by Max Barry
Klausman laughs. “You're probably too young to remember, Jones, but there was a time when a man filled your gas tank for you. A boy carried your groceries to your car. There was a time when you hardly ever stood in line, not outside of a government office. But labor is a source of cost, so companies externalized it. They, as you say, shat it out. And those costs landed exactly where they belonged: on their customers.”
“And on their remaining staff.”
“Quite so. Quite so. Hence: ‘Doing more with less.' You know, Jones, I wish I had more employees like you. Actually, I wish I had fewer employees not like you. You know what I mean. You're an exception: graduates are generally idiots. Enthusiastic idiots, yes, but that's no compensation. In fact, if anything, that exacerbates the problem.” He scratches his nose. “I'm thinking of cutting the graduate program. People say it brings in new ideas, but they're mainly stupid ideas. A man's brain is no good to a company until he's at least forty, in my opinion. Or a woman's. Can't be sexist, now. Of course, the problem then is when they do have good ideas, they can't be bothered to do anything about them.” Klausman falls silent, musing. “Anyway, my point is that you have a future here, Jones. I can see you running this place one day. Not soon.” He winks. “But one day.”
“Jones? Jones?” Sydney calls.
Klausman already has his back turned and is mopping the floor. Jones jolts into motion. “Hi.”
“I had to sign for this.” Sydney pushes a courier's bag across the counter, glaring at him—because of the package, her new duties, or just a general attitude, Jones can't tell.
“Sorry. Thanks.” He tears open the bag. Inside is a shrink-wrapped box that says NOKIA 6225 and a plastic-encased SIM card. There's no note.
“Hey, new cell phone,” says a man beside him. “Where'd you get that from?” Jones has no idea. The man looks at Sydney with a bemused expression. “Got one for me, too?”
“What?” Sydney snaps, having not followed this. Jones takes the opportunity to carry his package over to the visitors area and sit down. When he has successfully unpacked everything and put it together, he is rewarded with a little animation, a friendly tune, and: YOU HAVE 1 NEW TEXT MESSAGE.
A few button presses later, he has that, too. It says: IM SICK + BORED CALL ME
As he heads back to the elevator, Klausman and his mop veer in his direction. Jones's heart races. He is suddenly sure that Klausman is going to grill him about the phone, which, for some reason, he shouldn't have. His fingers tighten on the package. His brain vomits up a mass of inexplicable advice, like: Don't tell him it's from Eve. But then the elevator doors open on a packed elevator of loud, laughing suits, and as they walk by, Klausman's eyes remain glued to the floor. Jones steps into the empty car. When the doors slide closed, he remembers to breathe. He laughs shakily at his own reaction. He is clearly becoming either paranoid or insightful. He wishes he knew which.
“Hello?”
“It's me.”
“Ah! Jo . . . one second . . . choo! Oh, God. Sorry. It's good to hear your voice.”
“You sound like you're dead.”
“Not yet. Just . . . very . . . phlegmy.”
“Want me to come over?” He waits. He can't believe he just said this.
“Sorry, what?” There is a rustling noise. “Oh, God, that was my last tissue.”
“I'll come visit you,” Jones says. “With tissues.”
“Oh . . . Jones. That's really sweet, but . . . I'm not exactly looking my best.”
“I don't mind.”
“My eyes are puffy, my skin is greasy, my nose is red—not to mention dribbling—”
“Well, that's why you need tissues.”
A pause. “You seriously want to come over?”
“Yeah.”
“Even though I look like someone just dug me up.”
“Sure.”
She starts to laugh, which turns into a coughing fit. “Jones, you are something else.”
“Come on, give me your address.”
“Well,” she says, “so long as you know what you're in for.”
He is not hugely surprised when Eve's address turns out to be a sleek, modern building fronting the bay, nor that her apartment is at the very top and has its own elevator. He presses the intercom button while a light breeze tugs at his shirt, and takes the opportunity to think about what he's doing.
What he needs are some ground rules. Yes, he is visiting Eve. And yes, he is attracted to her. That's fine, so long as he handles it properly. There will be no flirting. No touching. He will not discuss incidents from his past, particularly of the romantic variety. He will keep the conversation on task; that is, he will get Eve to talk about Alpha so that he can learn how to break it.
