Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett

Author:Adam Haslett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, Technology & Engineering, Older women, Social Science, High school students, Bankers, Social classes, Fiction - General, Literary, Construction, Massachusetts, House construction, General
ISBN: 9780385524476
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-01-19T08:00:00+00:00

AS SOON AS Doug entered Evelyn Jones’s office an hour later, he realized he’d need a plan B. Whatever the origin of her immunity—intelligence, race, lesbianism perhaps, fact-based suspicion, some combination of these—his default MO would get him nowhere here. And yet she had to be won over. A bit of bad accounting was one thing. It could be papered over once he’d got an explanation from McTeague. But throwing the compliance department into investigative mode before he knew the facts—that wasn’t an option.

“You mind if I close the door?” he asked.

“Be my guest.”

Memos were tacked squarely to the bulletin board, binders arranged neatly beneath a row of five clocks, each labeled for the city whose time it kept. Along the front of her desk sat two small picture frames, their backings to Doug. Sabrina’s sleuthing had turned up the fact that she’d been absent for her brother’s funeral just a day or two ago.

“So,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his eyes wandering the lunar white boards of the dropped ceiling. “It looks as if Jim Lowry is moving over to community relations. Which will leave his position vacant. Is that a job that interests you?”

He allowed the silence that followed to stretch on a few moments.

“Vice president. For operations? Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I’ve been in this office two minutes, and I can tell for a fact you’d be better at the job than he is. Besides, your evaluations have it written all over them. And I know from the look on your face you know that’s true. Most of those assholes out there—they’re cattle, pension seekers, cowards. Leadership, though. That’s the question, right? The one the hiring committee would ponder judiciously before taking dead aim at mediocrity and finding the mark as sure as the men who hired them. Leadership. How fucking debased that word has become, don’t you think? Excuse my language. Seminars in swanky hotels where the lemmings take dictation from some retired guru hack. We pay for this shit too, we pay for them to fly off and learn the seven principles of how to manipulate your underlings and keep them cheerful as you do it. Millions a year.”

Evelyn Jones neither nodded nor looked away, her attention even and unremitting.

“There’s another thing we both know,” he said. “You get a big promotion and people—not to your face, of course—say, That figures. Right? African American woman, big corporation, diversity initiative. They do the cultural math and that’s what they think. Now, that would piss me off if I were you because you’re good at your job. And frankly, while I know a lot of the staff around here think of me as the friendly type, when it comes to management, I don’t give a shit who anyone is. I want the machine to work. Because the best parts of it, I built them. That’s why I want you to have Lowry’s job. And I’d make sure people understood that.”

“We’re being honest here, Mr. Fanning? Is that the idea?”

“Absolutely.

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