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Part 1
"Glen, come upstairs after we close, please. I need to talk to you," said Rosemary – under her breath, yet pointedly – as she passed behind me. She was the second-in-command, behind the owner, of the drug store where I worked to support myself as a 20-year-old, pre-med, sophomore college student in the mid 1960s.
What could she possibly want? I wondered, as I locked the front door behind the late-shift pharmacist after he left for home. Shutting off the outside lights at 10 p.m., I swept the floor and emptied the day's trash into the dumpster behind the store, locked the delivery car inside the back gate, and went upstairs to Rosemary's office, where she was counting the day's receipts.
"Wait a few minutes," she said, brusquely, as she completed a tally from a cash drawer. I stood a few feet away, unbuttoning my pharmacist's smock from my neck and down one shoulder, and wanted desperately to sit down. My days were full: 8 a.m. classes 'til one, a quick bite for lunch, at the drug store by two and working 'til ten – with a snack on the run – then a sandwich over the books until I fell asleep at 2 or 3 a.m. That schedule was repeated consistently, six days a week.
Rosemary finished counting the receipts and turned to look up at me from her swivel chair. Her gaze swept from my face to my toes, making me uncomfortable since she was wearing the sardonic half smile that she'd used so often to intimidate employees. "Did you lock up?" she asked, looking through the window in the upstairs wall that afforded her a view of the entire store and the adjoining pharmacy below.
"Yes, and swept as well," I responded.
"Good. Then, turn off the inside lights." I moved to the upstairs bank of switches to do as she'd ordered, and walked back to her desk, standing over her, perhaps more closely than I should have. I looked down at her small, shapely form – her luscious, curvy legs crossed under a tight, black skirt, with a snug, multi-colored silk blouse tucked into it – and knew that I was frightened of this woman. Not only was she a tough boss who ran the retail operation like a top sergeant – the other employees called her
the ice woman
– but she was gorgeous...and she wielded her beauty like a rapier when dealing with men.
We all wore pharmacy whites in the store, men in half-sleeved smocks and women in lab coats. But unlike the other female employees, only Rosemary wore her lab coat open, which exposed her generous C-cup bosom and full, scrumptious thighs under tight skirts or dresses. Each day she'd put on a freshly starched white garment, and would turn the collar up, making her look saucy and impudent as compared with the other women. She was no more than 5'2" tall, maybe 34-22-34, and her flawless oval, Irish face was framed by short, gently curled, black hair with eyebrows of the same color. Her creamy, ivory complexion was always made up beautifully, as were her riveting blue eyes, which now looked up at me with more than a hint of knowledge that she could make me squirm and do anything she wished. Though in her mid-thirties, I estimated, and childless, I could only imagine the power that she must've exercised over her husband, a firefighter who had the reputation of being a blustering jerk.
"I saw what happened last week...downstairs...with Barbara," she said. I watched her full lips, darkened with a near-burgundy lipstick, contemptuously form the name "Barbara," who was the boss's tall, lissome, longhaired blonde wife. Occasionally, Barbara would spend a half-day in the store to help out in the pharmacy.
"Oh? What happened?" I asked, trying to appear innocent.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about!" she flared. "You were taking inventory back in the pharmacy, and she stepped around one of the shelves to fasten her nylons. You got an eyeful of her under her skirt. You blushed...she gushed, and then she backed you into a corner, touching you all over and apologizing, as if it'd been her fault. Gawd, it was sickening!"
I remembered the incident. I also knew that Barbara liked me. But, I thought it was because she wanted me to date her teenage daughter, Sandy, her child with the big boss, Bob, whose father had started the business as a pharmacist a generation before. I knew Bob respected me as a hard worker, and was mentoring me, urging me to attend pharmaceutical courses in conjunction with my pre-med classes. Regardless, I'd put the memory of Barbara's soft, milky white thighs in perspective, after I'd memorized the image of her fastening a stocking to her garter belt over a pair of wispy, lace panties. I had a rich sensual imagination but, after all, I knew my place.
"It was an accident," I mumbled, backing away, since Rosemary had stood up to demonstrate body language that was decidedly threatening.
"Don't bullshit me, kid!" she hissed. "I've seen your kind before, a poor boy weaseling into a rich family. Just 'cause you're gonna be a
doctor
doesn't wash the crap off your boots! I don't care if Barbara wants to nail you...or have you screw her baby daughter. You're not in their class! You know why we call her
Santa Barbara
? 'Cause that's the name of that big apartment complex they own north of town! You're not gonna pollute that blood line...not on my watch!" she trilled, her breasts heaving in what I thought was excessive anger.
I was speechless, and my pulse was over 100 beats a minute. Part of this might have been because I was on time-release Dexedrine – diet pills – just to stay awake, given my demanding schedule. But I needed this job, so I absorbed Rosemary's invective. I raised my arms in a helpless, submissive pose and started to turn away, trying to avoid more of the same.