Chapter Text
Tuesday, August 27, 1996
Helen had been working at Blue Ridge Publishing as a marketing associate for just shy of a year. Eleven and a half months into an eighteen month program to get her foot into publishing during her postgrad, she was ready for it to be over so she could get the hell out of Virginia.
A mop of dark, curly hair poked through the doorway. “Hey, Helen. After you call Kathleen, update Steve on the nonfiction schedule for September.”
“Will do. Thank you, Cindy.” Helen replied as she picked up the handset and started dialing. She paused, seeming to have a revelation. “Wait, Cindy—“
Cindy stopped her attempt to leave. “Hmm?”
“Is Steve in his office? I thought he would be back tomorrow.” Steven Wilkins, the head of the marketing and design department, never seemed to run out of vacation days during the summer months.
Cindy shook her head. “No, he’s back tomorrow. But his new assistant started yesterday, so you can leave a message with her.”
“Got it,” Helen nodded, picking up the phone once more.
“Just a warning,” Cindy interjected. “She’s kind of an airhead. I had to teach her how to use the fax machine.”
“That’s how Steve likes ‘em,” Helen mumbled under her breath. Steve was already on his third assistant that year, an impressive feat for late August. It was a sick, perpetual cycle. Steve hires a pretty undergraduate girl to manage his schedule and prepare his reports, the girl falls behind the steep learning curve, Steve fires her and finds a replacement. All the while, he makes advances that he feigns as “friendly advice, mentor-to-mentee”. The girl is gone before she ever thinks to report it as sexual harassment.
He’d tried it with Helen, a month or so into her job. She’d circumvented human resources entirely and reported it to the director of operations, who visited her desk the next day with Steve in tow and made him apologize to her for his behavior. Not that it amounted to anything, because Steve was still her boss and was still employed with benefits. The good news, at least, was that he never made another attempt to pick up Helen, or any other young women in Helen’s presence.
Helen dialed the number for Kathleen, the author she’d been assigned to work with. She got the answering machine and left a message for the third time that week. That meant another scheduling delay, unless Kathleen miraculously decided to start returning her calls. Helen scribbled a note down on a Post-It. With a huff, Helen collected the note, stood up from her desk and started her trek down the hall toward Steve’s office.
The desk in front of his office was occupied for the first time in a month. A pretty young woman about Helen’s age was poking through the filing cabinet drawers, as if trying to familiarize herself with its contents. Her white blouse had a coffee stain on the collar that she’d clearly been trying to hide with her long blonde hair.
“Hi there,” Helen said.
The assistant jumped with a start. “Jeez, don’t… sneak up on me like that.”
Helen smiled instead of responding. She could point out that she’d walked the entire length of the hallway, and should have been seen coming the entire distance. But the blonde was new and was clearly occupied, so she let it go. “I’ve got a message for Steve, once he gets back. Can you pass it along?”
She held out the Post-It.
The assistant took the yellow square of paper and looked it over. “I can’t read your handwriting.”
“As long as Steve can read it, that’s all that matters,” said Helen.
The young woman rolled her eyes and sat the Post-It down. She wheeled her chair from one edge of the desk to the other, collecting a pen and a legal pad that was already half-full of notes. “What’s the message? I’ll tell him.”
Helen plucked the Post-It off the desk and pointed out the words written on it as she read them off. “Kathleen not responding. Swap dates with Dennis for September release.”
The assistant nodded as she wrote down Helen’s words on her legal pad. “I’ll let Steve know in the morning.” She looked up from her writing, and Helen noticed her very blue eyes for the first time. “Who should I tell him it’s from?”
“Helen,” she answered.
“You’ve got it, Helen.” The assistant put her pen down and turned back to the filing cabinet drawers. She glanced back at Helen, who still stood in front of the desk. “Was there something else?”
Helen shook her head. “That’s all.”
She looked Helen up and down. “You’ve got a run in your tights.” She nodded at the bottom hem of Helen’s pants. “Just there.”
Helen looked down. Sure enough. “You’ve got a coffee stain on your collar,” Helen said. She pointed to the collar on her own shirt. “Just there.”
The assistant frowned and brushed her hair over her shoulder, trying to cover the collar better.
“Nice meeting you…” Helen said, the corners of her mouth turning up in a smile. She searched the desk for a name plate, to no avail. “What’s your name?”
