Company (12 page)

Freddy arrives on level 3. It's so high in the building he feels a rush of vertigo and his knees tremble. Or maybe it's not vertigo. Maybe it's the sign before him:

HUMAN RESOURCES

Everything looks different here. The lighting is muted. The walls are a dark blue, not the ubiquitous cream. There are no motivational posters, no orange-and-black logos, no taped-up printouts of pie graphs. Everything is soft and shadowy. As Freddy walks down the corridor, his footsteps completely swallowed by the carpet, he could almost believe the walls are breathing in and out.

There is a reception desk, but no one staffing it. It is black and smooth, devoid of clutter. There's not a phone, nor a notepad, nor a ceramic bear in sight. No
RING FOR SERVICE
bell. Freddy looks around nervously. Two identical doors lead off from reception, one left and one right. Maybe this is some kind of test. Maybe one leads to Heaven and the other to Hell. Or, since this is Human Resources, maybe they both lead to Hell. Freddy bites his lip. He thinks he'll just stay where he is.

The door on the left clicks and swings open.

“Hello?” He walks up to the door and peers through it. It opens onto a long, empty corridor with half a dozen identical doors on each side.

He clenches his jaw, puts one foot in front of the other, and walks through the doorway. He half expects the door to swing shut behind him
—snick—
and the lights to go out and someone (or something) to begin cackling maniacally in the darkness, but, of course, none of these things happen. He is simply walking up a corridor in Human Resources. Still, he has to fight against the urge to flee back to the elevators.

All the doors are closed. None are labeled. Then one to his left clicks, and Freddy stops. The door swings open. Beyond it is a dark meeting room. But there's no table, just a plastic chair in the center of the room. Freddy steps inside warily. “You want me to sit in the chair?” There is no response but silence. He walks over and sits. He realizes he is facing an enormous mirror.

The voice comes out of nowhere, the one from the voice mail. “Your name,” it says. “State your name.”

Passing by a stairwell door marked 15, Jones notices a certain weakness entering his legs. By the time he reaches 10, his legs are visibly shaking and his shirt is stuck to his back. At 5, he misses a step and decides to go with it: he half sits, half falls onto a concrete step, and takes the opportunity to suck air into his burning lungs. As if waiting for this, his forehead jets sweat, which Jones tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to mop up with his sleeves. He realizes he is not going to make the best impression on Senior Management.

A sound bounces up the stairwell from below. Jones sits up. It comes again (or is that an echo?), then he hears voices. One says something like, “Up or down?” and the other replies, “Gotta be up.” Jones wonders if this might be Security, tracking him down, and then one of them yells,
“Mr. Jones? You're not permitted in the stairwell. We need to take you to Human Resources. Are you there? Mr. Jones? It's best if we get this done quickly.”
This settles the issue, and Jones hauls himself to his feet and starts climbing again.

A few minutes of Herculean effort later, he is face-to-face with a stairwell door marked 2. The Security guards are still behind him, but at least five floors lower. Jones reaches for the bar to open the door . . . then hesitates. He looks up. Level 2 is Senior Management. But level 1 is Daniel Klausman, the CEO. Jones thinks:
Why settle for second-best?
He has come all this way.

His legs lodge an objection, but Jones overrules them: he staggers up one more set of concrete steps. And then he is facing a door marked 1 with nowhere else to go.

It looks just like all the other stairwell doors. He's a little disappointed; he was half expecting golden gates, fluffy clouds, and bright light spilling out. Oh well. He puts his hands on the metal bar and pushes it down.
Ker-lack!
In the stairwell, it sounds like a gunshot. Down below, the Security guards start shouting. Because of the echoes, it's hard to make out individual words, but Jones gets the impression that there are dire consequences in store for him. Jones knew that already. He just hopes there are no Security guards on level 1. If he's gone through all this for nothing, he will be very disgruntled. He shoulders open the door.

The wind nearly pulls him onto his face. He has to grab at the door for balance. It's so different from what he expected that for a second his brain fails to comprehend it; he just hangs there, gulping air, his eyeballs struggling for focus. His first stupid thought is:
His office is huge!

Jones is on the roof.

“You know my name,” Freddy says. “You asked me to come here.”

“State your name,” the voice says again.

