*Note – This is a work of fiction.
Miss Miller worked for the same retailer I did when I first went to work at age 16. She was a middle aged, average looking office clerk, while I was a stock person. I said hello a few times to her, as she came in to the store and headed to the office.
By the time I was 18, I was trusted enough to open and close the store as well as being trained to run it. By then, Miss Miller was doing her office work from her mother’s home. Her mother had become bedridden and needed her daughter’s constant care. She very rarely went out of her house, so it became my job to take her to work and pick up the finished product. I always did it at the end of my shift so the amount of time I spent away from the store wasn’t an issue.
Miss Miller had no children and was not married, why I do not know. Whenever I came to her mother’s house, she would cheerfully greet me and offer me a soda or some snacks. I never saw her in a bad mood. She would pump me for the latest gossip in the store, and tell me any, if she had some. After a short period of time, I found myself looking forward to seeing her. No matter how bad my day was, she could always cheer me up.
By that Christmas, Miss Miller’s mother had passed away, and she inherited the house. The office in the store had been redone and they had made no provision for Miss Miller to return. She had sold her car for cash, so I became the person to bring her work and schlep her around. The owner decided to allow her to continue to work from home.
Once a week, I would bring a huge box of manufacturer’s coupons to her, besides the bookwork. They needed to be sorted by brand and then by product, totaled and sealed in an envelope to be returned for redemption, to each manufacturer. I had never done it before, but I could tell it was a Herculean task. One day, I showed up with two boxes. That was the closest I ever came to seeing the smile leave her face.
After offering me the usual, and my declining, I started to say goodbye.
“Ben, do you think I could talk you into coming over here tomorrow, to help me with these? The boss always wants these in the mail on Monday morning and I just don’t think I can do by myself, this week. I’ll order lunch or dinner. Whatever you want,” she said, almost in a begging tone.
“If you’ll let me watch the football games,” I said.
“Whatever, I just need the help.”
“What time?”
“Anytime after 10:00,” she said.
“Okay, Miss Miller, I’ll see you after 10:00.”
It was playoff time, and I had no intentions of missing any games.
Around 10:30 Saturday morning, I knocked on Miss Miller’s door.
“Ah, Ben, great!” she said, as she opened the door.
“Hi, Miss Miller,” I said as I entered.
“Hey Ben, I know your just trying to be polite, but you’re an adult now. Call me Dawn,”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m not that much older than you. I’m 39 and young at heart,” she said in her upbeat attitude.
“Okay. What do I have to do?”
She showed me what she had started. Separate piles for different manufacturers. We finished it in two hours.
“That wasn’t so hard,” I said.
“Whoa, sport!” she laughed. “That was the easy part.”
She was right. We now had to sort each master pile by individual products and provide copies of invoices to prove we had bought enough product to cover the number of coupons we were redeeming.
She turned on the first game for me as we went to work on the first pile. It was in the third quarter by the time we finished it. By the time we finished the second pile, the second game was at half time.
“Sorry I talked you into this?” asked Dawn.
“No, it’s just that my back is starting to ache from bending over the tables here,” I said, as I rubbed my lower back.
“Hang in there,” she said, like a pep talk.
We finished the next two piles by the time the second game was over. There were three left.
“If you help me with the largest pile there, I’ll order anything you want and get you a beer,” she said, “I’ll do the last two tomorrow, myself.”
“Let’s do it,” I said, as I attacked the big pile.
We finished at 8:45. My back really hurt.
“Okay, Ben, what do you want?” beamed Dawn.
“I think I just want to go home,” I said, as I tried to straighten up.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said, wagging a finger at me. “I told you that I was ordering for you and I mean it.”
“How about pizza?”
“I’d order live lobster for you and you want pizza?”
“Okay, give me a second,” I said, as she tapped her foot. “How about seafood?”
“Oh, great idea! Seafood Jerry’s makes a great dungenous crab leg dinner with all the trimmings and delivers. All you have to do is boil the legs so they’re fresh. Sound good?” she asked, excitedly.
“Absolutely,” I replied.
She went into kitchen to make the call. When she returned, she was carrying two Miller beers. I looked at her and she said, “No relation. If I was, I wouldn’t be sorting coupons!”
I took a few sips and set it down. I moved around the sofa a bit, trying to relieve the pain in my back.
“Back still hurt?” asked Dawn.
“Yeah, it’s just more of an annoyance than real pain,” I said as I continued moving around.
“Lay down on your stomach,” said Dawn. “I used to be chiropractic assistant.”
I laid down on my belly, and she started to work on my back. I’ve got to admit, she had my back feeling great in a short period of time.
“Feel better?” she said as she patted my back.
“Yeah, thanks, Dawn,” I said as I sat back up.
“These fingers can work wonders,” she said, wiggling them in my face.
“Well, they did with my back,” I replied.
I finished my beer and the food arrived. Dawn took the crab legs out to the kitchen and dropped them in a large pot of water she already had boiling. She opened the fridge and pulled out two more beers.
“Beer and sea food, a new food group,” she said tapping her beer with my own.
As she set the table and laid out the fixings, I looked at Dawn with fresh eyes. Yes, she was middle aged. To an 18 year old, middle age meant Mom. Still, Dawn had some nice qualities. She had green eyes, dark blond curly hair that barely touched her shoulders, some middle age spread around the caboose, and larger then average breasts. She caught me looking at those breasts.
“What, did I get something on me?” she said, as she looked down and brushed the front of her sweatshirt.
“I thought you did,” I lied. “There you got it.”