She shot Helen a suspicious look. “Carol,” she said curtly.
“Nice meeting you, Carol,” Helen said, turning back down the hallway. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
Wednesday, August 28, 1996
They did see each other around. The next day, Steve called the entire marketing team into a meeting to debrief him on the happenings while he was on his eleven day vacation.
“What’s the point of having an assistant if you’re not going to have them deliver your messages?” Helen had muttered to Cindy as they collected into their seats for the impromptu meeting.
“Third day on the job and the new girl’s already been made redundant by a meeting,” chided Cindy.
“She’s not so bad, though,” Helen noted. “Seems like she’s really trying.”
There was a thwack of a legal pad on the table across from them. They both looked to see Carol pulling out a chair to take a seat, eyes focused on her notepad as she fidgeted with a pen between her fingers.
“Good morning,” Helen said.
Carol glared at her, adjusting the chair she sat on. “Morning.”
“How’s your first week been, so far?” Helen asked politely.
Carol clicked her pen and wrote the date at the top of her page. “Fine.”
“Are you from Richmond?” She asked, trying to start some type of conversation.
“Virginia Beach,” said Carol. There was a brief silence. “But obviously I live here in Richmond now,” she continued.
“You’ve always lived in Virginia?” asked Helen.
Carol paused for a moment, then furrowed her eyebrows. “Why does it matter?”
Helen raised her shoulders. “Probably doesn’t.”
Carol underlined the date at the top of her notes. “Yes, I’ve pretty much always lived in Virginia.”
“‘Pretty much’?” echoed Helen questioningly.
“Alright everyone, it’s good to see your smiling faces this morning!” boomed Steve’s voice as he strode through the conference room door. Helen turned her attention to him at the head of the table, knowing the conversation with Carol had met its abrupt end.
“And for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure yet,” Steve continued, “give a welcome to Carol, the newest addition to the team. She just started this week and she’ll be helping me out for the foreseeable future.” He gestured to Carol, who blushed and nodded awkwardly.
The other marketing team members grumbled various welcomes and hellos to Carol.
Helen shifted her focus for the rest of the meeting between Steve, Carol, and anyone else who was speaking.
When they were all dismissed, Helen stood beside the exit for Carol to pass her by. She noticed that Carol was pointedly avoiding eye contact as she did.
“Carol,” Helen called.
She had little choice but to stop in her tracks and acknowledge Helen. “Hmm?”
“I’m happy to have you here,” said Helen. “May not seem like it, but we all are.”
Carol pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, then continued walking.
Friday, September 6, 1996
The next time they spoke more than three words to each other was in the women’s bathroom. Carol was washing her hands when the sound of a stall door opening behind her grabbed her attention. She looked up from her hands to see who it was and she saw, in the mirror’s reflection, a yawning Helen Umstead approaching the sink beside hers.
“Morning,” greeted Helen. She turned on the faucet next to Carol and began to wash her hands. “Is that how you identify all of your clothes?” Helen asked.
Carol traced Helen’s eyeline and realized she was looking at the neckline of Carol’s shirt. The same shirt she had been wearing the day they met, with the coffee stain on the collar. “I like this shirt,” she said defensively, turning off the sink. She snatched a paper towel from the dispenser and dried off her wet hands. “Don’t you have anything better to do than investigate my wardrobe?”
“Didn’t realize it was such a touchy subject,” Helen said, surprised at Carol’s change in tone. “Thought you might have just had two coffee-stained white button-downs.”
“How many pairs of your grandpa’s slacks do you own?” asked Carol snidely, gesturing at Helen’s trousers.
“The fashion police sure are grumpy today,” said Helen. She turned off the faucet and shook her hands off once into the sink.
Carol frowned. “You started it.”
Helen held her wet hands up in mock surrender, “Now I know that stains add sentimental value for you.”
“It’s not—” Carol sighed. “I don’t have a lot of work-appropriate clothes. I haven’t gotten paid yet since I started. Just lay off, I’ll get new clothes when I have the cash for them.”
Helen’s eyebrows raised in response and she nodded slowly. “My bad,” she responded. She reached for a paper towel and started drying her hands. “If you do go shopping, you should buy something blue.”
She clenched her jaw as if bracing for impact. “Why?” Carol asked with a sigh, like she expected Helen’s next words to be an insult.