He swallows. He guesses this is for the record. Whatever record that is. Or maybe—another idea occurs to him—it's to calibrate their equipment. When you have a polygraph test, Freddy has heard, they ask simple questions first, to get the parameters right. They save the real questions for later.

“Freddy Carlson.”

“State your employee number.”

“It's 4123488.”

“State your department.”

“Training Sales. Level 14.” He clears his throat. “All this is on my application.”

“You have a disability.”

Freddy shifts on the chair. In the mirror, his reflection does likewise. To Freddy, his reflection looks very guilty. “Yes.”

“Your disability is stupidity.”

“I can't help it. I mean, I tried hard at school and everything, I'm just not naturally bright.”

“It seems there is an error on your application.”

“Probably,” Freddy says. “I'm such a doofus, there are probably several.”

“Your application states that you are stupid.”

“Right.”

“We think you mean to say that Human Resources is
stupid.”

“Oh, no. No, of course not.”

“You know Human Resources' policy on disabilities.”

“I . . . might have heard it somewhere.”

“You know Human Resources complies fully with state and federal law.”

“Well, I assume.”

“You know Human Resources is proud to ensure that Zephyr Holdings is an equal opportunity employer.”

“Sure.”

“You know no employee of Zephyr Holdings has ever been discriminated against on the basis of a disability.”

“I didn't, no, but that's great.”

“You know that an employee with a recognized disability limits Human Resources' natural ability to terminate that employee.”

“I guess it does,” Freddy says.

“What's seven times three?”

“Tw—” Freddy catches his tongue. That was crafty! It was Human Resources' first question. “I'm not sure, I don't have a calculator.”

“What's the opposite of east?”

“Left.”

“Which go up, stalactites or stalagmites?”

“No idea,” Freddy says, truthfully.

“Teamwork is the lifeblood of the company, true or false?”

Freddy hesitates. This feels like a trick question. No one, no matter how mentally deficient, could not know Zephyr's position on teamwork. “True.”

A pause. When the voice resumes, it is deeper, even angry. “You know no disabled employee of Zephyr Holdings has ever been discriminated against on the basis of disability.”

“You just said that.”

Silence.

“Yes,” Freddy says.

“They have been
transferred.
” The voice adds a slight but clearly detectable emphasis. “They have been
passed over.
They have been
demoted.
They have been
docked.
But they have not been
discriminated against.
”

He swallows. “Oh.”

“They have received promotions that carry increased responsibilities but no extra pay. They have been integrated into teams with incompatible personalities. They have been assigned projects with mutually exclusive goals. They have been made supervisor of the Social Club's finances. They have been put in charge of cleaning up the customer database. They have been asked to train graduates.”

“Okay. Look—”

“They have failed to receive recognition for their accomplishments. Rumors have sprung up about them and unattractive co-workers. Their monitors have begun to strobe. The spring-loading on their chairs has failed. Their pens have gone missing. They have been given multiple managers. They—”

“Enough!” Freddy says. “I get it, all right?”

There is a pause. A pause to savor the moment.

“What is seven times three?” the voice says.

Holly returns from lunch (a salad eaten alone at the counter of the local deli) to find East Berlin deserted. Jones is nowhere to be seen, and Freddy has vanished, too—
GONE TO HUMAN RESOURCES
, according to the Post-it on his monitor, but she assumes that's a joke. She sighs. She feels restless.

She gets up and walks to the watercooler. Holly is at the tail end of an eight-week aerobic plan; it's important to keep hydrated. She tugs out a paper cup, fills it, throws back her head, and keeps swallowing until she's drained it. When she lowers the cup, she is treated to the sight of Roger walking past, looking at her breasts. His eyes flick up to her face. He winks. “Holly.”

“Roger.”

He walks away. Holly puts down her cup. This is something she cannot get used to: the sheer shamelessness of businessmen. Holly doesn't want to be a bitch about it, but she doesn't understand why sagging, pot-bellied, out-of-shape assholes with overinflated senses of their own importance should think that they have a chance with her. Except that's the whole problem: within the company they
are
important, or at least more important than her. So a creepy, wet-lipped manager in Order Processing is entitled to flirt with her. Not to come right out and proposition her—that would be a gross violation of the company's policy on inter-employee relationships (short version: they're banned)—but that almost makes it worse. She has to pretend it's all friendly, harmless banter, when if the environment permitted a more honest response, she could tell them to go screw themselves.