Jennifer yawned as she continued working. She noticed Shannon glance at her and saw a faint smile of approval on the woman’s face. At least she was putting up a good front; as long as it kept Shannon happy, so be it.
She yawned again as she finished the current worksheet and clicked to another one. She felt tired, ready to drop off at any minute. Good thing her apartment was just a four block walk.
Jennifer picked up the pace in her duties, hoping to finish quickly, and as she did she grew more tired and a strange tune circled inside her head, one she couldn’t place immediately but that seemed oddly familiar. And as she tried to identify it and place where it was coming from—because she couldn’t really hear it, it just seemed to be something her subconscious started playing, probably a tune she’d heard once and then forgotten—she coasted along in her job as if everything was going to turn out okay.
THE ONLY THING Michelle Dowling was looking forward to when she exited her flight and made her way down to baggage claim at O’Hare International Airport was talking to Donald.
She tried calling the house the minute she exited the plane. It was picked up on the second ring. “Michelle!” Donald sounded excited and scared.
“Donald, you’re home!” Michelle said, hurrying down O’Hare to get to baggage claim. Her flight had been uncomfortable; she’d been stuck next to a fat businessman in coach who’d breathed through his mouth and, when he found out she was a consultant for Corporate Financial, kept wanting to talk to her about the latest business news as reported by The Wall Street Journal . “Did you get my message?”
“Yes, I did,” Donald said. She thought she heard another voice in the background, one she didn’t recognize, and there was a short pause on the line and then Donald came back. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine! Why? Who’s over there?”
“Tell me the truth, honey.” Donald sounded serious; even grim. The sudden seriousness of it made her pause in her journey through the massive airport and she stopped near a McDonald’s restaurant, ignoring other people as they passed by. “When you met Jay O’Rourke in El Paso did you feel you could trust him?”
“What kind of question is that?” Something about Donald’s behavior caused a spike of fear in Michelle. “Donald, is everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” Donald said; his voice cracked just slightly. He’s nervous about something, she thought. He’s not telling me the truth. “It’s just—”
In the background she heard the other voice again. “Aw fuck, just tell her I’m here!”
“Who is that?” Michelle asked. She was trying to remember if she knew who the owner of that voice was.
“It’s Jay O’Rourke,” Donald said. “The IT tech you met in El Paso on Monday.”
“Jay? What’s he doing there?”
“It’s a long story, honey—”
“Mark told me he was fired on Wednesday,” Michelle went on. She was in her own little world now, completely oblivious to the coming and goings of the rest of the airport traffic. “What’s he doing at our house?”
“Do you trust him?”
Before she could answer, she heard a click on the line and then Jay’s voice came through. “Hey, Michelle. Sorry to barge in like this, but—”
“What the hell are you doing in my house?” Michelle’s voice rose in anger and she didn’t care. A woman pulling a luggage cart glanced at her and kept walking.
“I’m still trying to figure this out myself,” Jay said. She could tell he had picked up one of the extensions in the house—probably the one in the bedroom—and it was obvious now from Donald’s tone of voice that Jay had been an unexpected visitor today. How he’d managed to find out where they lived was another matter, one that scared her and immediately raised her defensive hackles.
“I don’t care how you got to my house or how you found out where I live, but I want you out!” Michelle said. The anger was now coming strong and hard.
“No you don’t,” Jay said. “Listen—”
“I don’t even really know you! What the hell are you doing at my house and why—”
Donald cut in. “Honey, he has a gun.”
“You have a gun? What, did you break into my house and pull a gun on my boyfriend?” Now Michelle could feel herself losing it. More people were glancing her way as they walked around her.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Jay said. “Look, Michelle, if you’ll let me explain—”
“You don’t have to explain anything,” Michelle heard herself saying. “You don’t belong in my house, I didn’t invite you, and I don’t think my boyfriend invited you either. I want you out of my house now, or I’ll—”
“I’m here because I think you’re in danger,” Jay said, and the tone of his voice was now sharp and to the point. Michelle froze at the sound of it. “So if you’ll shut your fucking trap maybe I can talk some sense into you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Michelle said. She could feel herself getting scared now, and she looked around at the flowing airport pedestrians heading to and from various airline terminals.
“Look, I can’t stay on the phone long,” Jay said. “I can’t take the chance that your line is bugged. Let me ask you a quick question first. What do you think of Dennis Harrington?”
The question seemed to come to Michelle out of left field. “What? Why should you care what I think about Dennis?”
Donald’s voice cut in. “It’s an important question, Michelle.”