“To bring out your eyes,” Helen answered, tossing her wet paper towels in the garbage can. She strode toward the door and turned back to look at Carol. “I think you’d look good in blue,” she said, then left her standing in an empty bathroom.
That night, Helen pulled a plastic storage bin from the shelf at the top of her closet. She dug through and pulled out a selection of items, unfolding each to examine it. Slowly, a neatly folded pile formed on her bed. There was a series of blouses, a sweater that she never bothered wearing, a skirt she didn’t have anything to match with and a dress that she liked but that was an inch shorter than she was comfortable showing off. Helen packed them all into an empty cardboard box to deliver to their new home.
At the same time, in a shoebox of an apartment six miles away, Carol Sturka touched herself while thinking of Helen Umstead for the first time. She remembered wet hands and a cocky smile, and she used her imagination for the rest. She thought of the timbre of Helen’s voice, saying “I think you’d look good in blue.”
Helen’s lower register echoed in Carol’s head like it was being whispered in her ear. “Let me see you,” said the Helen in her mind, whose fingers were rubbing careful circles on her clit. Carol mimicked the motion with her own fingers as she imagined it, and bit back a moan of Helen’s name as she came.
Monday, September 9, 1996
There was a cardboard box sitting on her office chair when she arrived. A yellow Post-It was stuck to the top, bearing the words “help yourself” in sloppy handwriting that Carol immediately recognized. She knew what she would find inside, but she opened the box anyway. Sure enough—it was a collection of business casual attire, clearly pre-owned but seemingly devoid of holes and stains.
Helen Umstead can go fuck herself, Carol thought. Nevertheless, she took stock of the contents. They weren’t really her ideal choice of wardrobe, and one top at a glance looked at least a size too big. Two of the blouses were shades of blue, as was the lone dress at the bottom of the pile.
She closed the box and tossed it under her desk to hide it from view. There was a level of embarrassment to its existence, a shame that washed over her. The idea that Helen pitied her and had been driven to an act of charity. Carol didn’t need charity, and she didn’t want it. Resolutely, she decided she would wait until everyone else had left for the day and would take the box outside when the coast was clear. She’d put it in the trunk of her car and forget it existed. Maybe an occasion would arise when she could return it to Helen without having to acknowledge it.
Thursday, September 12, 1996
Carol Sturka, as a general rule, did not show up early. In her youth, she was the type to snooze her alarm enough times to miss the school bus. She did so with enough frequency that one day, when she was thirteen, her mother awoke her after three missed alarms with an airhorn held a foot from Carol’s head. It drew a howl of pain from the teenager as she fruitlessly covered her ears with her hands. Her ears rang the entire thirty minute bus ride to school, but she never missed her alarm again. Carol’s discipline regarding punctuality thereafter started and ended with waking up on time.
Today, however, she arrived at the offices of Blue Ridge Publishing at 6:48 a.m., wearing the same skirt she had worn the previous day. The blouse was a different one than the day before, at least. She’d fished it from the cardboard box that had been living untouched in the trunk of her car. It was sleeveless, made of some silky, satiny material, cut about an inch lower at the neckline than she was used to, and a very complimentary shade of blue.
She didn’t want to be wearing Helen’s gifted clothes, but her choices were slim. Carol hadn’t gone home the night before, choosing instead to hop between bars downtown. It was a risky practice that she only did when strapped for cash and in need of liquor to take the edge off.
It was a simple system she’d formed. At the expensive places downtown, the straight male patrons would notice her at the bar alone. They’d buy her drinks until they realized she wouldn’t sleep with them or until the bartender cut her off. Or, in the worst case scenario, until Carol pulled the rip cord and slunk out of the bar without being seen as best she could.
Last night had been the worst case scenario, and she’d been too far gone on rye Manhattans to be effective at sneaking away undetected.
And then the bastard had followed her. She didn’t remember his name, in spite of the fact that he’d talked at her as she drank for nearly half an hour straight. She was drunk behind the wheel of her Lincoln Continental, swerving between lanes on a blessedly clear road at a quarter to two in the morning. Then she saw the lights of a Chevy pickup truck behind her and gaining, and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to return home that night.
