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best.”
    That felt really, really good. Emotionally, I couldn’t walk away from that now. I’d grown up with low self-esteem. Don’t we all? I’d been a geek, and I’d known it. So had all the other kids. But now, being a geek had become cool, and I was on the top of the game. No, I couldn’t walk away from it.
    I called the first of my clients and explained the problem. “No worries,” he said. “Everyone is available if you want to do it in, say, fifteen minutes instead? We shouldn’t need more than a half hour.”
    “Perfect,” I said. “Call me when you’re ready. I just have one more call to make.”
    “Sure thing, Sidney.”
    The second client was a little more difficult. She was a nervous woman named Dolores Hammer, and schedule changes always threw her. I could tell right away she didn’t want to move our meeting, but then I said, “How about if I pick you up for lunch instead? My treat.” And she was a budget-conscious client. “And I won’t charge you for the time. As long as we’re done by one-thirty at the absolute latest, this works for me.”
    I could practically see her eyes light up from over the phone. I wondered if she’d try to negotiate more concessions from me. “I can make that work,” she said. “Can you be here at eleven?”
    I didn’t laugh. She wanted two and a half free hours from me, but I figured I’d be well ahead for the day, and I’d have three happy clients.
    “Eleven it is,” I agreed.
    I had five minutes. I called Ed. “Yes,” I told him. “If we need to talk longer, it needs to be later. I moved one of my calls to five minutes from now.”
    “Thank you, Sidney,” he said, and I could hear the relief in his voice. “Attire here is usually pretty casual, but dress up tomorrow.”
    I always dressed professionally, but there is professionally, and then there’s professionally. “Of course.”
    * * * *
    Lunch with Dolores was stressful, mostly because she was always so stressed out. I spent a great deal of time managing her as a client. She was a middle manager for a modest department store chain. She had been a marketing manager, but had been promoted and moved sideways, and now had to interface with IT far too often. She relied on me to be that interface for her.
    I spent a great deal of time answering questions like, “Are you sure it will be done in time.”
    Yes, it would, but only because I always doubled what IT told her, and then I knew I’d end up riding herd on the technical staff, anyway. They were decent programmers, but they were miserable at time estimates.
    Although being off by one hundred percent was practically “on time” in the computer programming industry.
    I picked her up at her office. She brought a bulging satchel of papers with her, and she was even more nervous than usual. We drove to a nearby restaurant, got settled, and ordered before she turned to me. “I must seem like a real dweeb to you.”
    “No, Dolores,” I said. “You don’t.”
    “It’s just those programmers. They don’t respect me. I’m just ‘that bitch from marketing’ to them, and then they start speaking in techno mumbo jumbo, and I can’t tell if they’re serious or giving me a hard time.”
    The sad part was — they were, indeed, giving her a hard time. At more than one client, I’d subtly told the programmers, “Our job is to help the people who make money for the company do what they have to do to pay our salaries.” Hey. We programmers can be pretty arrogant, and it’s amazing how many people don’t realize such a simple fact.
    Maybe an MBA should be required for all programmers.
    I didn’t confirm any of that for Dolores. I simply said, “That’s why you have me.” I did something I don’t typically do. I reached out a hand and set it over hers, intending it for just a moment, but she glanced down and immediately covered my hand with her other, holding mine like that.
    “I was good at marketing,” she said. “I can run Word and