Michelle’s instinct was to protest again; how could her personal opinion of Dennis Harrington, a guy she barely knew, be important? But there was something in Donald’s tone of voice that told her the question was very important, so Michelle decided to play along. “Okay, I’ll give you my honest opinion,” she said. “My first impression after spending almost a week with him is that he appears to be a vapid, emotionless corporate drone. I know that’s probably unfair to the guy, but—”
“That’s not unfair at all,” Jay said.
Michelle wanted to ask Jay why he was asking her this, but went on. “Like I said, he just seems like a corporate drone to me. I don’t think he has a sense of humor at all and the only thing he seems to be concerned about is work. Big deal. You can say the same thing about Alma Smith and Mark Richards and whats-her-name, that woman you got into a pissing match with Monday night.”
“Barb,” Jay said.
“Yeah, her. They’re all peas from the same pod.”
“Anything else?”
Michelle was still trying to see where this was leading. She thought briefly of what Jay said the other night at the Lone Star. They’re like something out of that Jack Finney novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And on the heels of that she thought, Jesus, is that what he thinks? Because if he really believes that he’s even more fucked up than I thought he was.
But she didn’t voice her feelings. Something told her to tread softly, to take Jay and Donald at their words. She still thought Donald sounded funny, as if he wasn’t being entirely truthful, but she was also afraid to set Jay off. If Jay was armed, he might hurt
Donald. She had to play along with whatever sick game this was, placate whatever delusions Jay had for now until she could get help over to the house. “No, I don’t think there’s anything else,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
Michelle thought back on her encounters with Dennis Harrington. Corporate drone was the perfect description for him. The guy literally had no personality, no sense of humor or life about him. In fact—
“Wait, there is one thing,” Michelle said.
“What’s that?” Jay asked.
“He seemed...” Michelle searched for the right word to explain the sudden new sense that something really was wrong with Dennis Harrington. The feeling had come to her in a sudden wave, as if a switch had been flipped on in her mind to illuminate the dark corners. “He seemed...empty. That’s it, he seemed empty, like he has no soul.”
There was a pause
on the phone. She could sense Jay and Donald on the other end and then Jay suddenly said, “I gotta hang up. I’ll call you back in five.” The phone at her house was hung up.
Michelle pressed the disconnect button and glanced around; nobody was watching her. Her little outburst at Jay had only caused a slight ripple in the general everyday activities at the airport; those passing by had glanced briefly as she’d yelled at him over the phone and continued on with their business, probably figuring she was having a fight with her boyfriend or husband. She put her cell phone in her purse and went to the McDonald’s, not knowing what to do. She was hungry, but she wanted to be available for when Jay or Donald called back. She decided to wait five minutes near the McDonald’s and then call the house if they didn’t call.
She didn’t have to wait long. While she waited, her mind tracked over the past week, going over everything that had happened to her. Jay seemed very genuine to her when she’d met him; very honest, very down-to-earth, very no bullshit. She’d liked him immediately. She hated to think that she’d been taken in by his charm, that he was a clever sociopath or something. She didn’t really think that was the case, though; Jay hadn’t exhibited the signs of sociopathic behavior. He was charming because he was so himself. It was clear that he wouldn’t have cared one bit if Michelle had been turned off by his behavior. His response would have been a curt fuck you; a genuine sociopath would have done anything he could to win her friendship, would have played up to her sensibilities. Not Jay. He was who he was, take him or leave him.
As she waited by the McDonald’s, her carry-on bag and laptop at her feet, watching as people went to and fro in their journeys to wherever they were going, her mind traced back on work; all indications told her things were normal. The job was going normally, what was expected of her was normal, and the project itself was normal. Consultants were paid to advise, assist, plan, and in some cases overhaul their clients business. Large firms who needed assistance usually went to a firm that specialized in certain things; Deloitte and Touche specialized in Accounting; Farrar and Sons specialized in Business Administration; Pomeroy specialized in IT Solutions and Business Intelligence. Corporate Financial was a major player in all of these things and how it tied to Human Resources. Their clients hired them to tie all these business units together to make their enterprise work smarter, tighter, cheaper and—hopefully—more efficiently. There was no crime in it that she could see. If a firm like Building Products wanted to pay Corporate Financial two million bucks to develop Human Resources Software and documentation for their company, so be it. She didn’t think anything illegal was going on, at least nothing that she could see. But then she was still new; there could be things happening under the radar she didn’t know about.
When her cell phone rang she pounced on it. “Yeah,” she said, breathlessly.
“Jay here,” Jay said. “Now listen carefully. Donald, you on yet?”
Donald’s voice came on the line. “Are you still at the airport?”
“Yes,” Michelle said. “Now tell me what the hell is going on!”
Jay told her a quick, condensed version of what he told Donald an hour before. Michelle felt her belly grow heavy with dread. When he got to the part about seeing Dennis Harrington in his hotel room, and that he was unresponsive and smelled like a corpse, the warning bells went off. Jay was paranoid; he was crazy and she’d been fooled. She had to get Donald away from him.
