Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [77]
“This has nothing to do with Susan.”
“Yeah? I think it does. You’ve been late two days running and even when you’re here, you walk around like you’re dreaming. You’re in fucking dreamland, Tom. I mean, what the hell were you doing, going to Meredith’s office at night, anyway?”
“She asked me to come to her office. She’s the boss. You’re saying I shouldn’t have gone?”
Lewyn shook his head in disgust. “This innocent act is a lot of crap. Don’t you take any responsibility for anything?”
“What—”
“Look, Tom, everybody in the company knows that Meredith is a shark. Meredith Manmuncher, they call her. The Great White. Everybody knows she’s protected by Garvin, that she can do what she wants. And what she wants is to play grabass with cute guys who show up in her office at the end of the day. She has a couple of glasses of wine, she gets a little flushed, and she wants service. A delivery boy, a trainee, a young account guy. Whatever. And nobody can say a word because Garvin thinks she walks on water. So, how come everybody else in the company knows it but you?”
Sanders was stunned. He did not know how to answer. He stared at Lewyn, who stood very close to him, his body hunched, hands in his pockets. He could feel Lewyn’s breath on his face. But he could hardly hear Lewyn’s words. It was as if they came to him from a great distance.
“Hey, Tom. You walk the same halls, you breathe the same air as the rest of us. You know who’s doing what. You go marching up there to her office . . . and you know damned well what’s coming. Meredith’s done everything but announce to the world that she wants to suck your dick. All day long, she’s touching your arm, giving you those meaningful little looks and squeezes. Oh, Tom. So nice to see you again. And now you tell me you didn’t know what was coming in that office? Fuck you, Tom. You’re an asshole.”
The elevator doors opened. Before them, the ground floor lobby was deserted, growing dark in the fading light of the June evening. A soft rain fell outside. Lewyn started toward the exit, then turned back. His voice echoed in the lobby.
“You realize,” he said, “that you’re acting like one of those women in all this. The way they always go, ‘Who, me? I never intended that.’ The way they go, ‘Oh, it’s not my responsibility. I never thought if I got drunk and kissed him and went to his room and lay down on his bed that he’d fuck me. Oh dear me no.’ It’s bullshit, Tom. Irresponsible bullshit. And you better think about what I’m saying, because there’s a lot of us who have worked every bit as hard as you have in this company, and we don’t want to see you screw up this merger and this spin-off for the rest of us. You want to pretend you can’t tell when a woman’s coming on to you, that’s fine. You want to screw up your own life, it’s your decision. But you screw up mine, and I’m going to fucking put you away.”
Lewyn stalked off. The elevator doors started to close. Sanders stuck his hand out; the doors closed on his fingers. He jerked his hand, and the doors opened again. He hurried out into the lobby after Lewyn.
He grabbed Lewyn on the shoulder. “Mark, wait, listen—”
“I got nothing to say to you. I got kids, I got responsibilities. You’re an asshole.”
Lewyn shrugged Sanders’s arm off, pushed open the door, and walked out. He strode quickly away, down the street.
As the glass doors closed, Sanders saw a flash of blond in the moving reflection. He turned.
“I thought that was a little unfair,” Meredith Johnson said. She was standing about twenty feet behind him, near the elevators. She was wearing gym clothes—navy tights, and a sweatshirt—and she carried a gym bag in her hand. She looked beautiful, overtly sexual in a certain way. Sanders felt tense: there was no one else in the lobby. They were alone.
“Yes,” Sanders said. “I thought it was unfair.”
“I meant, to women,” Meredith said. She swung the gym bag over her shoulder, the movement raising her sweatshirt and exposing her bare abdomen above her tights. She shook her head and pushed her hair back