McQ

Katherine McQueen was about to earn a promotion. The bank was one of this country's largest. But having just gone through a taxpayer bailout, the CEO adopted a family values mission to erase the financial finagling that had been its history.

She was about to become the Vice President of the Trust Division. A huge job, with an equally large salary and staff. Katherine felt she had earned it, having slogged through the corporate banking world since her graduation from college.

Well, almost from then. Right after graduating from with a master's degree in finance, she took a year off to recoup and prepare herself for her career. During that year she fell in love with a construction worker, a civil engineer, a man with a ruddy, weather-worn complexion, huge forearms, and tough work boots. He was so unlike anyone in her family, a family of high school teachers - her father, her mother, her aunt, and even her grandmother.

He smoked. Camel cigarettes. In the mid 1970s that was not so unusual. Dragging on an unfiltered cigarette that left yellow tar stains on his fingers, added to his allure of toughness.

They met at a party. When they were introduced her heart swelled like it was being pumped with air. It throbbed in her throat. Her fingers tingled. Normally talkative, she seemed mute. But he was a man of few words, and operated on mutual feelings.

It was not too many dates later that they checked into a cabin on the lake and made heavy love through the night. She was breathless. This hunk of a man moved his callused hands across her body like a masseuse.

There were two more such nights, in the same cabin by the lake, and then...there was nothing. Not a call. Not a message. Not a letter. Nothing. He no longer answered his phone. Her hurt feelings lasted months, until she saw him at the grocery store, of all places.

"What happened to you?!" She was almost hysterical.

He threw her a detached look. "We were done filming. It was over."

Filming, she thought to herself. What is he talking about. Taken aback, she settled for rummaging through the produce section while he moved on.

Filming? What did he mean.

She went back to the woman who introduced them. "He makes x-rated movies," she answered. "I thought you knew that."

Katherine McQueen excused herself and ran to her car. My God! What have I done!

During what she thought was passionate "I Love You" lovemaking, she did not notice the mirror on the wall, or hear the film projector turning behind it, with a disinterested woman operating it.

A couple of weeks later, a male stopped her as she was entering the drug store.

"Whoa!," he said. "You were unbelievable."

It took her a minute to sort it all out. But it came to her. He had seen her on film.

Later that day she summoned up the guts to go into an x-rated store, and search for the video. It did not take long, thanks to the clerk behind the cash register.

"Hey McQ. Your video is over there, under new releases. You're a natural star, you know."

She found the video, not one but three, with the name McQ on them.

McQ was a recent John Wayne detective movie. Her name McQueen had been shortened to McQ for timely effect.

She stormed out of the store, and vowed to put the whole mess behind her.

For the next 25 years she lived an exemplary life, one without fault, one as the pillar of the community. Church groups, local government, charity, all in an effort to erase her mistake.

Gradually, the McQ movies drifted into her past. Yet the experience hung onto her, like the winter coat you hang in the closet during the summer. You don't use it but you know it is there. Her McQ persona hung on a hook in her mind.

She was about to be promoted to Vice President of the bank's Trust Division. Her only opponent was a man named Jeffery Glisson, a man just about her age, a well-tailored man, also with a pillar of the community reputation.

During the past year, as both were being groomed for the vice president position, she noticed him staring at her during meetings. At first, since she was married with college-age children, his staring did not seem consequential. Maybe it came from envy, she thought.

Yet it persisted. He seemed quizzical, and puzzled in his stares, like he knew her from somewhere...but where. This eye-game went on for almost a year. Then at one meeting he seemed unusually disinterested, and did not even look her way. She took note of that, too. After the meeting, he met her in the doorway and asked to speak to her privately.

"You know, Katherine, that in a few days the bank is going to name the next vice president of the trust division."

She nodded.

"It will be you...or it will be me."

"And your point," she said, getting fidgety.

He moved to the window area, overlooking the city, where no one could hear them.

"I kept thinking I met you somewhere. Maybe at college, or we dated once, or had mutual friends. It has taken me almost a year, and some, shall we say research, to figure it out."

Jeffery Glisson looked behind him and all around as if the next words had to be secret.

"You, Katherine McQueen, were an x-rated movie star."

The words hit her like a gravel truck.

"What do you mean," she squinted.

"You are McQ. An x-rated movie queen."

He seemed hesitant to divulge further.

She countered: "So you admit watching x-rated movies."

"When I was younger I did a lot of things that I was not proud of, and I will admit to that."

"Look, I need to move on," she said.

"Listen here, McQ," he said, punctuating his speech with her x-rated name, "you do in fact need to move on. To another bank, perhaps. Or another department." He took a moment to look around. "You need to get yourself out of the Trust Division."

"I expect to be promoted," she answered, and then it struck her like a pitchfork strikes a hay bale. She picked her briefcase up by the handle.

"I think that is what we are talking about, McQ," Jeffery Glisson said. "That promotion is mine."

At that point they separated and she returned to her office, told her assistant that she was feeling ill, and went home.

Tears would not come. There was too much anger. She cursed the so-called construction worker who had tricked her. She cursed Jeffery Glisson who was ready, able and willing to out her for his own good. In her haste to make the pain go away she emailed the bank CEO and told her she was withdrawing her name from contention.

There was no answer from the CEO.

The next day when she arrived at the bank office there were gloomy faces and hung expressions. She assumed the worst. She had been outed as an x-rated movie star, and everyone was hugely disappointed.

When she got to her personal office, her assistant looked at her with a hang-dog expression.

Katherine McQueen expected the worst, and braced for it.

"Did you hear the news," her assistant said. "Mr. Glisson was killed in a car accident on his way to work this morning."

It was a sledge-hammer moment.

"I knew you would take it hard," her assistant said. "Take a seat in the lounge and I will bring you a hot tea."

The assistant went about that task. It gave Katherine McQueen a moment to reflect. Her emotions buzzed through her like crazed hornets in a nest.

She took a seat in the lounge and her assistant brought her in a hot tea and wished her condolences. Katherine McQueen struggled to open her laptop and check her email.

There was a message from the CEO. Not addressed to her, but to the entire bank staff - thousands of employees nationwide.

"Due to circumstances, I have selected Kenneth Greenville as the new Vice President of the Trust Division." The message went on to explain the untimely death of Jeffery Glisson, and the decision to withdraw from contention by Katherine McQueen.

She was now more than emotionally ill. She vomited in the wastebasket.

"Mrs. McQueen," her assistant said, coming into the lounge. "Please go home for the day. This is all too traumatic for you. Mr. Glisson and all."

The assistant prepared to leave the lounge, but turned back. "By the way, we are all so happy you decided to stay with us. Turning down that promotion took a lot of courage."