Company - Max Barry [13]
“What?” Jones moves over to look at Freddy's screen. He is about to discover why he is the last person to arrive at work at eight thirty in the morning: Roger and Elizabeth have been hard at work backing out orders. Friday afternoon the reps heard Sydney say: I'm sacking reps who earn too much commission. Elizabeth has been here since seven thirty. When she arrived, Roger was already at his desk, leaving voice mails for clients to tell them the price he quoted earlier is wrong, much too low; also, it's looking as if Training Delivery won't be able to fulfill any orders for months. Elizabeth grabbed her phone and, her heart breaking, began telling customers in a low, pained voice that things just weren't working out; that it wasn't them, it was her; that she wasn't in a place where she could fulfill their needs.
“Roger's on minus eighty,” Holly says from across the aisle. “Elizabeth's on minus three hundred. She got that big order from Marketing last month canceled.” Holly can't quite keep the pride out of her voice.
“Looks like you've got a lot of work to do,” Freddy says. “You don't want to make the other reps look bad. Could be tough explaining those canceled orders if you're bringing in new ones.”
Jones's eyes flick helplessly between Freddy and Holly.
“It's okay,” Freddy says. “I'll help you out.”
“Thanks. Thanks.” Jones exhales. “But first I have to make Roger a coffee.”
A pair of beautiful eyes watch Jones walk to the coffee machine. They belong to Megan, the PA. Megan is overweight, her skin is a disaster zone, and no matter what she tries her hair looks as if she was caught without an umbrella while walking to work, but her eyes are gorgeous. People talk about bedroom eyes; well, Megan has the whole suite.
One of her hands takes hold of her computer mouse. The cord snakes between the army of ceramic bears, but doesn't disturb a single one. On her screen, she clicks a file called JACTIVITY.TXT. She scrolls down to 8/23 and carefully types: 8:49 COFFEE.
Megan is infatuated. With Jones's sandy hair, his lean body, his crisp, new, blindingly white shirts—she loves everything, the whole package. She loves how he strides from place to place. How he looks clearly and directly at things—but not in an arrogant way, like a manager (or a sales rep). He is not trying to impress people all the time, like Roger. He doesn't give you the impression that he thinks you've either done something wrong or are about to, like Elizabeth. He doesn't act differently depending on whom he's talking to. He is simply Jones: fresh, new, and utterly gorgeous.
She has taken to imagining erotic scenarios: Jones coming over to borrow a stapler and her grabbing his tie and pulling him close. His eyes widening in shock as their lips crush together, his hands touching her body, tentative at first, then with growing passion as they clamber onto her desk, sweeping the ceramic bears aside (carefully, none damaged), his eyes locked onto hers—yes! Yes!
When he sits at his desk, all she can see over the partition is his hair. Sometimes he stretches, and she sees his arms, maybe a flash of wrist, and her heart pounds; on these occasions she opens up JACTIVITY.TXT and writes the time and STRETCH.
She will die before allowing anyone to discover this. People would think it was creepy. They wouldn't understand: this is simply her way of being close to him. She has never spoken to him. Nobody bothered to introduce them; she was simply pointed out along with the xerox machine and other pieces of useful office furniture. PAs get no respect in Zephyr Holdings, Megan knows. They are the illegal immigrant laborers of the company; their existence is tolerated, but nobody bothers to get close. PAs are as interchangeable as Erector set components; they wheel one out and install someone else and hardly anybody notices the difference. Nobody looks at a PA properly, Megan has discovered. Instead, their eyes simply slide over you. And the biggest waste in the world is a PA with nice eyes, because no one