Company (42 page)

Eve looks at Jones. “They're going to get in here.”

“I know.”

She takes his hand. “You have to stop them. Please. Jones.”

“How the hell do you think I can do that?”

“Please.” Her body trembles. “Jones, please, they're going to hurt us.”

Jones says nothing.

She cries harder.
“Jones, please don't let them touch me.”

Level 13 is not marked as such, of course. The door says
MAINTENANCE.
But it's after 12 and before 14, and if you're looking for it, it's not hard to spot. A man with his shirtsleeves rolled up over bulging biceps—perhaps until recently a frequent user of the Zephyr gym—is the first to reach it. He tries the handle, but it's locked. He slaps his hand against the door in frustration. From the other side, there is a startled yelp. The man turns and yells down the stairwell. “They're in here!”

Blake paces back and forth across the carpet. When he smooths back his hair, his hand trembles. Abruptly he grabs at his eye patch, pulls it off, and tosses it onto the carpet. The skin around his eye is gray and shiny. Something—or someone—crashes against the stairwell door, and Blake jumps. “We need some kind of barricade,” he says, his voice tight. “Something to . . .” He turns. “Jones. Jones. What's your plan?”

Jones looks up. “What?”

“Your plan. Come on. Yes, okay, you got us. Alpha is over. Congratulations. Now how are you getting out of this? You wouldn't have done this unless you had a way out for yourself.”

Jones feels sympathy for him. Not a lot, but some. “Sorry.”

Blake stares. Then he laughs. It comes out high and cracked, and breaks off when there's another crash from the stairwell door.

Eve curls into a ball on the carpet. Jones thinks about suggesting that she move. It wouldn't be a good idea for her to be here, under the bank of monitors, when the horde bursts in. That would make a bad situation worse.

He strokes her hair. “I don't think Zephyr is externalizing anymore,” he murmurs, as the stairwell lock splinters and the door bangs open.

He hears Mona scream. And somebody else—male or female, Jones can't tell—lets out a high, strangled shriek that he will never forget. “We're just businesspeople!
We're just businesspeople!”

Elizabeth walks to the corridor and presses for an elevator. She turns back to Staff Services, for one last look to remember it by—but there's nothing to look at. The people she worked with are already gone, seeking vengeance, and the interior decoration is nothing special. It's not even level 14, which at least had a distinctive feature in the Berlin Partition. There is nothing significant here for Elizabeth to remember.

Maybe that's why she feels good about leaving. When the elevator arrives, she enters it with a spring in her step. The farther it descends, the higher her mood lifts.
Good riddance!
she thinks. She feels like laughing.

She used to fall in love with her customers. What kind of person does that? Elizabeth wouldn't describe what she feels toward her embryo as love, not yet, but she knows that feeling is growing. By comparison, her workplace infatuations are—well, there is no comparison, is there? When she thinks about the person she was four months ago, she doesn't even know who that was.

She wonders what she will miss about Zephyr Holdings. This place has dominated her life for most of the last decade. It has largely defined her. But sifting through her memories, the one that stands out is the time she sat in a bathroom stall and realized she was pregnant. So, as the elevator doors slide open onto the parking lot and the ramp and the sunshine beyond, she decides the answer is: Not much.

APRIL

THEY CLAP LOUDLY,
passionately, and for far too long: they keep going even when the lights come up. It's a large room filled to capacity, so the applause rolls around like thunder. Jones, who knows he's not a rock star, feels embarrassed. He steps away from the podium and walks into the audience, where people rise from their seats and converge on him with a mixture of admiration and horror on their faces.

Today they are from a whole range of companies, and their name tags glimmer as they press in from three sides. He gets the usual questions—asked while eyes flick over his body for some sign of the injuries—and delivers his standard answers, which elicit mass groans of sympathy and exhalations of disgust. Then a woman at the back says, “Steve, I have a question. How do you sleep at night, knowing you caused all those people to be hurt?”

All eyes swivel to her. When he finds his voice, Jones says, “Hello, Eve.”

