The Corporation

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WAS SIX p.m. on Friday and Jennifer Faus was still chained to her desk on the tenth floor of 156 Broadway in San Francisco, California where the offices of PeopleReady, Incorporated were located.

Jennifer had been coasting along in a mindless haze since two p.m., fruitlessly faking her job duties. She was ragged emotionally and physically. As one of twenty staff accountants for a mid-sized company that provided desktop IT and telecom support to various small and mid-size companies throughout the country, Jennifer’s job was rather mundane and run-of-the-mill. She was in Accounts Receivable, which meant she processed daily incoming EDI transactions, matched them with scanned paper invoices, updated the aging files, and ran various reports for a wide range of company personnel. She liked numbers and she liked her job. She was cheerful, always looked forward to starting the day with a smile and a positive attitude, and it showed in how her co-workers reacted to her; she felt she was very well liked in the company. It also helped that she was knowledgeable, competent at her job, and had a good attitude. Like every job, she had to deal with her share of difficult people, but those were skills one learned from life experience and a little bit of Psych 101 in college. Office Behavior workshops helped, too. As a result, out of most of the people she worked with, she had a good life/work balance. She took her job seriously and worked hard when she was at her desk from eight to five—after that she was her own person and the trivial matters of the day were forgotten.

But today… this week… had been hell.

On Monday morning Jennifer and the rest of the accounting staff were informed by the Controller and Vice President that a new corporate policy had been levied—all projects must be completed as quickly as possible on the day they were started. This brought protests from half of the accounting staff. The Vice President, a sullen, mousy-looking woman named Shannon Albright, informed them the decision was final and that they were free to tender their resignations if they no longer wanted to be part of this new team effort. She further explained that management was initiating this new policy due to increased competition from rival firms. “We need all daily accounts closed by five p.m. and we need preliminary work on the next day’s business in place before the start of business.” That meant two to three hours of prep work in some cases. Jennifer asked the inevitable question that was on everybody’s mind: what if they were physically unable to finish with closing due to circumstances beyond their control? Network or hardware failures, scheduling conflicts, that sort of thing. When Shannon asked, “What kind of scheduling conflicts?” Peggy Brenner, one of the accountants who had been at the company for thirty years answered. “I baby-sit my grandson from five-thirty to eight every night for my daughter while she attends UCSF. There’s no way I can work beyond five.”

“Then you’re dismissed,” Shannon had said curtly, without batting an eye.

A shocked hush rose up and there had been dead silence. Peggy had looked at Shannon as if she were waiting for the younger woman to grin and laugh, saying it was all a joke. Shannon’s features were sullen and stoical. She wasn’t joking; she was dead serious. This hit home to Jennifer when Shannon said, “Get your things and leave. I’ll have payroll process your final check.”

“But—” Peggy had said, her features suddenly growing white with the shock and confusion over what was happening.

“Does anybody want to join Peggy?” Shannon had asked the group. Jennifer couldn’t believe this was happening. She and the Controller were like different people; they were sullen, unemotional, their features not registering the sounds of Peggy’s cries as the older woman left the conference room in tears. “If not, I suggest you remain team players. This is all for the good of the company. Without the company, we are nobody. You are accountants because it is what you do. Right now the company needs you and your skills to help for the betterment of the company, and all of us. If the company succeeds, you succeed. That’s it in a nutshell, gang. If you want to remain a team player, you must trust each other and work together. The harder you work, the more you cooperate with each other to meet the company goals, the sooner you will be able to finish. That’s all we’re asking.”

So that was how Jennifer Faus came to work the first seventy-hour week in almost ten years. The first few days weren’t so bad. She assisted in the daily transactions and data entry and journal ledger entries; she ran reports for Shannon; she worked on preparing to close out the week’s business. But as the week wore on, Jennifer’s fatigue grew, and when Shannon gave her an icy glare Thursday afternoon after telling her she had to leave at five-thirty to make a six o’clock hair appointment, Jennifer realized there was something wrong. Something was just not right. She’d told Shannon she was going to be back—it was just a forty-minute appointment, if that, then she’d be right back to finish. In fact, she was getting into a routine, a certain rhythm to the new schedule, and she felt that by next week she’d have it down to where she’d be able to finish all the extra stuff before five p.m. just in time to go home at a normal hour. The look Shannon gave her told Jennifer that if she left the team to conduct personal business while the team was working towards its goals, she must not be serious about being a team player and, therefore, not a good worker. And if she wasn’t a good worker, she could find employment elsewhere.

So she stayed.

And now she was miserable and dog-tired.

