Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [155]
“Uh-huh.”
“After we first met, he asked me out five times. At first I said no, but finally I said yes. We’re happily married now. And the other day he said to me that, given the climate now, if we met today, he probably wouldn’t ask me out five times. He’d just drop it.”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I know. But those situations will settle out eventually. In a year or two, everybody will know what the new rules are.”
“Yes, but—”
“But the problem is that there’s that third category, somewhere in the middle, between the two extremes,” Fernandez said. “Where the behavior is gray. It’s not clear what happened. It’s not clear who did what to whom. That’s the largest category of complaints we see. So far, society’s tended to focus on the problems of the victim, not the problems of the accused. But the accused has problems, too. A harassment claim is a weapon, Bob, and there are no good defenses against it. Anybody can use the weapon—and lots of good people have. It’s going to continue for a while, I think.”
Garvin sighed.
“It’s like that virtual reality thing you have,” Fernandez said. “Those environments that seem real but aren’t really there. We all live every day in virtual environments, defined by our ideas. Those environments are changing. It’s changed with regard to women, and it’s going to start changing with regard to men. The men didn’t like it when it changed before, and the women aren’t going to like it changing now. And some people will take advantage. But in the final analysis, it’ll all work out.”
“When? When will it all end?” Garvin said, shaking his head.
“When women have fifty percent of the executive positions,” she said. “That’s when it will end.”
“You know I favor that.”
“Yes,” Fernandez said, “and I gather you have just appointed an outstanding woman. Congratulations, Bob.”
Mary Anne Hunter was assigned to drive Meredith Johnson to the airport, to take a plane back to Cupertino. The two women sat in silence for fifteen minutes, Meredith Johnson hunched down in her trench coat, staring out the window.
Finally, when they were driving past the Boeing plant, Johnson said, “I didn’t like it here, anyway.”
Choosing her words carefully, Hunter said, “It has its good and bad points.”
There was another silence. Then Johnson asked, “Are you a friend of Sanders?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a nice guy,” Johnson said. “Always was. You know, we used to have a relationship.”
“I heard that,” Hunter said.
“Tom didn’t do anything wrong, really,” Johnson said. “He just didn’t know how to handle a passing remark.”
“Uh-huh,” Hunter said.
“Women in business have to be perfect all the time, or they just get murdered. One little slip and they’re dead.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes,” Hunter said. “I know.”
There was another long silence. Johnson shifted in her seat.
She stared out the window.
“The system,” Johnson said. “That’s the problem. I was raped by the fucking system.”
Sanders was leaving the building, on his way to the airport to pick up Susan and the kids, when he ran into Stephanie Kaplan. He congratulated her on the appointment. She shook his hand and said without smiling, “Thank you for your support.”
He said, “Thank you for yours. It’s nice to have a friend.”
“Yes,” she said. “Friendships are nice. So is competence. I’m not going to keep this job very long, Tom. Nichols is out as CFO of Conley, and their number-two man is a modest talent at best. They’ll be looking for someone in a year or so. And when I go over there, someone will have to take over the new company here. I imagine it should be you.”
Sanders bowed slightly.
“But that’s in the future,” Kaplan said crisply. “In the meantime, we have to get the work here back on track. The division is a mess. Everyone’s been distracted by this merger, and the product lines have been compromised