“I was going to come up before you went on,” she says,
clack
ing her way down the corridor. She's carrying a long black coat and wearing a thin gray skirt so narrow it's amazing she can walk, yet is somehow having no trouble keeping pace with him. “But then I thought, no, I don't want you changing it because I'm there. I want the full Steve Jones experience.”

“I thought you moved to New York,” he says. They arrive at his little dressing room and he begins packing up his things.

“I flew back just to see this. You must know why.” Her eyes search his. She looks, Jones has to admit, stunning. Her hair bounces; her skin glows; you wouldn't think that four months ago she was in traction.

“I have no idea.”

“I'm on the speaking circuit, too. I'm doing the exact same thing as you, only in Manhattan.” One corner of her mouth curves. “Well, maybe not the
exact
same thing. There may be certain details we don't agree on. But it's the same basic take-home message: ‘Don't piss your workers off so much that they bust into your office and beat the crap out of you.'” She laughs. “Oh, also, I charge more.”

Jones stops packing. “
You
are speaking about
ethics
?”

“At the end of the talk, when I tell them about the riot, we turn the main lights off so it's just me on a stool in a spotlight. It's so quiet, nobody even breathes. Then I'm done and the regular lights come back up, and I see this
ocean
of shocked faces. It's like their worst nightmare. It's like the most appalling thing they've ever heard.”

After a second, Jones laughs. “I don't know why I'm surprised.”

She's watching him carefully. “Are you pissed?”

He considers. “What you're doing now is not really relevant to me.”

Her lips press together. “How about Blake, then? He's selling cars now. Nice ones,” she adds, to Jones's expression. “If you want a good deal on a Merc, call him.” She tilts her head. “Or maybe not. Then there's Klausman; he retired. Moved to northern California, I think. I haven't heard from him since we beat the class action.”

“How much did that cost? Just out of interest. I heard you had about a dozen lawyers.”

“Look, Alpha did nothing illegal. I kept trying to tell you that. The only thing we were guilty of was giving those people jobs.”

“Fake jobs.”

“There's no requirement that jobs be meaningful, Jones. If there was, half the country would be unemployed. That's why we won the case.”

He zips up his bag. “Well, I'm glad to hear you're all doing so swell. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm meeting Freddy and Holly.”

Eve's eyebrows shoot up. “Don't tell me they
forgave
you. Wow. I wouldn't have. But then, I guess Freddy and Holly didn't end up in a hospital.” For a moment, her face twists. Then she smiles. “But! I did get a free nose job out of it. What do you think?”

“I was wondering what was different.” He hefts his bag. “Okay, I have to go.”

When he reaches the door, Eve says, “You know, I tried to get in touch with you.”

He looks at her. “I know.”

There's a silence, during which Eve seems to be waiting for Jones to say something. When he doesn't, she lets out a laugh. “To be honest, I had an ulterior motive for coming out here. I wanted to see how I would feel about you.” Her eyes flick between his. “To see whether I wanted to kill you or . . . not.” Again Jones says nothing. “Want to know which it is?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, come on. I know you still think about me. I think about you.”

Jones says, “Eve, I have no interest in you whatsoever.”

This is clearly not at all what she expected: her face registers surprise, then doubt, then finally her features harden into a mask. All this happens in about half a second. “I mean, when I say I think about you, it's just, I feel bad for you. I know it must piss you off that Blake and I are making good money, while you . . . well. But what can I say? That's how business works. Nobody gives a crap about ethics. That's why people like me will always be successful.”

“You have a funny definition of ‘successful.'”

She frowns. “Huh?”

“Still lonely?”

Eve blows air between her teeth. “I was never lonely. I just said that to make you feel better.”

Jones snickers. “It was good to see you again, Eve. Really.”

He leaves the dressing room, his bag over his shoulder. He is almost at the exit, where Freddy and Holly will be waiting for him—he can't wait to tell them about
this—
when Eve calls out, “Hey, Jones. Don't blame me when America loses its corporate base to countries that aren't so hung up on
labor conditions,
okay?”

He turns. “I don't blame you for anything. Except being you.”

Eve thinks about this for a moment. Then she grins. “Thanks,” she says.