Finally he pulled out, degradingly wiping the last few drops on her nose and cheeks. He tucked his monstrous penis back between his legs and pulled up his pants to hold it in place.
She was gasping for air, and he patted the top of her head. “Good meeting,” he said, grinning. “Maybe you’ll be able to keep your job.”
He started to leave, then returned, poking his head around the corner. “You could stand to lose a few pounds, though. I suggest you come back to the program next week and weigh in.”
He left again, and, sobbing, Lupe pulled up her panties, turned around and threw up into the toilet. She could still taste him in her mouth, and she continued to vomit until her stomach was empty and the only thing her convulsing stomach could bring up was a thin dribble of mucous and saliva. Flushing, she made her way over to the sink, where she washed her face and rinsed her mouth out with water from the faucet.
AIDS, she couldn’t help thinking. What if he has AIDS?
By the time she returned to CompWare and her desk, she was ten minutes late, something Todd—Stool Sample—noted instantly, although, at this point, she didn’t really care. She wanted to tell Craig what had happened, but didn’t know how, knew she should report it to the police, but was afraid to do so. She was filled with an almost constant desire to spit and went through an entire box of Kim Wipes in the next hour and a half, using the oversized tissues to collect, absorb and wipe away the accumulated saliva in her mouth.
Before the beginning of lunch, she walked into Craig’s office, closing the door behind her to keep Todd and Mrs. Adams from hearing.
“I’m quitting,” she said.
At first, Craig thought she was joking. He started to make a bantering reply, but the expression on her face must have convinced him of the seriousness of her intent. “Really?” he said.
She nodded.
He was shocked. “So you’re giving your two-week’s notice?”
“No. No two-week’s notice. This is it. I’m not coming back after lunch.”
“But you won’t even get your severance!”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I have to get away from here.”
He stood immediately, coming around the desk. She thought he was going to try and hug her, and she stepped back involuntarily, not wanting to be touched. Obviously sensing her mood, he backed off, and her eyes filled with tears at the thought that they wouldn’t be working together anymore.
“Lupe?”
She couldn’t meet his gaze.
“What is it? What happened? Whatever it is, I’ll—”
“There’s nothing you can do,” she said.
“Is it the consultants? We can wait them out…”
She shook her head adamantly. “I can’t work here anymore.”
“Lupe…”
She burst into tears, and though flinching at the initial contact, she finally let him hug her.
“You can tell me,” he said. “Whatever happened, whatever it is…”
She shook her head against his shoulder, and gathering herself together, she sucked in her breath and pulled away. “I can’t.”
“Just tell me,” he pressed. “Does it have something to do with the consultants?”
She found herself nodding. “But I’m quitting. I’m not waiting them out. I can’t.”
“I understand,” he assured her. “But just listen, okay? I have an idea.”
“What?”
“They’re going to leave eventually, right? So what I’ll do is talk to Broderick in HR and see if I can get you a leave of absence or something. If that’s not feasible, I just won’t fill your position. I’ll take a temp if they force me, but I’ll keep the position open. Once BFG’s gone, you can apply again, and I’ll make sure you get it.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “You can’t leave me now. We’re supposed to be in this together.”
Through her tears, she smiled at him, and he smiled back, giving her shoulders a slight squeeze. “All right then.”
“But not until they’re gone,” she told him. “I can’t…”
“I know.”
She took a deep breath. “Thank you.”
“Go out there, grab your stuff, take what you need. I’ll do what I have to do, and once I figure it out, I’ll give you a call.”
“What if—” HE calls, she was thinking, but couldn’t complete the thought.
Craig seemed to know what she was trying to say. “I won’t call from here. I’ll call from home. So you can check your caller ID and know it’s me.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
“I’ll go out with you. Make sure Stool Sample and Nurse Ratched don’t cause any problems. Then we’ll walk out to your car.”
There were no problems, and Lupe let him know how grateful she was for all of his help as she got into her Camry.
“I’ll call,” he promised. His face darkened. “But if it’s from CompWare or a number you don’t recognize…”
“I won’t answer.”
He smiled. “Where else can I get this?” He moved his hand back and forth between them, indicating a connection. “That’s why we can’t break up the team.”
“You’re a good boss, Boss.”
It wasn’t until she got home that her stomach started feeling weird.
AIDS
No. That wouldn’t show up so quickly. But there were probably a lot of other diseases that might. God knows what that freak could have infected her with. It was time to pull her head out of the sand, face reality, go to the hospital and have herself tested for… everything.
A cramp hit her hard, causing her to double over and cry out. The pain was intense, as though a knife had been shoved into her abdomen, and Lupe barely made it over to the kitchen sink before she started throwing up.
She closed her eyes tightly, knowing that if she saw the vomit in the sink, it would make her throw up even more. Just the thought of it caused her to heave again.
There was something wrong.
