Company (23 page)

Jones loiters in the lobby, near the mission statement. This is becoming a habit: he keeps hoping he'll bump into Eve after work, but never does. Eve is supposedly a receptionist, but he has discovered she is practically never at the desk: all the actual reception work is done by Gretel. He sees Eve at the Alpha morning meetings, and occasionally in the monitoring room, but on those occasions there are other people around, like Blake Seddon. Jones wants to get Eve alone. He wants to follow up
certain issues that were raised the night of the baseball game.

He is about to give up when a
clack-clack
of heels turns his head. “Jones!” Eve says. “I thought that was you.” She smiles as she draws close. “I saw you on the monitors. What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you,” Jones says, which is shockingly direct, but he is emboldened by the way Eve is smiling. “I thought maybe you'd like to grab a drink.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.”

“Good.” Now he is grinning like a goon, but can't help it. “Good, then.”

“Give me one minute to freshen up. I'll be right back.” She strides off in the direction of the bathroom.

Jones shoves his hands in his pockets and bounces on his toes.
Go Jones!
he thinks.

“Night,” Freddy says, startling him.

“Bye! See you next week.” He watches Freddy exit the
sliding doors. Just before he moves out of sight, Freddy throws a glance at the empty reception desk, and in a pure flash of clarity Jones realizes there is a catastrophic scene looming in his near future when Freddy finds out there is something going on between him and Eve. The idea freezes his spine.

“Okay!” Eve says, taking his arm. She flashes him a bright, happy smile. “Let's go. I know a place.”

She drives him to a low, ambiguous building by the bay that Jones has driven past a thousand times and never thought much about. It turns out to be a bar so stylish that it has dispensed with anything as obvious as trying to look like a bar, and at six o'clock on a Friday evening it is chock-full of deep orange sunshine and more pairs of expensive shoes than Jones has ever seen in one place. Eve threads her way through the crowd, a cocktail in hand, smiling and greeting people. He follows her to a balcony, where it is so packed that it's a fine line between conversation and slow dancing. “Sex on the Beach,” she says.

“Pardon?”

Eve holds up her cocktail, flips her sunglasses over her eyes, and grins at him.

“Oh.” Jones smiles. He has a Scotch and the quiet hope that Eve will continue to drink Sex on the Beach, or any kind of alcoholic beverage, really, until he has acquired enough courage to confront her about what she said to him that night in bed.

“Klausman loves what you're doing on the smokers,” Eve says. “We were talking about it just today. You've impressed him. And impressed
me
, which is more important in the long run. What do you think: Will I make a good CEO one day?” She smiles.

“It might be difficult to explain to six hundred employees how you made the jump from receptionist.”

“Well,” she says, “there won't be six hundred employees for much longer.”

“Right. So, look, I still don't get this. Why is Zephyr consolidating?”

She shrugs. “Companies reorganize. It's part of the business cycle: growth then contraction. We're interested in finding better ways to do it. We make sure Zephyr consolidates at least once a year.”

“And then it grows?”

“Mmm. Not so much. Zephyr's been shrinking for as long as I've worked here. The trend toward more with less. You know.”

“How many people are going to lose their job?”

“Depends on Senior Management. Alpha doesn't micromanage—we just tug a string here and there and see what happens. Klausman sent out an all-staff voice mail saying we had to consolidate. Now we watch how the company reacts.”

He looks out over the water. “So an unknown quantity of people are about to become unemployed for no reason other than we want to see what happens.”

She cocks her head. “Is that a tone?”

“It's a question.”

“Aw, Jones, every time I start to think you might actually make it in this place, you go weak at the knees over how terrible it is to sack someone!” A few heads turn in their direction, which Eve ignores. “I thought you were past this.”

“Are you?”

“What? Of course I am. What are you talking about?”

“How much of the other night do you remember?”

She freezes. “What did I do?”

“You . . . didn't seem happy with who you were.” At the last moment, he shies away from:
You said you loved me.

She laughs. “Well, clearly, I was drunk.”

“And honest.”

“Ah, crap, Jones. Crap. I was probably just trying to sleep with you.”

“Why can't you admit you're lonely?”

There's a half second, then Eve laughs disbelievingly. “Oh, shit, you're serious.”

“You have a lot of nice
stuff.
I get that. What else do you have?”

This comes out more critical than he intends, and Eve's dark eyes widen. “I get drunk and say a few stupid things and suddenly you have a window into my soul? No, Jones. I have a great life and a great job and if it means firing a hundred people on Monday, I'll do it without blinking. I have everything I want. Not happy with who I am? God, I'm not just happy, I'm
proud.
”

“You—”

“And there's nothing wrong with my stuff!”

