A woman looking for fame and fortune, gets green acres and farm life instead.
*
Once her favorite holiday, Audrey now dreaded Valentine's Day. Normally an early shopper, with Valentine's Day looming closer, in the way of a painful toothache, she hadn't even yet bought her husband a Valentine's Day card. Every time she was in the mood to look at Valentine's Day cards, once she started reading the sentiments, wishing her life was different, uncomplicated and unencumbered. She wished she was single again.
Dreading returning home, she fell out of the mood to look at meaningless Valentine's Day cards and walked out the store feeling sad, frustrated, angry, unappreciated, and restlessly lonely. Just as she had grown to finally fall out of love with her husband, it was obvious that he didn't love her. Truth be told, the sad reality about their strained relationship was that he never loved her. More concerned about his farm animals than about her, if anything, wanting a farmhand with benefits, using her for sex, as if she was just another one of his farm animals that he needed to run his farm, he lusted over her but he didn't love her.
"Twinkle, twinkle little star," she said making her secret wishes on a star she picked out and that magically appeared each night in the same place in the sky, through the barn's tattered roof, whenever she was out in the barn. "I wish upon a star tonight, grant me my wish to improve my plight."
Only, her wishes for fame and fortune never came true. Definitely, without a doubt, this was God's country, but God was busy doing other things than to help her get her start with a singing, dancing, and acting career. Totally pitch black at night, unless the carnival, the farm show, or the circus came to town to light up the night's sky with an aurora borealis of wonderment and awaken the night with music, there were no Broadway lights and no music out here, just chores.
* * * * *
If given the chance, Audrey would have stayed in the big city. With stars in her eyes and fame and fortune on her mind, if given the opportunity, she wanted to be a singer and have a career as an entertainer. She loved the wild nightlife of the big city. Hopping from club to club to listen and to dance to the new sounds of music from live bands in the city, if the country had sidewalks, they'd roll them up at suppertime. If given the choice, she'd never leave the city nightlife for the real wildlife of a small country, rural town. Only, she wasn't given much of a chance, opportunity, or choice, when she had to pack up her things and move from the city to the country.
"So, this is it, small town USA? This is the whole town, a gas station, a country store, a church, an old cinema, a bowling alley, and a diner? It's so quaintly charming but, just like the small cemetery behind the church, so peacefully dead," she said after having pulled into town and parking her car behind the bank, where she'd be working. "Where are all the people? I can only wonder what they do or don't do on a Saturday night. I wonder if they have cable? I hope to God they have the Internet."
Audrey was transferred from her corporate bank in the city to this small branch office in this small town way out in the western part of the state, after she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her boss, the senior vice president at the bank, and her employer, Multinational Bank. Even though it's been more than a year since the attack, the memory of the sexual assault, along with the effects of her lawsuit, with her being transferred here, as if being punished, are still fresh in her mind and sometimes plays in the way of an endlessly horrific video. It all started, when Mr. Wilson called her up to his office. Nothing unusual about that, typically they met weekly behind closed doors to discuss banking business, something he preferred doing with her, rather than with her immediate superior, Mr. Wilson's Bank Manager, George Reynolds, who was a man his age.
"Mr. Wilson wants to see you, Audrey," said Mr. Reynolds.
"He does? Why? Have I done something wrong?"
"No, not at all, he wants to discuss the bank's business with you. Matter of fact, he wants to see you weekly to discuss banking business," he said with a sigh and a defeated look, while slowly shaking his head.
"I don't understand, George. You're the Branch Manager and I'm only your assistant. Besides, he has weekly meeting with all of his bank managers. Why does he need another private meeting with me? Why does he want to discuss banking business with me, instead of with you? You have more banking experience and financial education that I do."
"Because," said George with a sad face and a roll of his eyes, while looking at Audrey with a fatherly smile, "suffice to say that you have better legs than I do. Just humor him and maybe he'll leave you alone," he said with a thoughtful pause, "or give you a raise and a promotion in the way that he gave Brenda," he said with a little laugh, as if enjoying a private joke.
"Oh," said Audrey immediately understanding that the bank's business as usual sexual harassment laws didn't apply to those top echelon executives.
Even though this is the 21st century with established sexual harassment laws firmly set in place, and not the 20th century with secretaries being groped and coerced to have sex with executives, in exchange for raises, preferential treatment, and promotions, nothing has changed at this bank managed by mostly middle-age Caucasian men, in fifty years.
When she entered his office, with his back to her, Mr. Wilson was sitting in his big, red, tufted leather, high back chair with it turned outward to the panoramic view that he had from his expanse of penthouse office windows. Rude of him to be sitting like that with his back to her, she thought, when he had asked to see her, especially knowing she'd be right up and that she was now there in his office, she silently stewed by the ill-mannered slight and his lack of professional courtesy. Content to sit and wait for him to finish, whatever he was doing, usually on the phone texting someone, she took the empty chair in front of his desk, while staring at the back of his bald head.
As if she was auditioning for a Hollywood producer, always positioned in the same exact spot, she always thought it odd that the chair in front of his desk was always so neatly arranged. Pushed far enough back from his desk to give him a view up her short skirt, if she was careless and didn't sit like a lady, she wondered if that was his intent. She imagined slutty Brenda sitting in this same chair, while giving him an up skirt view of her panty. Maybe that's why George was laughing. Maybe that's how ditsy Brenda got her big raise and promotion.
Finished playing with his phone, discovering later that it wasn't his phone that he was playing with but his cock, with a wave of his hand and a quick turn of his chair, making it appear accidental with his elbow and arm, he knocked a pile of papers and folders from his desk. All of it planned, in hindsight, she now knows that clearing his desktop to the floor wasn't accidental. Everything went flying everywhere. Suddenly feeling like the subservient woman, instead of his junior executive, the Assistant Branch Manager, immediately Audrey stood and squatted down to pick up the mess.
Not paying any mind to her comportment, with her short skirt raised just a few inches from her crotch, no doubt, exposing her panties to him, should he be looking and he was, her knees were mindlessly parted wide enough to give him an accidental show of her panty. With the top of her loosely fitting blouse falling opened, too, now rewarded with an up skirt and a down blouse, he squatted down with her, too, on the pretense of helping her pick up his papers. Only, he wasn't picking up papers, he was looking up her crotch high skirt and down her loosely hanging blouse, while pretending he was picking up the purposely dropped paperwork. When she caught him looking, staring, and leering, actually, her face flushed to match her pink panties and she stood and pulled down her skirt.
