The Mail Room After Dark

My name is Trixie Decker, I'm forty-seven years old, and I've been running the basement mail room of the Fairmont Building for fifteen years. I was married to Marty Decker for fifteen years too, until eighteen months ago, when he slid the divorce papers across our kitchen table like he was passing me a memo. He's the facilities manager here, which means I still see him every damn day in the elevator lobby, nodding at me like we're coworkers who once shared a carpool.

It didn't help that he left me for Ali Koch, who works in accounting upstairs. She's twenty-eight, which is twenty-four years younger than him and nineteen years younger than me. I did the math more than once, usually with a glass of wine in my hand at midnight. The math always came out the same. I came out old.

So yeah, I was bitter. I don't pretend otherwise. Bitter is a coat I wore every morning down to the basement, and I kept it on all shift.

The mail room is mine, though. Industrial shelving along both walls, a long steel sorting table in the middle, and a little office in the corner with a desk and a fan and a radio I play too loud. After five o'clock the building empties out and it's just me, the cleaning crew, and whatever stragglers still need a package signed for at seven.

That's when Dante Castro showed up for his first Monday, back in September. He's twenty-two, fresh from some warehouse job out in the suburbs, and he interviews like a golden retriever. Yes ma'am, no ma'am, can I lift that for you ma'am. I told him to stop calling me ma'am. He lasted about a day and a half on that promise.

He's not a bad worker. He's just eager in that way young guys are, all elbows and questions. First week he put a crate of legal files on the top shelf instead of the bottom shelf, and I chewed him out in front of the cleaning lady. He took it like a champ, which surprised me. Most kids pout. He just said, "Okay, got it. Bottom shelf. I'll remember."

He remembered. That earned him maybe half a point in my book.

Around week two, I noticed something, and I'm not proud of how much I noticed it. When I bend over to lift a box off the bottom shelf, my slacks pull tight across my rear end. Fifteen years of lifting parcels has kept my butt in decent shape, I'll say that for myself, and I know it because I've caught men looking. Marty used to look. Lately nobody looked, and I'd gotten used to the silence.

But Dante looked. He thought he was sneaky about it. He'd be sorting letters six feet away, and I'd hear his hands go quiet on the paper, and I'd know. I tested it a couple times, honestly, just bending for no reason, pretending to check a label. Hands quiet every time. Then I'd stand up and turn around and he'd be very interested in a zip code.

I should have felt old and sad about it, a kid half my age sneaking glances at the supervisor. Instead it did something for me. It lit a little pilot light I thought had gone out with the marriage. I caught myself wearing the nicer slacks on Mondays. I caught myself putting on lip gloss for a shift in a basement. Bitter and vain at the same time, which I guess is what forty-seven looks like after a divorce.

* * *

The Thursday of his third week was the night it all shifted, and I need to back up a day first, because Wednesday is what put me in the mood for trouble.

Wednesday afternoon, around four, the freight elevator dinged and Ali Koch walked into my mail room. She works in accounting on the ninth floor and has no earthly business in the basement, but she was carrying a box personally, a big padded envelope from some vendor.

"Trixie! Oh my gosh, this place is so cozy," she said, setting the box right on my clean sorting table like she owned it. "Marty said I should just bring this down myself, he's swamped with the HVAC inspection."

"Fine. Sign here," I said, and pushed the clipboard at her.

She signed, then she lingered. That's the thing about Ali, she always lingers. She looked at the shelves, the fan, the radio. "I just love that you've been here so long. Marty says you practically live down here. He worries about you, you know."

"He does not."

"Well, he mentions you," she said, and gave me this little smile, like we were girlfriends sharing a secret. "Oh, and we're doing a team happy hour Friday if you ever want to come up sometime. Everyone's dying to meet you."

Everyone. Sure. I stood there holding the clipboard while this child in a pencil skirt fluttered around my mail room, and I felt the humiliation land right in my stomach, fresh as the day the papers came. She wasn't being mean. That's the worst part. She was being nice at me, the way you're nice to an old dog.

"Have a good night, Trixie," she said, and clicked back to the elevator.

I sat in my little office after that, fan going, and I thought about Marty mentioning me. I thought about happy hour everyone. I thought about how the last person who looked at my ass in that mail room was my ex-husband, three years and a lifetime ago.

Then I thought about Dante's hands going quiet on the paper.

* * *

Thursday I worked the late shift alone, which was normal, except Dante came back at six forty for his jacket. He'd left it hanging on the hand truck. I heard the freight door and called out that the room was open, and in he came, all apologies.

"So sorry, Trixie, I can't believe I forgot it, I'll be out of your hair in one second."

"Relax. You're not disturbing the party," I said. I was sorting the evening drop, and there was nobody else down there.

He grabbed the jacket and then, because he's Dante, he didn't leave. He drifted over to the table and started helping me sort as if it were nothing. "This international pile is weird, right? Like half these forms are filled out wrong."

"You'd make a decent supervisor someday if you'd stop asking questions," I told him.

"Or I could just keep asking you everything," he said, and grinned at me.

I looked at him over the pile. Six foot, decent shoulders from the warehouse job, and that open dumb-lucky face young guys have. My heart was doing something I hadn't let it do in a while.

"You always help out after hours?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Beats my apartment. And honestly? You're the only person in this building who's ever taught me anything."