Jennifer glanced at the time on the bottom right hand portion of her computer screen. On any normal Friday evening she’d be out having dinner with her husband, Jack. Then they’d stop by a bookstore and browse, maybe take in a movie and drinks at a pub in town, then come home. Not tonight. Even if she were to leave the office in the next fifteen minutes, she was too tired to do anything except plop her butt on the sofa and veg out in front of the TV. Jack had called an hour ago and Jennifer caught Shannon glance her way, disapproval in her eyes. Jennifer had told Jack that she was still at the office but she should be finished soon—sorry. When she got off the phone, Shannon had strolled by. “What are you doing?”

“Working on the spreadsheet,” Jennifer had said.

“It didn’t sound like you were,” Shannon said and left it at that. The subliminal message was obvious: take a personal phone call while you’re working again and you can find another job.

Jennifer inserted data into the spreadsheet she was working on, her mind elsewhere. Her co-workers continued their duties normally. Jennifer paused for a moment, listening to the sounds in the office. It was quiet except for the sounds of computer keyboards clacking and people on the phone. It was as if things had settled back to normal, as if her co-workers had resigned themselves to the fact that these long hours were now a normal part of the workday. There were no mutters of complaint, no idle chatter or slouching on the job. Jennifer’s mind had been wandering for the past two days while she went about her tasks like an automaton; many times she just pretended to work, since there really wasn’t much to her duties anyway. There was no justification in staying late, really. Yet she stayed at the office with the rest of her co-workers not out of a sense of loyalty to them, but because she needed this job or she would be unable to pay her rent and bills. It was as simple as that. And if things were going to continue this way at PeopleReady, then she supposed it was time to start looking for a new job.

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.”

“What about your mother,” Donald murmured.

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.”

“So there was nobody at All Nation like Dennis or Alma except for your parents?”

“None. At least none that I remembered.”

“What about other places you worked at?”

Michelle took the question seriously. She thought about it, rattling off those that came to her quickly. “There was a woman I used to work with at an insurance company, one of my consulting gigs. I don’t remember her name. She practically lived at the office. Had no boyfriend, no husband, had never been married. All she talked about was work, even the few times she tagged along with us after work for drinks.”

“Any more?”

Michelle thought about it and related more; a middle-manager she knew at a client’s office who once reported Michelle to her supervisor when he heard a rumor that she dabbled in art outside of work. “Asshole actually believed extra-curricular activities that deviated from the company’s stated goals were in direct violation of the company’s interests. Can you believe that?”

“Bingo!” She heard Jay take a drag on his cigarette. “I was actually dreading those terms, but at the same time I’m glad you said it.”

“Why? Can we stop with the bullshit and just tell me flat out what the hell is going on?”

“I still don’t have all the answers yet,” Jay said. “But I’m working on them. And I don’t want to keep this line open anymore. Go get your stuff and call us when you get back to your room. But before you do that, do you have a copy of Corporate Financial’s Employee Handbook somewhere?”

“I have a pdf copy on my laptop. Why?”

“Read it before you call back. I think you’ll find most of it—especially the section under the heading ‘Conflict of Interest’—to be very interesting.”

“Okay, but—”

“We gotta go,” Jay said. “I think you’re safe for tonight, just call us back when you get to your room.”

“Donald!” Michelle called out.

“It’s okay,” Donald said, and now she could hear that his voice had changed; he didn’t sound nearly as nervous as before. “Call us when you get to your room.”

“I will,” Michelle said, and then the line went dead.

She sat on the bench for a moment, her thoughts running a mile a minute. She was more curious now than ever before; she was no longer frightened, no longer angry at Jay (okay, maybe a little… he’d scared the living shit out of her when she found out he’d showed up at the house unannounced and armed), and despite all that had happened, she was now getting the feeling that something was not right. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but talking to Jay made her think about things she hadn’t thought about in a long time.

Namely her parents.

Were your parents like Dennis Harrington?

Absolutely.

She shuddered at the thought because she knew now, for the first time ever, that something had been wrong with her parents. They hadn’t just been unemotional, uncaring people. They hadn’t just been too self-absorbed with their own careers and goals that they continually ignored their only child or cast her aside. It wasn’t that at all.

Her parents hadn’t been entirely… right.

She thought about this on the walk over to baggage claim, turning it over in her mind. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that the walk was over before she knew it, and then she was scanning the monitors for her flight, trying to find which baggage claim area to report to, and she was still thinking about what Jay said when she found her flight, and that’s when two men she’d never seen before suddenly materialized in front of her. “Michelle Dowling,” one of them said; he was about her age, blonde, well-groomed in a sport shirt, blue tie, and a coat. “I’m Bill Mayer, from Corporate Financial. This is Tom Elliot. We’re here to escort you to your hotel.”

And before she could shift gears they swooped down on her.