Company - Max Barry [51]
“Then. In the meeting. But he has a point.” She pulls out a jacket and holds it in front of him. Even through the plastic, Jones can tell it's expensive. “For your eyes, I'm thinking something in charcoal.”
“I can't afford a new suit.”
“Suits. You need more than one. Don't worry, you'll pay me back.” She holds it out to him.
He doesn't move.
A smile tugs at her lips. “I'm only offering you clothes. You don't have to take my morals.”
“Look, I'm not an idiot. I understand that business is about making money. I just want to know that we treat our employees properly. That we, you know, care about them.”
“Honestly? We don't. But maybe that's what you can change.” She lets go of the suit.
Jones grabs it out of reflex. “Okay. Maybe I will.”
She smiles, turns, and walks to the smoked glass. “Try it on.”
He hesitates, unsure how revealing his reflection will be in that glass. Then he starts undressing. As he peels back the plastic, he gets a whiff of the suit's fresh, confident scent.
Eve says, “They're dusting the mound. Why do they need to dust? It's made of dirt.” She shakes her head. “You know, you and I are working on similar projects at Alpha.”
Jones threads his belt through his pants. “Really? What's yours?”
“Pregnancy.” She turns around. “Are you done?”
Jones zips. “Pregnancy?”
She walks over and looks him up and down. Then she starts fixing him: correcting the folds of his jacket, straightening his tie, tugging his shirt into place. “It's a major cost. Maternity leave is just the tip of the iceberg. The more pregnant a worker gets, the less she works. She's drawing the same paycheck, but taking more breaks, leaving earlier, concentrating less, making more personal calls, and chatting longer to other co-workers, mostly about what it's like to be pregnant. Which, incidentally, results in a small but significant increase in the desire of her co-workers to also get pregnant, so she's effectively contagious. Then there's maternity leave, paternity leave, increased absenteeism to look after sick kids, decreased willingness to work overtime . . . Management needs to take note of effects like that. They'd be negligent not to.” She reaches around him and yanks up his trousers. “What are you doing here? These aren't hipsters.”
“You can't discriminate against employees because they're pregnant,” Jones says. “Jesus, that's illegal.”
“Same as it's illegal to discriminate against smokers. Like I say, we're working on similar projects. We're trying to discourage workers from activities that cost the company money.” Her hands slip down Jones's butt, in a way that he suspects is not strictly necessary to adjust his pants. “Although, on a personal note, I don't see why I have to effectively subsidize every woman on the payroll whose life is so dull that she needs to inject children into it.”
“I'm not really comfortable discussing pregnancy while you're squeezing my butt.”
“I'm not squeezing. This is squeezing.”
“Doesn't Zephyr have a policy on inter-employee relationships?”
“Of course. But we're not in Zephyr. We're in Alpha.”
“Does Alpha?”
“We're surprisingly open-minded.”
“You're still holding my ass.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
He suddenly realizes he could kiss her. In fact, given that she's currently groping him, it's probably what she's expecting. But Jones still has a bad taste in his mouth from the pregnancy thing, and he reaches back and removes her hands from his butt.
“Oh, come on.” Her eyebrows jump. “Really?” She looks bewildered. She turns, walks to the sofa, and drops onto it.
Jones says, “Sorry. I think that would be a bad idea.”
“You're right. You'd get the wrong impression of me; it'd be awkward at work . . . we should keep things professional.”
“Right.”
“More Scotch?”
“Sure.” He walks over to the sofa.
Eve refills their glasses. He can actually see her regaining her composure. By the time she hands him his glass, she is smiling. She looks so beautiful that he starts to wonder whether he made the right decision. “Well!” she says. “I can tell it's going to be interesting to have