That landed somewhere it shouldn't have. I put down the parcel I was holding. "Careful, Dante. Flattery gets you assigned to the recycling run."

"Wouldn't be the worst thing. I like working for you."

"Do you," I said. And then, before my better judgment could get a word in, "Then tell me something true. Why do you keep sneaking looks at me when I'm at the bottom shelf?"

I thought he'd bolt. He went red instead, clear up to his ears, and set his stack of letters down very carefully. "I wasn't. I mean, I was. Oh man. I wasn't trying to be weird about it."

"Were you weird about it?"

"No ma'am," he said, and then caught himself. "No, Trixie!"

I came around the sorting table slow, and I'll be honest, I wasn't thinking about Marty or Ali or anyone's happy hour. I was thinking that feeling young again was one thing I could still take, and he was standing right there looking at me like I was something to look at.

"Dante," I said. "Lock the freight door."

He studied me for a long second, and I watched him decide. He walked to the freight door, threw the bolt, and came back. "Trixie, are you sure? I don't want to screw this up."

"If you screw it up, I'll tell you," I said. "That's how supervision works."

He laughed, and that broke the tension some, which was fine. I wasn't looking for romance. I was looking for hunger, the kind I hadn't felt since before the papers came.

I took his hand and led him into my little office. It's not much. Desk, two chairs, a mini fridge, a shelf of binders nobody reads. I opened the fridge and pulled out the bottle of red wine I kept down there for bad days, which is most days lately. "Sit down," I said. "Have a drink with me first."

"You keep wine in your office?" he asked, taking the chair.

"Where else would I keep it? Marty never comes down here, and the cleaning crew doesn't judge." I poured two paper cups half full. Classy operation, this. "To teaching you things."

"To the only supervisor who ever taught me anything," he said, and we clinked paper like idiots and drank.

He told me about his apartment, two roommates and a leaking ceiling, and I told him things I hadn't said out loud in a year. About Marty taking the good furniture and leaving me the good grudge. About Ali's team happy hour. He listened. Twenty-two years old and he actually listened, which is rarer than you'd think at any age.

By the second cup I had stopped pretending this was about conversation. I set my cup on the desk and stood in front of him.

"Stand up," I said.

He stood. I'm five foot four, and I looked up at him and put my hands on his chest. His heart was going like a jackhammer, which did something for me, I'll admit. It meant this mattered to him. It meant I wasn't the only one hungry.

"I'm going to kiss you now," I told him. "Any objections?"

"No ma'am. No, Trixie. No!"

I kissed him and he was clumsy for about three seconds and then he wasn't. His hands went to my hips and pulled me against him, and there it was, hard through his jeans, pressing into my stomach. God. Eighteen months. I had forgotten what that felt like against me.

We got messy fast. He walked me backward until my ass hit the desk, and papers went everywhere, and I didn't care. I got his jacket off and his shirt over his head, and he's got that young flat stomach, no softness anywhere, and I ran my hands down it just to feel it. He tugged at the hem of my blouse and I lifted my arms and let him pull it off, and I stood there in my bra in a basement office and felt, for the first time in a year and a half, like a woman and not a fixture.

"You're so," he started, and stopped.

"Don't strain something," I said. "Finish later."

He laughed into my mouth and reached behind me and undid my bra on the first try, which surprised us both. I shrugged it off and his eyes went straight down and stayed there.

"Touch them, Dante. They don't bite. Much."

He cupped my breasts in both hands, careful at first, then not careful at all, and when his mouth closed on my nipple I grabbed the back of his head and held on. My clit woke up like it had been asleep for a decade. I ground my hips against him and he got the idea and pressed back, and we stood there dry humping against my desk like a couple of fools, which was exactly the point.

"I want to," he panted against my neck. "Can I? I want to go down on you."

Well. That wasn't in the plan, and I was already wet enough that the plan could go to hell. "Yes," I said. "But not on the floor. You'll ruin your knees and I need you for the recycling run."

I sat on the desk and pushed my slacks down over my hips. He helped, hands shaking a little, and got them off one leg at a time, and then my panties, and I leaned back on my elbows with my feet on the chair seats, spread for him under the fluorescent light, feeling about as exposed as a woman can feel.

"You're beautiful," he said, and this time he got the whole sentence out.

"Shut up and show me."

He dropped to his knees and put his mouth on my pussy, and I'll say this for Dante Castro, he had appetite if not technique. He licked up and down and found my clit fast, and when I made a sound he stayed right there, working it with his tongue, a little sloppy, a little too much spit, exactly like a young man who wants it too bad. I reached down and held my own lips open for him and he groaned against me, and the vibration went through my clit and I started shaking my hips, riding his mouth.

"That's it, right there, don't you dare move," I told him.

He didn't move. He sucked my clit in gentle and I came, fast and hard, faster than I have in years, my legs clamping around his head, my hand fisted in his hair. It went on a while. When I came back to earth he was grinning up at me with my wetness all over his chin.

"Not bad for a first lesson," I said, trying to catch my breath.

"That was a lesson?"

"Everything down here is a lesson. Get up."

He stood and I undid his belt. His hands were already there, and we fumbled together at his jeans, both of us too eager to be graceful, and got them down along with his boxers. His cock sprang out hard and straight, average size