The Company Man

The sponge holder was out of alignment with the edge of the granite countertop. He fixed it. Surveying the rest of his apartment with a practiced and keen eye he found no other maladjustments needing remedying. Pure, blissful sterility. Surely no emperor in the passage of time had it as good as he, the Company Man.

By remote, the stereo oozed classical "non-music" as he called it. Pounding, passionate music disturbed the void he so desperately sought to maintain. His corporate soul he kept locked away, its release the destruction of the empire he'd built over many long years. He was not the king, but smarter than that. Like a wily woman, he left the decisions - along with their weight and publicity - to the one anointed. But in his hands he held the power of the ruler's might with all its resources in back of it.

The stunning view from his window looked over the halls of power as his own backyard. Wide-eyed tourists, school children and the great unwashed looked upon these monuments with awe. Even foreign dignitaries or brigadier generals or governors of state could look upon them only as outsiders. But he, the Company Man, was on the inside, deep inside safe from the scrutiny of prying eyes. In fact, the prying eyes were on his side.

A student of history, he fancied himself a modern member of the Praetorian Guard, the inner circle to the seat of power. Yet even as Caesar was murdered in broad daylight, nowhere is it recorded of the killing of his bodyguards. Rulers pass but the institution must carry on. To this institution he was married heart and body. The next ruler - and all those to follow - would see that he and his kind were preserved. These were the thoughts that passed through his mind at the edge of nightfall.

Not that he wouldn't give his life for his master. He found something to die (and kill) for and thus to live for. This freed him from petty obligations of the masses toiling in futile labor, unknowing their fates already decided by suited men in secret rooms. He laughed to read of misspent conspiracies clogging the blogs and byways . With so much noise, even those with correct insight were drowned out by the static. Yes indeed, the Company Man stood invincible and inviolate atop the world.

What worked against the ordinary life worked for him. Greed and corruption, chaos and warfare, uncertainty and fear - these were his true employers. Since the beginning of history, the Company Men had stood the test of time. In war he found peace. His only true fear was a world of prosperity and harmony, one of justice and accord working towards the final betterment of mankind. Just rulers in a just world need no guards or deeds done in the still of the night.

He hated "Poser Presidents" who refused the naked grab for power he knew they craved as if they were above it. To die for one of them would leave a bitter taste in his mouth. To die protecting a true man of power, now that would be glorious! He'd go down in history as a hero even if all the while he'd been an assassin. He didn't have to know who he killed. He didn't have to care. The Company Man was simply the blameless instrument of policy. That lie very much excited him.

His sex he kept in perfect agony. The guilt of denial hounded him into hell as he literally cried out for help in the dark. But when he read of agents caught red-handed with prostitutes he knew he'd chosen the right path in the ultimate safety of denial even as he begged to be spanked by hot teenage girls whom he spied behind his stoic dark glasses. Yes, he knew he was a hypocrite of the highest order, but the fact no one else spotted it proved he sank as a hypocrite in a sea of hypocrites.

The Company Man looked down to the street at the aftermath of a car accident. He heard the phrase "no fucking insurance" and let out a wry smile. Life of the little people, always one human error away from permanent damage. Who would want to live like that? Why didn't everyone try to be a Company Man? Fools and idiots all! "God has given you one face, and you make yourself another." Their fate and pain meant nothing to him - just as his fate and pain meant nothing to them - or to himself.