August 1975

Julie Wilkes sat at her desk in one of the tiny offices in the basement of Sutherland’s Emporium. The forty-five-year-old bookkeeper should’ve gone home two hours ago when her workday officially ended, but with nothing but an empty apartment to go home to, the dark-haired redhead would rather catch up on some work. She’d worked at the Brooklyn department store for nearly thirty years — first as a part-time sales girl during her last year of high school, then as a full-time sales associate while she went to the local community college at night, and finally in her present job after she’d gotten her degree.

Sutherland’s itself first opened its doors back when her grandfather had been a child, quickly becoming a neighborhood institution where you could get everything from houseware to pets, auto parts to children’s toys. The last became even more important years later when they began converting part of the top floor every holiday season into a winter wonderland, where parents could bring their kids to not only meet Santa but, from the late forties on, get a picture with him as well. Even more recently, they’d rebuilt part of that same space to hold a couple of full-sized AFX slot car tracks, where players could either rent cars and controllers, or bring their own, and compete for prizes.

Almost from the beginning, the store’s slogan had been “You can find everything at Sutherland’s,” and most people firmly believed that. Julie certainly had, given that she’d even found her husband there, a truck driver in the delivery department. But unlike many things found at the Emporium, her marriage hadn’t come with an extended warranty, much less a lifetime one, and had crumbled three years ago, just short of their fifteenth anniversary. Following their divorce, Carl Wilkes, who had always been a marginal employee, sought employment elsewhere, finding it at a similar store up in the Bronx — along with someone new to share his bed.

They hadn’t had children, and, with Julie having always earned her own keep, their separation produced few changes in her life other than an empty space on the other side of the bed. One which had been filled only irregularly in the years since, as the newly single woman discovered far too many men viewed being divorced as being synonymous with being an easy lay. Having been sexually active even before her marriage, Julie didn’t have a problem with doing the deed; she just didn’t like the assumption that it was a given, preferring sex to be on her terms.

An unexpected voice abruptly interrupted Julie’s concentration, causing her to look up and confirm that she was indeed alone. There had been a time when such an occurrence caused her to wonder if the halls of the century-old building were haunted, but now she knew it was merely the result of a poorly designed HVAC system. One which sometimes created a cross-talk effect, conveying distant sounds with such clarity that you’d think they originated in the same room. It didn’t happen that often and usually only lasted a short time.

Curious and a bit bored, Julie got up and moved over to the wall-mounted air vent that the sound had originated from. After listening intently for a minute, she realized that it wasn’t just one voice, but three, all male. As they became more distinct, she was able to recognize one as that of Danny Wray, a delivery driver who had once worked with her ex-husband. The second voice also belonged to another driver, Henry Warren, who had only been with the company about two years.

The last voice, however, was harder to place, but it was definitely younger than the other two. It was only when it grew stronger, indicating that the speaker had moved closer to the vent on his side, that Julie finally identified it as that of Chris Cassidy, one of the college students hired as summer help. The sandy-haired nineteen-year-old had no set job assignment, but was moved around to fill in for people on vacation. Evidently, this week that was shipping.

Seeing as delivery drivers knocked off even earlier than most other employees, having started well before the store opened, Julie was confused as to what they were all still doing here. A memo that Wayne Bennett, the general manager, had sent out last week drawing attention to some unexplained inventory discrepancies abruptly came to mind, and while she hated to think they were stealing merchandise, she felt obligated to be sure.

Julie didn’t have to listen long, however, to realize they weren’t here after hours for any nefarious reason. They were simply taking advantage of an empty locker room to hang out and have a few beers. Technically, drinking on company property was a violation of the rules; but it wasn’t like she hadn’t broken a few of them herself over the years. Besides, their being slightly inebriated made the conversation more interesting.

“So, come on, Chris, you still haven’t answered the question,” Danny Wray said. “If you could fuck anyone that works here, who would it be?”

“I know who I’d pick,” Henry Warren interrupted, his slight slurring of his words suggesting he’d had more to drink than the others. “Jenny Lane, hands down.”

