Package Handlers is a romance novel about two middle-aged, blue-collar workers who fall in love (and lust) with each other at a UNITED PARCEL SERVICE (UPS) shipping hub. Trucks run all night. They are loaded, unloaded until the last shift breaks in the dewy dawn. But things run afoul in the shank of the morning as forbidden attraction blooms and sours amid mountains of brown parcels and the endless parade of boxes carried by conveyor belts and sloping metal chutes that often transport only heartache. It is a romantic tragedy of the soul.
Her name was and remains SHIRLEY (42). He is STAN (58). He’s a gruff, bitter dispatcher, his gray hair puttied into a wave of impervious shellac. He spices his speech with curses and insults and nobody who works with him likes him.
Except for Shirley. She sees something oily about the man. It’s irresistible. Shirley is a casualty of marriage with three triplet sons (BUB, BOB & ROB). The piercings in her pouted, beckoning lips make Stan flinch but the tingling in his pants overrides his squeamishness. He feels only moderate squeam, which he regards as a victory.
Shirley and Stan begin a complicated lambada of flirtation, hurt feelings and barcode scanners. Shirley and Stan find themselves falling headlong into a torrid love affair. Shirley’s husband, BOOTH (43), remains oblivious to the radical changes in his wife’s schedule. She disappears for entire hours at a time and returns home wearing her pants inside out. Unbeknownst to Booth she is holing up with Stan at a cheap motel where the two gratify their loins and then watch Falcon Crest, a program known for its lurid storylines. The motel is known around town as a “no-tell motel.” There are fluids and pubic hairs on the drapes that go back decades.
When Booth finally starts to get wise to Shirley’s infidelity, he makes salient yet opaque cracks about her sex life. She panics and tries to bring the affair to a screeching halt. She visits Stan in the control room. He can tell by the tone of her face that she’s made a decision that will crush, fold and mutilate his spirit. She lays a hard truth on the man. It’s over. It was mildly amusing while it lasted. But it’s over. In an ending kind of way.
But Stan is not so easily dodged. They work together, after all. He hands out the timecards. As the workdays move along he tries to entice her with salty comments. She returns his pathetic advances with the silent treatment. When not mute she is curt. When not Curt she is Shirley. The loss of her love hits Stan like a toppling box and he topples as well—straight off the wagon. He’s been enmeshed in recovery for fifteen years and attends weekly gripe sessions and confessionals. That’s why he’s angry and miserable most of the time. It’s from not drinking. It’s from organized sobriety.
He begins slugging whiskey upon waking and things slidge contuperously from there….
Stan breaks into Shirley’s locker in the locker room and steals her phone. He dials her family and spitefully reveals the squishy, glandular truth to Booth and the triplets. He uses words that are pregnant with violence and Shirley is forced to get a restraining order against him. But neither ex-lover combatant wants to leave the job. It pays well and the medical benefits are decent. Thus he violates the restraining order every time he hands Shirley a blank timecard. The other workers wonder why Stan hasn’t been fired, or at least transferred to a neutral station.
One night he comes to work drunk and after a stuporous pratfall, tumbles down a steep set of steel steps, cracking open his dome. All the conveyor belts halt, and an ambulance is summoned. Stan is delirious and confesses his undying “heat” for Shirley but he can’t name the current president, indicating a concussion. He is removed from the premises on a stretcher and the conveyor belts start moving again.
They finally never see Stan again. None of the employees are interested in missing him. Shirley still doesn’t feel safe at work and is embarrassed by her folly and contretemps. She continues to work on both packages and her fraying marriage.
Package Handlers is approximately 100,000 words and divided into several chapters.
Crumbling Asphalt 