When Jay was finished, she cut in. “Donald, do you believe him?”
Donald hesitated. She could detect that Donald still didn’t know what to think. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Jesus,” Jay said. “I know it sounds crazy, but goddammit I’m not making this shit up! Michelle!” He was directing his attention to her now. “How much money is Corporate Financial paying you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just answer the fucking question! How much are they paying you?”
“Like it’s going to matter,” she said, sighing. “They’re starting me off at eighty thousand a year.”
“Plus benefits?”
“Uh huh.”
“What kind of benefits?”
“Retirement, 401k, Health and Life Insurance, Vacation, the usual.”
“The usual? Don’t you think that’s a little unusual? I mean...especially a separate retirement package?”
Michelle thought he had a point there. She was surprised herself when she heard Corporate Financial offered a separate pension plan. Most companies were doing away with retirement packages, instead offering their employees a chance to invest part of their pretaxed dollars into their own individual 401k accounts. Many companies that did that didn’t even contribute to them.
“Talk to me about your health coverage,” Jay continued. “How much are you putting in to it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You don’t help subsidize it?”
“No.” Michelle picked up her carry-on and laptop with one hand and walked over to a bench near the McDonald’s that had recently become free and sat down. “They pay for everything. I just have a five dollar deductible.”
“Donald, you’re a doctor, right?”
Donald answered him. “Yes.”
“Don’t you think that’s pretty weird? Especially in these times?”
“It is,” Donald admitted. “It’s actually...you used to see that kind of coverage with every company. Health care costs have risen so drastically that it’s forcing employers to shift an ever growing part of the costs to their employees. When Michelle told me about the bennies, I have to admit I was envious.”
“But you didn’t think it was weird?”
“No. I just thought she was pretty damn lucky.”
“How often do you come across a patient with her kind of medical benefits?”
“Hardly ever,” Donald answered.
“Some of the stuff I found out in that secured folder for Corporate Financial on Building Product’s server,” Jay said, “it relates directly to this. They’re able to fully fund your medical benefits because of the money they’re siphoning off from their clients and the medical insurance industry itself.”
“What?” Michelle said. This was getting loonier the more she listened to it.
“Here it is in a nutshell,” Jay said. “Listen carefully, because I don’t want to keep this line open any longer. The contracts Corporate Financial enter into with their clients is binding until the dissolution of the client company. Once the client begins operating leaner and cheaper, forty percent of their savings is directed to Corporate Financial’s coffers. That’s forty percent that could have gone to strengthening the shit that was fucked during the reorganization Corporate Financial does. It’s also more than enough money that is saved when payroll is trimmed from the layoffs that result.”
What Jay was describing was something she didn’t care about. Michelle knew all large companies operated, to a certain extent, crookedly. The books were cooked, money was swept under the table, earnings were under-reported. She knew it happened everywhere. “So you’re saying Corporate Financial is partially responsible for the sudden growth of white-collar outsourcing and downsizing?”
“To a certain extent yes, but that isn’t the whole picture.” Jay’s voice sounded grim. “Tell me something else...when you first started working did you know other people like Dennis Harrington?”
Michelle blinked. “I...I don’t know...I mean...I guess so.”
“This is serious,” Jay reiterated. “Come on, think! You have to remember at least one corporate drone when you first started working.”
“There was a woman named Myra who was a supervisor at All Nation, my first job,” Michelle said. It was funny how she remembered her stint at All Nation, which was both a horrible time for her and a glorious one; Alanis had done a lot in opening her eyes, to see things for what they were. “She was all companied out. I remember that, but she wasn’t nearly as bad as Dennis.”
At first Michelle didn’t know who Donald was talking about, but then she felt the world crash down on her. “God, my mother,” she said. “And my dad.”
“What about them?” Jay said.
“They were workaholics,” Donald said. “Both of them were corporate executives. Michelle didn’t see much of them while growing up.”
“My mother pestered me to get a job at All Nation,” Michelle said, the long buried memories springing to the surface. “She pushed me on the fast track to a Jr. Executive position. I hated it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the business world!”
“Let’s skip the history lesson for now,” Jay said. There was a pause in the background; it sounded like Jay was taking a drag off a cigarette. “Were your parents as bad as Dennis?”
“Absolutely,” Michelle said.
“And this Myra person?”
“She wasn’t at all like Dennis,” Michelle said. “She was actually quite nice in social settings.”
“So she wasn’t like Barb Queenbitch,” Jay said. Michelle stifled a grin.
“No,” Michelle said, relaxing a little. “Not at all like Barb. Myra just took her job pretty seriously, but she knew when to have fun and let her hair down.”
TheCorporation Page 11