There was always something wrong if a person was throwing up, and she knew the reason why this was happening right now, knew what she had swallowed, but that wasn’t all that disturbed her. The feel of the vomit was also freaking her out. There seemed to be things moving in her throat and mouth as she puked into the sink, and she opened her eyes to see an assortment of small squirming sluglike creatures amidst the disgorged contents of her stomach. She felt still more of them in her mouth and throat as she spewed again, and began screaming even as she was throwing up. This was what had come from his sperm.
The stabbing pain in her abdomen intensified, and Lupe involuntarily doubled over, her head hitting the sink’s faucet handle. Blood was suddenly spurting from her forehead, and she backed off, holding a hand to the wound in order to suppress the bleeding, staggering away from those impossible monstrosities in the sink, not caring that she was now spitting up on the front of her blouse and the floor of the kitchen.
Not all of the creatures, apparently, were sluglike. One with sharp insectile limbs scurried out of her mouth and down her neck. She fell to the floor, weakened legs giving way beneath her, blood flowing down her face as she removed the hand from her forehead to bat away the sperm-spawn scuttling around her neck. Sobbing, her will broken, Lupe slumped on the tile. She was no longer vomiting, but those creatures continued crawling up her throat, gagging her. She flopped about, attempting in vain to suck air into her lungs, using a hand to try and clear her mouth, but her strength was ebbing and she was vomiting again, sickened by the repulsive feel of rubbery slime on her tongue.
Degraded, humiliated and alone, she died.
TWENTY EIGHT
TO: All Employees
RE: Nutrition and Health
Studies have repeatedly shown that good nutrition is the key to good health. In an effort to promote wellness within the CompWare community and to reduce worktime lost by sick leave, a series of nutritional guidelines have been drawn up by health experts and are being provided to all employees. Whi
le adherence to these guidelines is strictly voluntary, personnel who adjust their eating habits to accommodate the suggested recommendations will be given preferential consideration if layoffs become necessary between employees of equivalent position. To make the guidelines easier to access, a downloadable app is available to all CompWare employees that not only lists low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie food suggestions, but enables users to scan the bar codes of prepackaged food items to determine their nutritional content.
Reading this email constitutes acknowledgement and understanding of the nutrition and health suggestions made herein.
Thank you.
Regus Patoff
Regus Patoff
BFG Associates
For Austin Matthews, CompWare CEO
TWENTY NINE
Lunch.
They’d picked a place at random, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint in a slummy area east of the freeway, a place they’d found after driving up and down various side streets to make sure they weren’t being followed—a ridiculous precaution, perhaps, but it made them both feel better.
“I spent all damn morning in a meeting,” Phil said on the way. “They called me in early, and I didn’t even get to eat breakfast. I’m starving.”
It was the only real thing they said to each other until they arrived, since both of them were paranoid about the car being bugged. This is no way to live, Craig thought, and he wondered if he was one of the people being targeted for downsizing now, if the consultant was instilling this paranoia within him, hoping it would pressure him into quitting.
Now he was being paranoid about being paranoid.
The small restaurant was crowded, so they took turns ordering, one going up to the window while the other guarded the small table they’d commandeered near the door.
“So what was the meeting about?” Craig asked as they waited.
“Nothing,” Phil said. “What are they ever about? That asshole just likes to hear himself talk.”
“So no news?”
“Not that they’re sharing.”
“You know,” Craig said, “they didn’t even have our programmers work on that nutrition app. They brought it in themselves. I don’t know if they bought it off some vendor or if they have their own in-house programmers, but no one from CompWare worked on it.”
“Are you having your guys analyze it, in case…”
“Yeah,” Craig said tiredly. “For whatever good it’ll do. It’s like Lord of the Flies among the programmers now. Everyone’s afraid their jobs are on the line, so they’re throwing each other under the bus so they’ll be the last man standing.”
His number was called, and he walked up to get his food. On his way back to the table, Phil’s number was called. Craig had just bitten into a tortilla chip when Phil put his tray down on the table and said, “You know who Tom Waits is?”
“I’ve heard of him.” He tried to cut his friend off. “This isn’t one of your boring music analogies is it?”
Phil ignored him. “In the 1970s, Tom Waits put out these amazing albums: The Heart of Saturday Night, Nighthawks at the Diner, Small Change, Foreign Affairs. Jazzy, kind of beatnik things, totally unique, especially for then. As anti-trendy as you could get. At that time, he gave this interview where he said he’d rather play for a bunch of derelicts at a union hall than a crowd of hip college kids with coke spoons around their necks. Well, in the eighties, he changed his style completely, became a critic’s darling and he’s spent the rest of his career playing to hip, trendy college students.”
“The point?” Craig prodded.
“Sometimes things happen. We start out pure and end up becoming exactly what we didn’t want to become.”
“Do you mean me?” Craig was still confused.
“I mean us. Look what we’re doing now. Look what we’re going along with. We took the blood test. We don’t wear tennis shoes. We wear gold shirts. You ordered a taco salad, for Christ’s sake…”
“Wait a minute,” Craig said. “How do you know about that Tom Waits interview? You had to be, like, one.”