Carol took a series of illogical turns and ran two red lights trying to lose the man on her tail. When she hadn’t seen him for a few minutes she finally allowed herself to breathe, then pulled off to park behind a big-box store. She quadruple-checked the locks on each of her car doors, then laid her driver’s seat back as far as it would go in an attempt to sleep. But sleep evaded her, her mind and heart rushing with the anxiety of the evening. Eventually, she glanced at the clock on her dashboard and decided it was time to give up on the sleep idea.
Now it was not even seven o’clock in the morning as Carol unlocked the front door to the Blue Ridge office building with the key she’d been given on her first day. She first headed to the restroom to apply a layer of concealer and hopefully cover the dark circles that were definitely forming under her eyes—one of the many consequences of twenty-five hours without sleep.
If she could catch up on her work now, she might even be able to nap in her car during her lunch break. Surely the exhaustion would have overtaken the insomnia by then, and her body would let her have that brief pocket of rest.
It was 7:23 a.m. when Carol stood in the artificial light of the copy room, pulling banker boxes from the storage closet and moving them to the counter. It was a tedious job that Steve had told her to finish by month end—almost certainly assigned to her because it was monotonous, repetitive, and irritating as hell.
“Do you always get here this early?” came someone from the doorway.
Carol jumped in shock at the sound of another voice. She turned to see who it was, but her gut said that she already knew.
Helen stood in the doorframe, holding a stack of papers tucked to her chest.
Of course, Carol thought. Of course it’s Helen, because God isn’t real and if he was, he would have a vendetta against me. “No,” she gave in answer to Helen’s question.
“Why are you here this early?” asked Helen.
“I wanted to get a head start,” Carol lied. “Steve seems to think I can sprout an extra pair of arms from my armpits to manage this many things at once.”
“Can you?” asked Helen cheekily.
Carol glared at her, unamused. “Believe it or not, no.”
Helen shrugged. “Have you tried?”
Carol laughed, the kind of laugh that’s really just a heavy exhale and a shake of the head. “No, that must be the issue. I haven’t checked for a second set of hands on my body.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, we’ve all made that mistake,” she said with a grin. “You should have seen me when I discovered my third foot. You don’t wanna know where it was.”
That earned a real laugh from Carol—a full, head-thrown-back laugh that echoed in the quiet hall. “Stupid,” she mumbled, smiling. “What are you even doing here, anyway? You usually get here at eight.”
“Do I?” asked Helen sarcastically as she approached. “You been timing me?”
Carol didn’t know how to communicate the truthful answer. No, I just always notice when I hear your voice down the hall, she thought. “No, just—” she stammered, “Most people get here at eight. Why are you so early?”
“Getting samples printed while the copiers are free,” Helen answered. “I needed to have them done today and there’s always a wait for the copier in the mornings. Plus I have to make up my time so I can have a long lunch today.”
“Big lunch plans?” Carol raised an eyebrow, continuing her earlier task of unboxing, checking and filing.
“School stuff,” she shrugged. “No time I can go but in the middle of the day.”
“You’re in school?” asked Carol. “U of Richmond?”
“Commonwealth,” Helen corrected. “And nearly finished with my grad program. If I don’t give up and become a stripper instead.”
“Good luck with that,” Carol teased. “I wouldn’t have the core strength.”
“Never said I’d be a good stripper,” she countered. “Are you at U of Richmond?”
“Hmm?” The blonde looked at her quizzically before absorbing the question. “Oh, no. High school was bad enough for me. I had no desire to do anything optional. I sat through two lectures of college algebra at the community college before I put that idea away.”
“Fair enough,” Helen nodded. “Always felt pretty meh about numbers as a concept. Letters were always more exciting.”
“More of a punctuation marks girl, myself,” joked Carol. She pulled a stack of papers from the box by the binder clip holding them together, then watched in horror as the middle pages slipped out and scattered along the linoleum floor.
“Whoops,” Helen said as she knelt and started collecting the papers.
“Shit,” muttered Carol, agitated. She dropped to her knees and joined Helen in the sorting. “Shit, are these numbered? Damn it.”
“It happens, no big deal,” said Helen calmly, reassuring. “We’ll fix it.”
“God, there’s no way to put these back in order,” Carol whined. She pressed her hand to her forehead.
“What is this, a marketing slideshow packet?” Helen held up a page with a series of graphs and bullet points on it. “Nobody’s gonna look at this, much less read it. Let’s just put it back.”
