Page 9 of And They Had a Great Fall

When Jake saw her, he jumped up and began pulling levers and pushing buttons on his Breville. She was humored that hehad no real food in the apartment but managed to have the fanciest coffee machine she’d ever seen. “Latte?” he asked, which was her favorite morning coffee. She was surprised he remembered, because she rarely drank them at home. Unlike him, she did not make fancy coffee at home, preferring her quick, efficient Keurig.

“Usually, but not today,” she said. “Can that fancy machine make an Americano with two shots of espresso?” She needed a jolt this morning. The jet lag plus the wine last night were making her brain fuzzy.

He chuckled. “Damn. You mean business.” He put a cup under the coffee spout.

She pulled her phone off the charger and checked her text messages. Two were from Emily. On a Saturday, this couldn’t be good. Checking the time, she did some quick math. She’d slept late, and it was past 11:00 a.m. in Copenhagen. That would be about 5:00 a.m. in New York. Emily was always up early. She texted Emily to let her know she was available to talk and then popped in her AirPods.

Emily called right away. Her perpetually perky voice burst on the call as soon as Kat swiped to answer. “Hey, sorry, this will be fast.” she said. “I didn’t know if this warranted calling you, but I thought you’d want to know just in case. Oh, and good morning!”

Jake walked over to Kat and handed her the cup of coffee. “Hey, I made sure I had oat milk and that sugar you like.” He handed her a small carton, container of sugar, and a spoon.

She nodded silently poured the milk in her cup. If she wasn’t on the phone, she probably would’ve hugged him. Given how few supplies were in the apartment, it occurred to her most of his “food” had been purchased for her. She grabbed the cup and took a sip, thankful for the caffeine about to course through her veins. She put her fingers on her lips, motioning for him to be quiet. She was not on mute and knew that Emily had heard. She turned around to look out the window.

Emily interjected, “Hey! I heard that. Who was that?” When Kat didn’t say anything, Emily insisted, “Oh, is that mystery pronoun?”

Kat feigned ignorance. “Oh, I didn’t know what you were asking. It’s the barista. I’m picking up coffee.”

Emily let out a loud laugh. “Oh, okay … right … you aren’t going to tell me. That’s fine.”

“So, Emily, what’s up?” Kat asked, refocusing her. Emily brought Kat up to speed regarding an issue that could throw a wrench into their launch plans. The stickers they used to seal the individual boxes that held the devices were faulty, and boxes were popping open during shipping.

The PVA was a premium technology device, and they couldn’t have boxes popping open at will. At the minimum, it would look cheap; at the max, the device could fall out and be damaged in transit. It wasn’t an insurmountable issue, but one that had a level of urgency that warranted a live conversation, even on a Saturday. They had to avoid any delays that would affect the launch date, which was already promised to the board. Emily was right to call her.

Kat grabbed her laptop and sat down at the kitchen counter. She opened it and started reviewing a document Emily had sent her with shipment dates and units. “Are they all faulty or just a percentage?” she asked, her voice sounding as stressed as she was starting to feel.

“It looks like about fifty-three percent of the boxes are sealed with the new stickers, which are not consistently sticking,” Emily said. “We have confirmed the manufacturing lines for the devices produced last month used the old stickers, for the most part. I’m still confirming, but I think those should be fine.”

“Okay, I need you to get the number of units with the functioning sticker solidified by Monday. I’ll figure out the projected orders in the pre-launch markets so we can understand how manyunits they’ll need. If we have enough available units, they will still make their shipping dates and have enough in-store inventory at launch.”

“I’m waiting on shipment dates for a new group of stickers with the proper sealant. If they get here in under a week, we won’t really have to make a noticeable adjustment to any of our launch plans, right?” Emily asked. Kat could hear the nervousness in her voice.

“Maybe. Right now, this will require a minor adjustment, but let’s start mapping alternative scenarios in case this goes south. Find out how locked the marketing dollars are in case we need to adjust the start date. Worst-case scenario, we might have to shorten the window for pre-orders prior to launch to still make the Black Friday push,” Kat said, eager to get ahead of this potential issue. She had enough experience to know that a launch could indeed be undone by a tiny sticker.

She hit end on the call and sighed. She needed to call Will immediately, to get ahead of this. This was not the Saturday she’d planned in her mind. She only wanted to drink some much-needed coffee, have breakfast, and talk to Jake. Instead, she was spending yet another weekend stressing about work.

While she and Will were in the middle of an intense discussion about worst-case scenarios and impacts to forecasts and budgets, Jake set down another coffee and a plate in front of her. It was half of a bagel and scrambled eggs, made with the leftover supplies from the night before. He rubbed her shoulder and handed her a fork. Kat couldn’t remember a time anyone made her breakfast, or any meal, and she mouthed “thank-you.”

When the situation had been dissected and every possibility considered, Kat took out her AirPods and put her phone to the side. She noticed Jake watching her.

“That seemed intense,” he said. “You okay?”

“I think so,” she replied. “This launch just has to be perfect,and now it might get derailed by bad adhesive on a small sticker … but there isn’t much more to do until we get more information. On Monday, we’ll—”

He cut her off. “I’m sure you’ll handle it. I asked ifyouwere okay. That sounded like a pretty stressful start to a Saturday.”

She nodded to show him she was just fine, but tears pricked her eyes. She stood up and pretended to need something out of the fridge so he couldn’t see her. It had been a long time since anyone, including herself, had asked if she was okay.

Jake was a curious observer when Kat was at work. He didn’t know what the hell she was ever talking about, but she slipped into a character of her own—one in full control, cool, calculating, and always efficient. He’d watched her during his lazy pandemic days, when he would lie on her couch and listen to her virtual meetings.

He’d studied her as if she was a film character. He’d been fascinated by the formality of the language used by her and her team—phrases like “parallel path,” “on the same page,” and “distributed workforce” intrigued him. He would roll the phrases around his tongue, having only a vague idea of what they really meant. Part of the reason he could inhabit different characters was his absolute love of studying people.

Today, however, she seemed more stressed than he had ever seen her. She insisted she was fine and in control, but he could feel her unease. She made it clear she didn’t want to talk about it, but he tucked away a mental note to ask her about it later. He wished he had her skill to weather a crisis with calm action.

“Hey, what’s your call time today?” Kat asked, looking up from her laptop. He was not surprised that she had moved on to thinking about his logistics for the day.

Her innocent question made him look down at his cup andhesitate before answering. He had not yet mentioned his forced break. Even though it was only a few days, film shoots had tight schedules and, as the lead, having time off was measured in hours, not days. He knew it was bad when Garren changed the entire schedule.

“None,” he said, “I have a few days off while they shoot around me. I’m so terrible that they’re not going to waste another inch of film on my half-assed acting.” He continued to stare into his cup, face burning.

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