“There's more to you than that. Eve, you feel bad about what Alpha does, I know you do. At least sometimes.” She doesn't react to this the way Jones is hoping—doesn't react at all, in fact—so he presses ahead. “Freddy. You met him in the elevator today. He's the one who's been sending you flowers every week. Did you know that?”

Eve stares at him. “You moron,
of
course I know that.
We
monitor
the whole company!”

Jones feels himself reddening. “Well, he's—”

“You know what it says in Freddy's file? ‘Do not promote no matter what.' That's why he's been a sales assistant for five years; he's a project. They're
all
projects. Want to know something else? Holly, that girl you work with, she books meeting rooms for no meetings. She just goes and sits in them. Sometimes she takes a magazine, but mostly not. She's the loneliest person I've ever seen. That PA your department had, the fat one—she kept a record of your movements. She was so infatuated with you she couldn't
breathe,
and
you didn't notice.
Do I try to fix these people's lives? No. I don't worry about them, I don't care about them. They're mice in a maze to me.”

Jones walks away. This is not as impressive as it sounds, because the crowd is a crush: he feels not so much like the steely-jawed hero as the teary heroine. Still, he gets all the way down the stairs, out the door, and into the back of a cab conveniently waiting by the curb before Eve catches up. Then she raps on the window with her knuckles.

“Just go,” Jones tells the driver. But Eve is a beautiful woman in a figure-hugging dress, and apparently this carries more weight with the cabbie than Jones's opinion. When he realizes the car isn't going anywhere, he rolls down the window.

“Ask Klausman to tell you about Harvey Millpacker. They started Project Alpha together way back when. Just the two of them and twenty ignorant employees, until Harvey got an attack of the guilts. One day, out of the blue, he comes in to work and announces it's all a sham. An experiment. Klausman had no idea it was coming, no chance to stop him, so that's it, experiment over. The company folds and everyone's laid off. The workers went nuts. There were death threats. But you know what? They were angriest at Harvey. Klausman had lied to them, but he'd given them jobs. Harvey got them sacked.”

“Is this a morality tale?” Jones says. “Because coming from you, it's a little hard to take.”

“The business manager was Cliff Raleigh. Fifty-eight, divorced, not much in the way of friends or family. But at work he was a living legend. It's a disgrace how hard it is for older workers to find decent work these days. It's something Alpha wants to address.” She shrugs. “Three months after he lost his job, Cliff shot himself.”

Jones clenches his fists. He has always considered himself to be a peaceful person, so he is unprepared for the violence of his reaction. He wants to get out of the car and hit her so badly that he can taste it in the back of his throat.

“You,” Eve says, “should think
really carefully
about whether you want to be another Harvey Millpacker.”

“Go,” Jones says to the driver, and when this elicits no action, he roars:
“Drive!”
But the cab doesn't move until Eve takes her hand off the door and steps away. Jones doesn't even get to
leave
until she approves, and, bottom line, he guesses that's about right.

On level 2 of the Zephyr building, Senior Management sits around the board table. It's been a long day for Senior Management. There's no rest for the executive. With darkness outside the floor-to-ceiling windows and a thunderstorm brewing, Senior Management puts the final touches on the consolidation plan.

There are two ways to look at Senior Management. One is that it's a tightly integrated team tirelessly pulling together in the service of whatever's best for the company. The other is that it's a dog pack of power-hungry egomaniacs who occasionally assist Zephyr as a side effect of their individual campaigns for wealth and status. Nobody believes the tightly knit team theory anymore. Once, a long time ago, it may have been true, but the instant a dog-pack person made it into Senior Management, it was all over. It's like a fox getting into the chicken house; pretty soon there are only foxes and feathers. If Senior Management was ever made up of selfless individuals who put teamwork ahead of self-interest—and this is a big if—they were long ago torn to pieces.

It's important to understand this, because it's a prerequisite to making sense of Senior Management decisions, like the consolidation. The initial goal was to streamline Zephyr's business operations. But that was a week ago. Since then, it has been about empire expansion. Senior Management camps have waged fierce and bloody war. Departments were lost, claimed, and lost again. Many fine, decent ideas were lost in the mayhem; many innocent, hardworking employees, none of whom know it yet, were caught in the cross fire. It has been a week of senseless tragedy and mindless destruction, and now even Senior Management is a little tired of it.

