The burrito bowls."

"I remember. The man who wanted extra hot sauce."

"That was me," Leon said, too fast.

"It was not," Mario said. "I got your extra hot sauce, Leon, and you complained the whole afternoon."

"He's lying," Leon said.

"He's not lying," Tabby said.

I laughed. It came out before I could stop it. Leon looked at me when I laughed, and I noticed he perked up a little, the way a dog does when you pick up its leash. I didn't think much of it at the time. I have to say that now because later it mattered, but at the time I just figured the guy was punchy from forty hours of coding.

"So what's the damage?" Mario asked, tapping the dead screen. "Can you recover the demo?"

"I've got it on the backup drive," Tabby said. "But the backup drive is in the server room and the server room is locked and Leon has the only key."

Everybody looked at Leon.

"I'll go get it," he said. He was up and moving before anyone could argue, weaving through the cables, and he knocked his hip on a desk on the way out. Nobody laughed except Mario, quietly, into his fist.

"He's usually not this useless," Tabby said to me.

"He's fine," I said.

"He's been weird for two weeks," Mario said. "Ever since the burrito bowls. He asks about the catering schedule. Who's coming, what days. Like he's planning a wedding."

"Mario," Tabby said.

"What? It's true."

"He does not ask about the schedule," Tabby said.

"He asked me this afternoon if the same lady was coming tonight."

I kept wiping. My knees were starting to ache on the concrete floor. "Well, I'm here now," I said. "Somebody's got to feed you people."

"You have no idea," Tabby said. "Forty-eight hours. These two have eaten nothing but cold pizza. I've been living on vending machine almonds."

"That's criminal."

"Tell me about it."

I got the floor clean and hauled my tray over to the far table and started setting out the food. It was a simple spread. Sandwiches, the pizzas, a fruit tray, the coffee. The other coders, two more of them at the back, smelled the food and appeared like cats.

Leon came back maybe five minutes later with a key on a lanyard and a strange look on his face, like he'd been arguing with himself in the stairwell.

"Server room's open," he announced.

"Great," Mario said. "Restore the demo. Also, Willa, that latte?"

"On it," I said. I made his oat milk latte from the supplies in my cart. I make a decent latte. It's not hard, but most people think it's magic, and I don't correct them.

Leon stood near the coffee table while I worked. Not helping. Just near.

"You didn't have to come clean all that up," I said. "The floor, I mean. You handled it fine."

"Fine," he said. "I don't know about fine."

"It's a keyboard. They make more keyboards."

"Right. Yeah. They do." He picked up a coffee cup, looked at it, put it back down in the wrong spot. I moved it back.

"Is your night usually like this?" I asked.

"Like what?"

"Someone wrecking your stuff."

"No. No, usually it's just quiet. I go home. I watch TV. Very exciting life." He said it flat, and I couldn't tell if he was joking.

"Well," I said, "sorry about the keyboard."

"Stop apologizing. Please. I'm serious. You've apologized four times."

"Four? I said it twice."

"To yourself, too. I heard you."

I laughed again. Same as before, out before I could catch it. He watched me laugh and this time I did notice something in his face. Something pleased and nervous at the same time.

"I should check on the food," I said.

"Sure. Yes. Of course." He stepped back, bumped the table, steadied the fruit tray with both hands like it was a baby bird.

Mario, from across the room, called out, "Leon. The server. You said you were going to debug the server."

"I'm going," Leon called back.

"You've been going for ten minutes."

"I'm going now." He turned to me, said, "Nice to see you again, Willa," and then walked into a chair on his way to the server room.

I heard Mario and Tabby crack up behind me. I didn't turn around. But I'll admit I was smiling while I restocked the napkins.

It was going to be a long night. I figured that much was true.

Mario went into the server room with the backup drive and stayed there a while. I could hear him talking to himself through the door. Little beeps. Fans. Whatever servers do.

Meanwhile I worked the room. Refilled the fruit tray. Collected cups. Wiped down the tables the two coders at the back had claimed. They were polite in the way tired people are polite. They nodded and said thanks and went right back to their screens.

Around midnight I brought my cart over near the server room door to restock. The door was cracked open. Leon and Mario were inside, arguing about something. I wasn't eavesdropping. I have to say that up front. But the loft carries sound, and the door was open, and I have ears.

"Look at the logs," Mario said. "It's been throwing errors since Tuesday."

"I know," Leon said. "I've been debugging it all week."

Debriefing.

That's what I heard. I swear that's what I heard. He's got a soft voice and there's a fan humming in that room and "debugging" and "debriefing" sound close enough when you're not listening for either one.

So now I'm standing there with my cart thinking the man wants to debrief me. Later. Privately. About the spill, I figured. Or the catering. Something official. He'd been asking about my schedule for two weeks. He'd asked Mario if I was coming tonight. And now he wanted a debriefing.

It all fit. That's the thing about a wrong idea. When it lands on top of a bunch of right facts, it looks right too.

I'd seen it before, sort of. The agency has corporate clients. Sometimes after an event somebody from the client side wants to go over things. Attendance, billing, whatever. A debrief. It's a real thing people do.

Fine, I thought. I can do a debrief. I've done worse meetings in worse rooms.

I finished the round and went back to making coffee. And I'll admit something else here. I was a little pleased. Not about the meeting. About the asking. A sixty-two-year-old woman gets used to being furniture at these things. The coders looked through me all night. Leon never did. He regarded me as a person who'd chosen to be there. That counts for something at midnight on a Friday.

I made him a fresh coffee. Black, two sugars. I'd seen him dump sugar packets into his cup earlier, four of them, so I didn't guess.

The server room door was still cracked. I knocked on the frame with a knuckle.

"Got a minute?"

Leon looked up from a monitor. Mario was under a desk somewhere, only his sneakers visible.

"Sure. Yes."

I handed the cup through the door. "Fresh one. You look like you need it."

"Thank you," he said. He took it careful, the way he does everything. "You didn't have to."

"It's my job." Then I leaned in a little and dropped my voice, because Mario was right there and I figured this was the private part. "I'll meet you in the server room when you're done, okay? Whenever you're ready."

The cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

"My," he said. Then nothing.

"I'll just be out front," I said. "Take your time."

I turned and walked back to my cart, feeling pretty smooth about the whole thing. Sly, even. I don't get to feel sly much at my age. I took it.

Behind me I heard a clunk. Metal on metal. Then Mario's voice, muffled, from under the desk.

"Was that the catering lady?"

"Yes," Leon said.

"Did she just say she'd meet you in the server room?"

"I," Leon said. "Yes. I think so."

"Huh." A pause. "Why?"

"How would I know?"

"You're the one she invited."

"I don't know what she said. I don't know what that was."

I didn't hear the rest. I was already around the corner. And honestly I filed it under nerves. The man was nervous. I'd watched him bump into two chairs and a table in one hour. Nerves explained a lot about Leon.

I texted the agency to let them know the night was going fine, no incidents, one keyboard down. Then I restocked. Then I wiped the counter that wasn't dirty. Then I checked my phone. 12:40.

At 12:50 I figured enough time had passed for a debrief. Whatever a server room debrief looked like, I'd sit through it. I straightened my collar and went back.

The server room door was shut. First time all night I'd seen it shut. I knocked.

"Hello?" Leon's voice. High.

"It's me," I said. "Willa."

A long pause. Then the door opened about six inches. Leon stood in the gap with his coffee cup and the face of someone who'd been read his own autopsy.

"Hi," he said.

"Ready for me?"