The nine Sarofine and Chérubin short stories narrate the careers, adventures, love affairs and marriages of two friends who meet while working for the International Telephone & Telegraph Company (ITT) during its heydays in the late 1960‘s and seventies.
Fred Sarofine is 24 years old when he immigrates to the USA in 1964. Arriving in New York he lands his first job working for a family owned insurance agency. Two years later he starts working for ITT and in August 1973 is sent on an assignment to Santiago, Chile where he witnesses the nine-eleven military coup d’état where President Allende is killed in the presidential palace and a military junta swore itself into power with Pinochet acting as President.
Jean-Pierre Chérubin is a Frenchman who came to Brussels to work for ITT. Eight years younger than Fred, he is tall and sturdy, not particularly good-looking but with attractive blue eyes and a fine head of black curling hair. He is very fond of women and has an air that was pleasing to them but he was not sentimental; he knew what he wanted and he often asked for it, and if he couldn’t get it he shrugged his shoulders and went his way. He was likable, good natured and amusing but he had a tendency to blurt out things that were better left unsaid. This often shocked his mother who came from the old Bordeaux bourgeoisie.
In 1979 Fred’s career takes him from ITT New York to Sprint in the San Francisco Bay Area and five years later Jean-Pierre, after a tragic love affair with a flamingo dancer, leaves Brussels and moves to Northern Virginia where he also works for Sprint. They both experience first-hand the impact of the revolution in the telecommunications industry that started with the breakup of the Bell System monopoly and the new competition in long-distance service by new companies like Sprint and MCI.