“Hello?” the intercom croaks.
“It's me.”
The door in front of him goes clack. He pushes it open and rides the elevator to floor P, which Jones guesses stands for penthouse. It opens onto a six-foot corridor with a single door at the end, and as he approaches, this goes clack, too. He turns the handle and steps into Eve's apartment.
He is expecting a huge, light-filled room dotted with ultramodern furniture in coordinated colors. He is half right: it is enormous. And the sun does bounce off the bay beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. But it is also practically empty. The only furniture is a single, lonely-looking table in the middle of the carpet and a few wooden chairs. There's a giant TV, but it's on the floor. Facing it is not a sofa but a spongy-looking mat.
He takes a guess and heads up a spiral staircase, past a gigantic stylized painting of the Seattle skyline—which, if Jones has his geography right, includes this building. Then the reflection of something colorful catches his eye, and he turns around to see a walk-in closet filled with clothes and shoes.
It is easily the size of Jones's bedroom. On each side are racks jammed with pants, skirts, dresses, and jackets. At least half still have tags attached, sporting names like Balenciaga, Chloë, Prada, and Rodriguez—which mean very little to Jones, other than expensive. The far end of the closet is a solid wall of boxes, and as Jones draws closer he sees each one has stuck on it a Polaroid photo of a pair of shoes. He is dumbstruck. There are enough clothes in here for Eve to wear a completely different outfit each day for about two years.
“Jones?”
He leaves the closet and finds the bedroom next door. Inside, Eve is propped up on a king-size bed, looking pale and bleary in a thin nightdress. The curtains are closed and the lamps on—which, as this room actually has furniture, rest on bedside tables. A full-length mirror stands on the far side of the room, beside one of two large wooden chests of drawers. There are more cupboards. One corner of the carpet contains a mound of balled-up tissues, suggesting that Eve recently staggered out of bed and swept them all there.
“Sorry,” she croaks. “Is this too gross?”
“In my job, I see a lot worse.” He holds out the tissues—eight boxes' worth, because Eve was very specific about the brand, which turns out to be sold only in tiny, beautifully packaged boxes. He's a little relieved to see that Eve is genuinely ill, because it will make it easier to stick to his ground rules, and a little disappointed, for the same reason.
“I love you so much for coming.” Her smile is unusually loose, almost goofy.
“Are you high?”
“I did take a number of anti-flu tablets, once I knew you were coming over.”
“Was it a large number?”
“I wanted to perk up for you.” The smile wobbles across her face again. Her pupils are huge; at first he'd thought it was the low light. She slides down the pillows and clasps her hands above her head in a position Jones finds confrontational. “Come, sit with me.”
“Uh . . . no, I'm okay.”
“You can't just stand there.”
“How much are all those clothes worth?” he says.
“I don't know. I never added it up.”
“It must be . . .” He starts to do sums in his head,
then realizes the figure is going to be ludicrous. “How are you going to wear all that?”
“It's not just the wearing. It's the acquiring, and the having. Come on, sit.”
He stays on his feet. “Don't take this the wrong way, but have you considered therapy about this?”
“I do see a therapist. But I'm not allowed to tell you what we talk about.”
“Oh. Okay. Wait, you're not allowed to tell me specifically?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not?”
“I can't tell you.”
Jones exhales.
“He said you won't understand.”
“I'm trying to think why you're discussing me with your therapist.”
“Because you're important to me, Jones.” She blows her nose. “God, thank you so much for these tissues.”
He eyes her. “If you don't want to tell me, that's—”
“He says you're a mother figure to me.”
Jones sits on the bed.
“I know what you're thinking,” Eve says. “Mother figure? But it's nothing to do with sex. It's about roles.” She leaves a pause, in case Jones wants to say something. “My dad's a loser, not like you at all. Mom was the strict one.”
“You think I'm strict?”
“Dr. Franks—that's my therapist—says you fill a need for moral guidance that's been missing since I left home.”
“This is very disturbing.”
“It's really a compliment. It speaks to how much I look up to you.”
“I thought you didn't even like your mom.”
“I don't.”