But at last it's over. The final plan, which gives every employee something to be happy about, so long as they work in Senior Management, reduces the number of Zephyr departments by a whopping 70 percent. Many departments are out entirely, but most were rolled together, creating new departments with all of the responsibilities and some of the resources of two. Or three. Or, in one case, five. The plan is passed around the table, and as each Senior Management signature is added, hideous new creatures are formed from the stitching together of departmental organs. With the slash of a pen, Security is grafted onto Human Resources. Large, flapping sections of Legal are sewn into place. For reasons that have nothing to do with operating efficiency and everything to do with hardball bargaining between executives, the sole remaining Credit employee is stapled on. Lightning crashes outside the boardroom window as Senior Management finally, exhaustedly, attaches a departmental head. And there it is: a new department. Senior Management has given birth, right there in the boardroom. Its progeny lies on the table, a cruel abomination of nature, sucking in its first foul breath. Its yellow eyes glint balefully. Its limbs curl and flop on the polished oak. It throws back its ill-fitting head and roars with life, or something similar.

Below, the scattered few employees still at work pause and look up. Their bowels tighten. They exchange frightened looks. No one puts it into words, but everyone feels it. Something evil has come into the world.

Q4/2:
NOVEMBER

GRETEL MONADNOCK
carefully slides her Kia hatchback into a space right beside the elevators. She turns off the engine, gathers her jacket and bag, and closes the door behind her. The sound rolls up the length of the Zephyr Holdings underground parking lot and back. Usually Gretel drives right through this sublevel, passing car after car; she only keeps half an eye out for a space, and if she finds one it's a real thrill. But today a mere half a dozen or so cars occupy spaces. It feels strange. It is 7:25
A.M.

She is inside the elevator and pushing for the lobby when her cell phone trills. She digs it out of her bag. “Hello?”

“Hi Gretel, it's Pat again. Is everything still on track?”

“I've just arrived this second.”

“Oh,
great.
Thanks so much, Gretel. You'll call me if you have any questions?”

“I will. Bye.” Gretel turns off her phone. The elevator doors open and suddenly Gretel is looking at a young man in a blue Security uniform. He is standing directly in front of her, blocking her exit from the elevator. Behind him are two more uniformed men.

The man's eyes drop to her chest, in a way that Gretel always finds disconcerting, to read her ID tag. “You're the receptionist?”

“Yes.”

“Right on time.” He smiles, which is clearly meant to be reassuring, but his lips are wet and shiny and Gretel feels a brush of irrational fear. “There are complete instructions in your voice mail, I'm told.”

He steps aside. This allows her to see that there are three more Security personnel by the lobby's front doors and a further six encircle the reception desk.

She puts her head down and walks to her desk. The
clack
ing of her heels echoes crazily. Nobody else makes a sound; they simply follow her with their eyes. When she reaches her desk, she realizes she is holding her breath.

Six stapled pages are waiting for her and her voice-mail light is blinking. She picks up the handset.

“Hi, Gretel. This is Pat from upstairs. I've got a message from Senior Management following. Someone should have called you at home over the weekend about this, but if you have any questions, I'll be in early Monday, too. Just give me a call. Thanks.
Click.
Pat, forward this on to that woman in reception—sorry, I forget her name. Not Eve Jantiss, the other one. HR has told her to come in early Monday morning, but can you make sure she does? Just keep calling her. Harrumph. All right. To reception: We have completed our consolidation plan, and as a result many employees have been reassigned to new departments. Other employees are no longer required. For security purposes, those people cannot be allowed to go to their desks. Security will disable direct elevator access from the parking lot to the upper floors, so everyone will come in via the lobby. As people arrive, you need to check them against the new employee list, and if they've been terminated, explain to them that . . . well, just explain it. You can say that HR will be in contact to forward their severance pay, personal belongings, et cetera et cetera. Then ask them to leave the building. Security will be on hand to provide assistance. Any kind of assistance. Thanks.”

Gretel puts down the phone. While she was listening, the Security guard with the wet lips came over to stand beside her. He smiles. “So, everything clear?”

The first arrives just before eight: a middle-aged man in a suit with shiny knees and a baggy backside. He comes in through the front doors and begins to cross the lobby floor, glancing curiously at Security. Gretel freezes: she thought the guards were going to stop people, but apparently they expect her to. By the time she has unstuck her throat, the man is stepping into an open elevator and reaching for the button panel. Then his face blanches. He throws the nearest Security guard an anxious look. “Where's my floor?”

The guard jerks his head toward Gretel. For a moment the man's expression doesn't change. Then his shoulders sag. It's a moment or two before he can bring himself to leave the elevator and cross the lobby floor, and when he does, his shoes drag. He doesn't walk so much as slide to the reception desk, and when he reaches it, his eyes don't meet Gretel's; instead, they fix on a random point on the desk's orange surface. “I'm from Central Accounting. Is . . . Central Accounting still here?”