Carol took the papers from Helen’s hands and wordlessly did so, snapping the binder clip at the top of the newly realigned stack. She slid open the filing cabinet drawer and put the papers in a file at the back, then shoved the drawer closed like she was hiding contraband.
“You’re squirrely,” remarked Helen.
Carol side-eyed her. “I just… don’t wanna mess shit up. I was lucky to even get this job.”
Helen looked at the remaining banker’s box and a half that Carol had left to be filed. “Do you want help? I’ve got some time,” she offered.
Carol shook her head. “I don’t need help,” she refused.
“I asked if you want help,” countered Helen.
She shrugged and silently went back to her filing.
“I’ll read off what it is, you put it where it’s supposed to go. Sound good?” Helen strategized.
Carol pursed her lips, then nodded.
The whole task took them twenty-five minutes.
Helen broke down the emptied banker’s box with a sigh. “Teamwork makes the dream work, as they say,” she said, noting the clock on the wall. “We’ve got another ten minutes before people start flocking in for the day. Anything else you need done?”
Carol shook her head, “I can handle everything else on my own. But thanks. For helping.”
“Anytime,” Helen said, leaning against the table. She glanced out the window to check the weather. “You wanna take a smoke break?”
“Sure,” Carol agreed.
Helen led them outside through a side entrance that Carol had been unaware of, the warm late-summer air refreshing after the stale copy room. Helen pulled a pack of Marlboros from her pocket, along with a disposable blue lighter. She put an unlit cigarette between her teeth and then held the open pack out to Carol.
“No thanks,” Carol said, waving them away with her hand. “My smoking days are behind me.”
Helen raised an eyebrow as she flicked her lighter and lit her cigarette with a practiced motion. She took a long drag before speaking. “If you don’t smoke, why’d you agree to take a smoke break with me?”
“Secondhand smoke sounded like a fun way to die,” Carol retorted.
“I need to quit,” Helen said, flicking a wayward speck of ash from her top. “I’ll do it one of these days.” There was a pause as she looked Carol up and down curiously. Carol avoided her gaze and pretended to look at the architecture of the building until Helen broke the silence. “How are you holding up?”
“Fine.” Carol was brushing her off, evading the topic. “The publishing side is a lot more boring than I expected.”
Helen took another puff of her cigarette. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know,” shrugged Carol. “Reading and talking about books all day, maybe artists and illustrators running around. Stacks of newly printed ARCs.”
“Yeah, definitely not like that,” agreed Helen. “And how’s Steve? He giving you any trouble?”
“Seems like he expects me to know things before he asks for them, but that’s about it,” said Carol, drawing shapes on the sidewalk with the toe of her shoe.
“Watch out for him,” Helen said lowly. “And if he tries anything with you, let me know. I’ll beat him up.”
“Tries?” echoed Carol, looking at her puzzled. “Tries what?”
“If he starts hitting on you,” Helen elaborated. “The guy acts super friendly with everybody to try to hide the fact that he’s a creep.”
“Oh,” Carol said. She looked into the distance, clearly reflecting on that information. “Good to know.”
“I’m serious though, I’ll kick his ass. Just say the word.” Helen mimed a jab with the fist not holding her cigarette.
“Yeah, I believed you when you said it,” said Carol with a nod. “Was that something that happened with the girl I replaced? She rejected him or something?”
“It didn’t even get that far, she was scared off by his management skills,” Helen dropped her cigarette butt on the concrete and ground it out with the sole of her shoe. “Or lack thereof. It’s a shame he’s not a hundred years older, he’d have been a great captain of the Titanic. Sunk it without even needing an iceberg.”
Carol tried to laugh but snorted instead. Her eyes widened and she covered her face with her hands. “I didn’t just do that.”
Helen threw her head back and laughed. “‘Course not. And it’s a shame because it would have been pretty cute if you had snorted that hard at a joke that wasn’t even funny.”
“You’re one to talk,” Carol said, blushing. “You laugh loud enough to rattle the walls.”
“Some of us know how to have a good time,” said Helen with a smile. “Now we should probably head inside and do our actual jobs.”
Carol huffed but nodded in agreement, turning to open the door. She held it ajar and gestured for Helen to go first. “After you,” she said politely.
“What a gentleman,” Helen replied, stepping inside. “And by the way…”
Carol looked up at her, their faces closer than they’d ever been before.
“I was right about the blue,” Helen said.