“I'm confused.”
“Maybe you should see Dr. Franks,” Eve says. “He's very good.”
Jones stands up again. “Did you give me that phone because you're sick and you wanted your mom to come take care of you?”
Eve laughs, then sneezes, then laughs again. “That's so funny. I have to tell that to Dr. Franks. Jones—hey, come on, sit. Sit down.” She waits until he complies. Then her lips curve. “Kiss me.”
“What?”
“Are you worried about the virus? Don't be a sissy.”
“Eve, I'm not going to kiss you.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . it would be a bad idea.”
“I want you to know I don't think of you as my mom.”
“Fine. I accept that. But no.”
“It's because I'm sick and ugly, isn't it.” This isn't a question. Her face pinches.
“Eve, you're very attractive. Even with a bit of tissue stuck to your nose.”
She rubs her nose and inspects her finger. “That's embarrassing.”
“You're not ugly,” Jones says firmly. “Trust me.”
“How can I trust you? You're the new wiz kid at Alpha. That was me, a few years ago.” She puts a hand on her chest. “That was me. And you won't even kiss me. How do I know you won't hurt me?”
Jones blinks. “I won't hurt you.” As this comes out, he realizes he really means it. Exactly how this dovetails with his aim of sabotaging Alpha is not clear.
“Prove it.”
“No.”
She sneezes.
“Anyway,” Jones says, paddling for calmer conversational waters, “illness is a major cause of corporate productivity loss. As an agent for Alpha, you should know better.”
She wipes her nose. “You know with peacocks, only the males have colorful tails? The gene that causes that also lowers their immune system. That's why females find it sexy, not just because the colors are pretty, but because they're proof the male is strong enough to fight off infection even with a lowered immune system.”
“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 you.”
“It's okay, you don't—”
Eve leans forward and takes his hands. Jones's sentence terminates with a sound like uck. “Jones,” she says. In the lamplight her eyes look enormous: huge and dark and unreadable. “I knew
you were smart right from the beginning. The way you found out about Alpha so fast . . . that impressed me. Then we went for a ride in my car and I thought you were an idiot. You had to be, because whenever people raise ethics, it's a cover. They're worried what other people will think, or whether it's legal, or else they're just too scared to make a decision. But you're something else. And I finally worked out what. You're a good man.” Jones feels his eyebrows bounce up. “You probably don't even know that that's rare. But it is. It is to me. Every man I know is either smart and selfish, or generous and stupid. And I don't like those people, Jones. Guys like Blake and Klausman, I respect them, but I don't like them. You . . . you're different. This is going to sound stupid, but I swear to God, I didn't even know there could be someone like you. I didn't think it was possible.” To Jones's alarm, her eyes begin to glisten. “You make me feel like a piece of me is missing.” She pulls a tissue from a box and wipes her nose. “I'm not saying I want to be exactly like you. That's probably impossible. But I don't want you to become like them, either. You are admirable, Jones. I feel it in my heart. You're good. I think . . . we could learn from each other. I think we need each other. I think . . .” She stops. “I know. I know I need you. I really need you.”
“Oh. Boy,” Jones says. In his mind, there are alarms going off everywhere. His hands are sweating. His chest is constricting. Violently different ideas about what to do next crash against each other in his head.
“If you laugh,” she says, “I'm going to kill you.”
“I'm not going to laugh.”
“I haven't done this before.”
“What?”
“I mean, said things like this.”
“Oh,” Jones says, with relief.
“I'm not saying I'm a virgin.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Not since I was thirteen. But that wasn't exactly voluntary, and there was no one else until I was twenty. So you could say I'm a late bloomer.” She smiles at his expression. “Ah, Jones, you are so cute when you're appalled.”
All he can say is, “Oh, God.”
“Kiss me. Please?”
He kisses her.
Her lips are dry and cracked; still, when they touch his, something hot and brilliant sparks behind his eyeballs. Maybe it's his ground rules. Jones has imagined this moment many times, sometimes idly, sometimes not so idly, and in none of those scenarios was Eve sick. This should, therefore, be one of those times when fantasy is deflated by the mundane prick of reality. Only it's not. Kissing her feels like the best thing he has ever done.