“I read it online.”
“You spend your free time looking up old music interviews from when you were a baby?”
“The internet is a wonderful tool.”
Craig picked up another tortilla chip. “‘Tool’ is exactly the word that comes to mind.”
“That’s not the point I’m making. What I’m trying to say is, despite our rebel stance, against our will and without us even knowing it, BFG’s already changed us. The only question is: what comes next?”
Craig thought about that. As much as he hated to admit it, Phil was right. He thought he’d been fighting the consultants, but he hadn’t been immune from their influence. He had been forced to conform. He’d gone on that dog hunt at the retreat, had had his blood taken, allowed himself to be monitored by camera, was watched daily by an observer, and, as Phil had pointed out, was wearing uncomfortable shoes, a gold shirt and was about to dig into a taco salad he’d ordered instead of the deep-fried chimichanga he’d really wanted to eat.
He thought of that dead dog made into a meal, of Tyler’s freak electrocution, of Jess Abodje’s wheelchair speeding out into traffic, of everything else that had happened and was still happening. Was he complicitous in any of it? He didn’t want to think so, but the circumstances were starting to make him believe otherwise. He should have been more aggressive in his opposition to the consultants, more assertive.
“I know that face,” Phil said, biting into his burrito. “Stop beating yourself up.”
“I should’ve—”
“What? You should’ve what?”
Craig shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You’re a cog in the machine. You’re a division head. And you’ve done a damn good job of protecting your division, which is what you’re supposed to do. Do you know how easy you guys have gotten off compared to most?”
“We’re content providers. They need us.”
“Maybe,” Phil conceded. “But at least you’re fighting the good fight. Me, too. We’re limited, we’re constrained, but given the state of affairs, we’re doing pretty well.” He paused. “What I want to know is: where’s our illustrious leader? Where’s Austin Matthews in all this? Listening to you after that retreat, I thought we had him in the bag. But I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the guy since. And all of those memos, if you haven’t noticed—and I know you have— are signed by Patoff for Matthews.”
Craig nodded. “I’ve noticed.”
“He’s a ghost in the machine. I’m thinking he’s on his way out.”
“It’s his company.”
“Not since it went public. He has to report to the Board now, and after that merger fiasco, they might be inclined to do whatever BFG says.”
“Inclined?”
“That’s the interesting part. Because I think the consultants are a little more forceful than that.” Phil sipped his soda. “First of all, I need to point out that you’re the one who should be doing this. You’re the computer geek; you’re the one whose family’s being stalked. This is really your bailiwick. But, whatever. I’ve been doing some more research.”
“Not on your own computer?”
“The library’s. I’m not entirely dim. But I’ve been going as deep as I can. Not just articles and press releases, but stock reports, SEC filings, Google searches of individuals, any damn thing I can find.”
“And what did you find?”
Phil looked grim. “Bad shit. ProTech, for example. BFG consulted for them last year. They were on the verge of going under, and after implementing BFG’s recommendations, they not only got back on their feet, but their stock price tripled. Now they’ve practically cornered the market on USB adapters and niche tech like that.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But here’s where it gets interesting. Because, since then, there’ve been an unbelievable number of violent acts associated with the company. Nine former employees committed suicide. That’s nine hun
dred times the average for tech businesses. One man and two women committed murder. Three people from one company within the past year. What are the odds of that? The women are both in jail, awaiting trial. One killed a rival at another company, one killed her husband. The man murdered another ProTech employee, then killed himself, so, technically, he’s part of the murder and suicide statistics.
“Bad luck? Coincidence? You might think so, right? But the pattern holds. It’s true for four of the five companies I’ve investigated. Shockingly high rates of violence, completely unexplainable, all after BFG consults for them.”
Craig felt chilled. He believed it. Every word. He thought of Angie. Maybe he should have supported her idea to quit her job. “So what do we do?”
“One thing we need to do—and you can help with this—is get the information out there. Maybe someone else has put all this together, but even if they have, it’s not readily available. I’m thinking Better Business Bureau, Attorney General’s office, newspapers, 60 Minutes. Hell, corporate ratings sites. I want to get the word out but not have it traced back. Just in case. That’s where you come in. Is there some sort of filter, some way to make my posts and emails anonymous so that even a group like BFG can’t trace it back?”
“Sure.”
“Because these guys don’t fuck around.”
“We create a fake account, from an offsite computer, someplace with an IP address that has nothing to do with us or CompWare, write the email, run that through an anonymizer, send it on time delay set for an hour when we’re both verifiably at CompWare and engaged in other work.” He was thinking aloud. “Sure. We can do it.”
“I have another plan, too,” Phil said. “A way to ferret out even more information.”
“You’ve been a busy little bee, haven’t you?”
“You know my watcher? John?”
“Yeah.”
“We take him out after work today, get him drunk and see if we can’t loosen his lips a little.”
“I don’t think they’re supposed to fraternize with us.”
“They probably aren’t,” Phil agreed.
The Consultant Page 25