Company - Max Barry [59]
Jones says, “Why did she take his donut?”
“Look, please, if you tell, Elizabeth will know it came from me.”
“Okay, okay,” Freddy says. “It's just between us.”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. She was hungry, that's all. It wasn't anything personal. Please, promise me you'll keep this secret.” Her voice wavers. Her face is pinched and anxious, her frown line a sharp tilde. “This is exactly what I was talking about!”
“Of course we won't tell,” Jones says. “Right?”
“Right, right.” Freddy licks his lips. Knowledge is power, and Freddy has a big, doughy chunk.
Holly still looks nervous. Jones says, “About that being two people thing. I know what you mean.”
“You do?” She looks at him hopefully. “Do you think everyone does?”
They look at Freddy, who is lost in thought. “What?” he says. “I'm not going to tell Roger about the donut.”
Rumor production slackens toward the end of October. Without any new information on the consolidations, the rumors turn in on themselves, becoming ever more fanciful. When someone claims that Senior Management is cutting Human Resources, that's the end; nobody can believe that. The atmosphere of desperate, ignorant terror essential to healthy rumors seeps away, replaced by a silent, wary paranoia. People bunker down, jealously keeping what they know, which is nothing, to themselves. As hands reach for jackets each night and briefcases are snapped closed, employees exchange suspicious farewells, each wondering if the other is concealing something. They conjecture what might await them the next day, and who might not. As they ride the elevator down, they eye the button panel and wonder how many holes it will soon have.
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.