“Yeah, like she’d want to screw a decrepit old asshole like you,” Danny responded, turning his attention from the teenager to his thirty-eight-year-old partner.

“Why not, she’s fucked just about everyone else, from what I hear,” Henry laughed.

Jenny Lane, Julie knew, was a vivacious blonde who worked the cosmetics counter up in the lobby. Twenty-five years old with a scandalous reputation, it was rumored that she’d slept with half the sales staff, including a few of the married men. Julie thought that was an exaggeration, but not by much.

Danny, it seemed, had already announced his pick before Julie had come in on the conversation. She idly wondered who it had been.

“There’s no one here at the store that really interests me,” Chris finally replied.

“Bullshit!” Danny echoed. “I know for a fact that you got a thing for someone that works here. Pete Cameron told me.”

Pete Cameron was one of the salesmen in the Sports Department, Julie recalled.

“He said that you told him that night he and Billy Taylor took you out to O’Malley’s,” Danny continued.

“They got me drunk the night they took me to O’Malley’s,” Chris stated with conviction. “Things you say when you’re drunk don’t count.”

“In vino veritas,” Danny countered, causing both of the other men to stare at him.

“What the hell does that mean?” Henry asked.

“It’s Latin,” Danny explained. “It means ‘in wine, there is truth’. In simple terms, it means that the things you say when you’re drunk usually prove to be true.”

“Where the hell did you learn Latin?” Henry said, his slurring causing him to have enough problems with English.

“I read a lot,” the older man replied.

Henry knew that was true, not being able to recall a time when his partner didn’t have some book stuck in his back pocket. Still, that didn’t answer the question of who it was that Chris had said he found attractive, and he said so.

But Chris still sat silent.

“Wait a second, Pete Cameron is one of those guys who, well, you know...” Henry abruptly said, bending his wrist forward as he attributed the younger man’s silence to a totally wrong conclusion. “Are you saying that Chris is...”

“No, not at all,” Danny said, quickly cutting Henry off in a sharp rebuke. Pete’s sexual preference wasn’t really common knowledge and he was surprised that Henry knew of it. “Chris likes girls, he just likes a particular sort of girl.”

Again, Henry was confused as to what the hell that meant.

“Alright, I said that I thought Julie Wilkes was really sexy, okay,” Chris said, a bit angry in his tone. “Are you satisfied now?”

“What?” Julie said in a voice just as loud, her own surprise enough to cause her to forget that the cross-talk effect could work in the opposite direction as well.

“Who?” Henry asked, not recognizing the name.

“The old lady from accounting,” Danny replied, “the skinny redhead with the small tits.”

Glancing down at her breasts, which measured 32B, Julie had to admit that someone else might consider them small. Not her of course, as she had always thought they were the perfect size for her five-foot-eight and a hundred and ten-pound frame.

‘And I’m not old,’ she thought to herself, even though she was older than either of the senior drivers.

“I still don’t know who you’re talking about,” Henry said as he tried to put the name and description together but again came up empty.

“The one that looks like the mom in that Fifties sitcom on ABC,” Danny finally said. “I can’t remember her real name, but on the show she’s Mrs. C...”

“Oh wait, now I know who you’re talking about,” Henry interrupted, rattling off both the character’s name and that of the actress who played her.

Meanwhile, Chris had gotten up from his folding chair and tossed his now empty beer bottle into the brown paper bag it had come in. He hadn’t said another word since he’d blown up at Danny and was grabbing his own stuff in an indication that he was leaving.

“Oh come on, Chris, we were just having a little fun,” Danny pointed out.

“Yeah, fun,” the teenager replied.

“Look, I wasn’t trying to embarrass you, I mean, it’s just us guys here,” Danny went on. “It’s not like one of us is going to say something to anyone else.”

Chris seemed unconvinced, but at least he wasn’t still headed for the door.

“Look, some people speak the truth when they have too much to drink; some just make assholes of themselves,” Danny offered, a concession that did seem to mollify the younger man.

“Alright, as long as it doesn’t go beyond this room,” Chris finally said as he dropped back into his chair.

