Company - Max Barry [113]
This is clearly not at all what she expected: her face registers surprise, then doubt, then finally her features harden into a mask. All this happens in about half a second. “I mean, when I say I think about you, it's just, I feel bad for you. I know it must piss you off that Blake and I are making good money, while you . . . well. But what can I say? That's how business works. Nobody gives a crap about ethics. That's why people like me will always be successful.”
“You have a funny definition of ‘successful.'”
She frowns. “Huh?”
“Still lonely?”
Eve blows air between her teeth. “I was never lonely. I just said that to make you feel better.”
Jones snickers. “It was good to see you again, Eve. Really.”
He leaves the dressing room, his bag over his shoulder. He is almost at the exit, where Freddy and Holly will be waiting for him—he can't wait to tell them about this—when Eve calls out, “Hey, Jones. Don't blame me when America loses its corporate base to countries that aren't so hung up on labor conditions, okay?”
He turns. “I don't blame you for anything. Except being you.”
Eve thinks about this for a moment. Then she grins. “Thanks,” she says.
Acknowledgments
I AM ETERNALLY grateful to those people who read my crappy first drafts and told me what they think. I know it's not easy to read three hundred pages of unbelievable characters and inexplicable plot developments, then craft an insightful, helpful response that doesn't also make me want to jump off a bridge. But somehow these people did it, and it's thanks to them that I managed to claw my way toward something that finally resembled a novel: Beth English, Roxanne Jones, Gregory Lister, Lindsay Lyon, and Dennis Widmyer.
Charles Thiesen, my mentor (or I'm his, I forget), read more drafts than I can remember and played cheerleader when I needed encouragement, and oracle when I needed advice.
Kassy Humphreys gave me a ton of great ideas exactly when I needed them, and, as if this wasn't enough, let me plunder huge tracts of her career for inclusion in the book. As she said, “It would be funny if it wasn't my life.”
Luke Janklow, my agent, continues to be the most dependable, supportive, and all-round awesome guy in the Universe.
It's thanks to Bill Thomas, my editor, that the final version of this book bears little resemblance to the one I sold him. That's a good thing, trust me. He helped turn a book I was happy with into one I loved.
And Jen, my wife, is perfect. Always.
ALSO BY MAX BARRY
Syrup
Jennifer Government
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 2007
Copyright � 2006 by Max Barry.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Barry, Max.
Company : a novel / by Max Barry.
p. cm.
1. Young men—Fiction. 2. Corporation—Fiction. 3. Business ethics—Fiction. 4. Work environment—Fiction. 5. Corporate culture—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.A7424C66 2005
813'.54�dc22
2005048498
www.vintagebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-27966-8
v3.0