Chapter 3 - Model Life
She wears a charcoal-colored pencil skirt with a white blouse today. The heels on her black patent pumps are three inches—enough to give her some height without being inappropriate for the workplace. A delicate silver chain encircles her neck, and tasteful matching earrings complete the outfit. To me, she looks like someone who belongs in this conference room—as if she was sketched into the design plans along with the dark cherry conference table and black leather executive chairs.
"We're ahead of schedule in the software development phase and will transition into the design verification stage on Monday. A group of Navy reservists familiar with Modeling & Simulation will serve as end users during black-box testing*."
She clicks on a slim black rectangle in her hand—the magic wand through which her creation can be manipulated—and the next slide of the PowerPoint presentation appears on screen.
"With subsequent target dates moved to the left, you can see that we'll be ready and well-prepared for the commencement date of Exercise SeaStar."
Her voice matches her posture—strong and confident. She holds the respect of everyone in the conference room: three senior military personnel and four upper-level civilians, all of them men. I know this has as much to do with her impressive background as it does her ceaseless demonstration of competency. She graduated from MIT, where she coauthored a Machtey Award-winning student paper, and went on to receive an MBA from Harvard Business School. She could have worked at any of the top corporations in the U.S. but choose as her employer a mid-sized company who did contract work for the military.
The staff members nod their heads at her statement and attempt to justify their paygrades with prodigiously-worded comments and cavillous questions. She fields them with ease. If five was the first digit of her age instead of three, they'd be reporting to her and not the other way around.
When the briefing concludes, she disconnects her laptop from the lectern and packs it in her messenger bag. One of the admirals pauses by her side as the rest of the group files out of the conference room.
"Another excellent presentation, my dear. You have this well under control."
"Thank you, sir."
"We're not in an official setting now. Call me Mark." The slung-back shoulders of his military bearing relax and he touches two fingers to her elbow. "A few of the other staff and I are going out to lunch now. We'd love for you to join us."
Her body tenses minutely before a lipstick-painted mouth forms a rejection.
"Thanks for the invitation, but I have a lot of work to do," she says with a smile. "The development team will be waiting for a debrief."
"Oh, come on," he protests. "You just showed us how far ahead your people are. I'm sure they can benefit from a breather, same as you. We're only going to Ruby Tuesday. It won't take long and then you can get back to cracking the whip over your minions."
He laughs, but there's an undercurrent in his tone that conveys expectancy of her compliance.
"Alright, I need to put my things away. I'll meet you there."
His weathered face lights up in a grin of triumph. With a nod to acknowledge her correct response, he turns and strides to the door.
She doesn't have the luxury of walking as slowly as he does. Her heels click-clack on the polished floor in rapid tempo on the way to her office, located in the M&S* wing of the building. There's a convenient bathroom just off the main passageway, so she stops to relieve herself of the three diet sodas that served as breakfast.
As always, I critique her appearance when she approaches the bathroom mirror. Shoulder-length brown hair clipped back in a tidy ponytail, hazelnut-colored eyes set wide apart, straight nose, rouged cheeks, full lips. The self-assured face of a capable, experienced professional.
I get lost in the reflection of those brown eyes, amazed by the person in front of me. Why did fate decide to bestow her with intelligence, work ethic, and motivation? How did she get so lucky? It seems the world is her oyster.
I can hardly believe that she is me.
I want so much to be her.
*black-box testing: software testing technique whereby the internal workings of the item being tested are not known by the tester. For example, in a black box test on a software design the tester only knows the inputs and what the expected outcomes should be and not how the program arrives at those outputs. (Webopedia)
*M&S: Modeling & Simulation