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?”