Company - Max Barry [86]
“Why does everyone around here use animal analogies?”
She grins. “Because it's a zoo. A big, corporate zoo.”
“Well, I don't have feathers coming out of my butt. And I'm not going to kiss you just because you have a long list of practical reasons for it.”
“I'm a practical girl.” She nods. “A practical, practical girl.”
“I noticed.”
“But that doesn't mean I have no feelings, Jones. I also have a nonpractical reason.”
“You do?”
“I do. Do you want to hear it?”
“I'm not sure.”
“Yes or no?”
Jones hesitates. The correct answer here is clearly no. It is also probably to stand up and walk out of the apartment. But what he says is: “Yes.”
She smiles. “Okay. I . . .” She looks down and laughs. “Now I'm embarrassed.”
“Forget it,” he says, already regretting his decision.
She puts her hand on his. “I want to be honest with you. But . . . this is new territory for me.” She pushes herself up in the bed and adjusts the pillows behind her. When she arches her back, Jones's eyes drift helplessly down to where her breasts push out her nightgown. He tears his gaze away, but not before he realizes he is in serious, serious trouble.
“So,” he says, “you slept with Blake.”
Eve freezes. “What?”
In one sense, this is a terrific success: it plugs a lot of Jones's more alarming feelings and gets him back on task. But he can't believe he just used a line from Days of Our Lives. This is the noxious nature of Blake, Jones realizes: he brings you down to his level.
“You think I slept with Blake?”
“Did you?”
She looks stupefied. “God, I wish.”
Jones says, “I have to go now.”
“Jones! No, I mean, years ago, I had a thing for him, it didn't work out. I don't want to sleep with him now. I couldn't; it'd be too competitive. We're Alpha's top two after Klausman. You can't date someone who's the same level as you. You have to go up or down.”
“I'm pretty sure it's the other way around.”
She frowns. “But then to get promoted, one of you has to climb over the other. No, no, it's much neater if you understand who's boss from the beginning.”
This makes a kind of sense. Jones wonders if he is losing his grip on reality. Then he realizes he is being seduced by a woman with a throat infection on a bed dotted with used tissues, so the answer is probably yes.
“A while ago, Zephyr made everyone sign this thing called a Love Contract. It indemnified the company against issues arising out of people screwing their boss, or their secretary. I should say, issues that arose when they stopped screwing their secretary. But it wasn't enough. We had a sexual harassment complaint from an employee who wasn't harassed. She said she was discriminated against because her co-workers, who were dating, gave each other preferential treatment.” Eve rolls her eyes. “I mean, that was probably true, but it's not like the company banned her from dating co-workers. If you ask me, the real culprit was her skin condition. But anyway, now nobody in Zephyr is allowed to date anybody else.” She bites her lip. “Alpha, of course, is outside those rules.”
“I'm pretty sure it's illegal for a company to say who its staff can and can't form relationships with.”
“That's true. But Zephyr's policy doesn't ban relationships, it bans sexual harassment. And harassment is defined as making an unsolicited approach. You see, you can't ask anyone out unless they ask you to. Which they can't, because that would be sexual harassment.” She smiles. “Alpha didn't invent this. Zephyr came up with it all by itself. That's the magic of Alpha, right there.”
Jones doesn't say anything. This helps; it reminds him why he needs to sabotage Alpha. It also explains why so many Zephyr employees have chewed fingernails.
“Anyway,” Eve says, “what else did Blake say?”
“He wasn't very complimentary about you.”
“Yeah, that's a given. Ah, forget it. I don't care about Blake. I don't want to talk about him. I want to talk about