Gretel scans her pages. “Central Accounting has been consolidated into Treasury. The new department will operate from level 8.” She looks up. “Many Central Accounting staff have been terminated.”

The man tries to say it offhand, but it doesn't come out that way. “Have I been terminated?”

“Are you Frank Posterman?”

His eyes jump to her face. “No! Frank's the manager.”

“Then yes.”

His head rocks back. Gretel bleeds for him. But she keeps her face emotionless.

“I'm sorry.” Already two Security guards are moving forward. Gretel reaches across the expanse of the desk and offers him her hand. “You need to leave the building now. Thank you for your service to Zephyr Holdings, and good-bye.”

“She's good,” Klausman says, watching the monitor. “Compassionate, but professional. She won't do anything to help you, but you feel like she cares. That's exactly the kind of attitude that dampens emotional outbursts. Mona, make a note.”

The entire Project Alpha team is clustered behind him. This is today's morning meeting, relocated to the monitoring room so they can watch the action. Occasionally a tech in jeans and a T-shirt squeezes between them to fool with a keyboard, but otherwise the room's atmosphere is highly compressed Calvin Klein and Chanel No. 5. Blake stands behind Klausman's right shoulder and Eve his left; Jones is behind her. So far their conversation has consisted of “Good morning,” “Big day today,” and “Yes,” but from the way her eyes keep flicking to him, Eve couldn't be any more aware of Jones if he was carrying a meat cleaver. Blake has picked up on this; during his and Eve's frigid exchange, Jones felt his steely blue gaze—or, at least, the half of it that isn't hidden beneath a black matte patch adorned with tiny letters that spell out Armani.

“Look at level 2,” someone murmurs. All eyes leap to the monitor in the top corner. There Senior Management sits around a board table, their hands folded, their expressions somber. A speakerphone sits in the center of the table.

“They're getting updates from Security in the lobby,” Eve says. She is wearing a strappy green dress. Her brown shoulders gleam at Jones.

“Well, thus far, I have to say I'm impressed.” Klausman turns around for a second to see if anyone disagrees. The agents nod and murmur assent, except for Jones, who doesn't do anything at all. “They've followed the Omega recommendations protocol to the letter. Maybe a little overkill on the number of security guards, but better safe than sorry, eh? I remember a few years ago when Zephyr outsourced IT—not for the first or last time, of course”—chuckles from the agents; Eve's bare shoulders jiggle—“but the department manager, idiot that he was, told staff ahead of time. He actually called a meeting, announced it was everyone's last week, offered counseling, et cetera, et cetera, then sent them back to their desks. An hour later the phone system was down, company confidential files were on the public Web site, and when you tried to log on to your PC, you got a picture of a man doing something with a stapler that haunts me to this day. It took weeks to straighten out.”

“The thing that concerns me,” Blake says, when everyone has finished enjoying this little story, “is not the execution, but the strategy. Senior Management knows what it's doing, but it's hardly given any thought to why. Basically, they just jumped at the chance to reorganize.”

Klausman sighs and turns back to study the monitor. “True. Eve?”

“Ah . . . well, it's a Drifting Goals systems archetype. Same problem we always have with Senior Management.”

“Jones!” Klausman barks over his shoulder. “Do you know what she's talking about?”

“I can guess.”

“Go ahead.”

“The primary benefits of a position in Senior Management are increased status and increased salary. The disadvantages are decreased free time and increased stress. So, logically, the sort of people who end up working in Senior Management are those who are most motivated by money and status, and care least about missing time with friends and family.”

Klausman chuckles. “A somewhat unsympathetic view, Mr. Jones, but yes, you have the general idea.”

“We seem to be taking a fairly unsympathetic view toward employees currently being fired,” Jones says. “I thought that's what we were doing.”

Klausman, Eve, and Blake all turn around.

Into the awkward silence, Eve says, “Well, he's got a point. Senior Management is no different from any other department, for our purposes. I know we all feel a connection to the top execs—and hell, Blake's
in
Senior Management—but we shouldn't be identifying with anybody. We're objective researchers.”

Klausman nods slowly. “Indeed. Indeed. Fair point, both of you. And note, everyone, how valuable a fresh perspective is in identifying areas of potential groupthink.”

He turns back. After a second, so do Blake and Eve. Everyone around Jones looks thoughtful. Jones feels thoughtful, too, but not about Senior Management. He wonders why all of a sudden Eve is crawling up his butt.