“Scout’s honor,” Danny grinned, holding up three fingers, even though he had never been one.

Henry also raised his hand, although the gesture he made with his fingers more resembled that made in a popular margarine commercial than the one used by the youth organization.

A few moments of silence followed, during which Danny offered Chris another bottle from the brown bag, an offer that he declined, saying he’d had enough.

“So, what is it about Mrs. Wilkes that attracts you?” Danny inquired, his curiosity prompting him to risk setting Chris off again.

“I don’t know exactly, I just get ... oh, I can’t explain it,” he said, his previous anger no longer evident.

“She really gets you hot and bothered, doesn’t she?” Danny offered.

No answer came through the vent, but Julie took the silence as acknowledgement.

“Well, maybe you should do something about it,” she heard Danny suggest.

“What do you mean?” Chris asked.

“Well, some women like younger guys,” Danny said. “You know, I used to work with her old man; he walked out on her a few years back. So I gotta figure she might be a bit desperate for companionship these days, if you know what I mean.”

“I am not desperate,” Julie said under her breath in a voice too low to carry, the declaration sounding a bit hollow as none of her dates since her divorce had been much to crow about.

“And it’s also been my experience that some of those moms next door types are really hellcats in bed,” the older man added, “especially if it’s been a while.”

Again, Julie heard no comment from Chris, leading her to wonder if he agreed or disagreed with Danny’s statement.

“So, if you made a pass at her, what’s the worst that could happen?” Danny asked. “She says no and you move on, but at least you’d have tried. I mean, you’re back at school in two weeks, so what have you got to lose?”

“If you think she’s that hard up, why don’t you give her a go?” Chris retorted.

“Not my type,” Danny laughed, “I like a woman with big boobs. Besides, I already got a girlfriend, and she takes really good care of me. I’m not about to screw that up.”

Chris thought for a moment about the photo Danny had shown him and Henry the first time he’d been assigned to shipping at the beginning of the summer. The dark-haired Latina in it, who looked to be only a few years older than Chris, certainly had big boobs. The older man had described them as being 42DD in size.

“Hey, you think that maybe she’d be...” Henry interrupted, popping out of the beer-induced haze he had drifted off in, only to be just as quickly shot down by Danny.

“I think you need to set your sights a bit lower, pal,” he said before again turning back to Chris. “Just think about it, kid.”

Just then, whatever caused the cross-talk effect changed and the voices faded until they were gone. If Chris had given a final response to Danny’s comment, it had been too indistinguishable to be understood.

Dropping back into her chair once she accepted that there wasn’t going to be anything more, Julie slowly shook her head in disbelief at what she’d heard. It was absurd, she thought, the very idea of her and a kid like that. Well, maybe not a kid because, after all, he was almost twenty — but still.

Closing her eyes, Julie tried to recall her interactions with Chris over the summer. Most had been of the friendly greetings as they passed in the hall variety, but there had also been the week he’d filled in for their vacationing clerk. She remembered him as being extremely eager to please, going above and beyond what was normally expected of summer help.

Sure, they’d had a few conversations, mostly about general things like, what he was studying in school, did he have a girlfriend, how did he like working at Sutherland’s? The answers to which she’d mostly forgotten. Yet there had been a compliment he’d paid her one day that had stuck in her memory. About how nice she looked in the dark green dress she’d been wearing that day, the color going so well with her hair. It seemed such an unusual thing for a young man to say, which was why she probably still remembered it.

It was only as she thought of that that she also recalled a comment that Alicia Ortega, the assistant bookkeeper, had made the next day. She’d said it was a good thing Chris being there was only temporary, because she got the impression that the kid had a bit of a crush on the older redhead. Julie had told her that was absurd; she was old enough to be his mother. Alicia, however, had been adamant.

“I could’ve been mistaken,” the Hispanic woman had said, “but I’m fairly certain that he had a hard-on when he was talking to you yesterday. At least that was the way it looked from across the room.”

Somehow, despite having been much closer, Julie had missed that observation.