Mrs. Robinson (Mrs. Robinson #1) by Seth King

by people, I’ve come to expect the worst, so I won’t ever be surprised.”
    He nodded. “I know what you mean. Who was that at the door, anyway?”
    “Oh, um…a neighbor.”
    He looked over my shoulder. “Wait, what? What did she want? Did she see me? Do you want me to leave, or...?”
    “No,” I said, stepping forward, “if anything, that’ll only make it worse. She’ll be watching the house until her nightly glass of sherry knocks her out, I’m sure.”
    “Damn. What now, then?”
    I studied him. I’d been wrong – he wasn’t bad – and now our night could continue. I glanced through the doorway to my expansive living room windows looking out onto the street. I was horny as hell, there was no denying that, and I didn’t want my nosy neighbor to keep me from the best sex of my life, and so I closed the doors into the living room and faced Ben. I needed another calming glass of wine in front of the flames of my automatic fireplace before I blew a gasket or something, and I needed it now.
    “Here, let’s sit again,” I said. “God knows I need to sit down and shut up for a second.”
    “Sounds good to me,” he laughed, amused with me for some reason. After I poured two glasses of wine we both settled into the wingback chairs facing the fireplace, which roared and cackled before us. Ben took a long sip and then stared into the flames, lost in his own mind. Soon it started to rain outside, the steady, raw drizzle washing the townhouse clean, the pitter-patter on the adjoining sunroom’s roof lulling me into some sort of trance. But at the same time, my stomach still churned and squirmed from being so close to Ben, which was directly at odds with the peace in my mind. How could his presence be so comforting and so electrifying at the same time?
    “I’m sorry about your sister,” I said again, getting the succinct feeling that I wasn’t the only one in the room who was hurting.
    “Thanks,” he said. “Sorry for ditching you. I missed her, and I was worried about her.”
    “Of course. Are you her – uh, her…”
    “Her caretaker?” he prompted. “Pretty much. Our parents… removed themselves from the situation some time ago. So it’s just me.”
    “You mean they left you ? With a sister who couldn’t take care of herself?”
    His eyes grew larger, something seeming to bubble up from somewhere in his soul. “My parents should have never been parents,” he said, a new iciness in his voice. “It is not normal to put out offspring into the world and then just not care about them. But their total and complete failure at being humans taught me a lot, and I am all my sister will ever need, and that is that.”
    I wanted to reach out and hug him, but I couldn’t. “That’s awful that you had to deal with all that,” I said, and he shrugged and looked away. And suddenly I realized the reason behind that strange darkness I’d noticed battling on his face with all the charming boyishness: carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders had forced him to grow up too quickly and become a man in a boy’s body. I thought of my own twenties, when I’d signed up to live in a fantasy and had instead been left alone in a cold, empty house all day, and the light around Ben seemed to change. “Is that – is that what made you do this?” I asked him, unable to stop myself, and he frowned at the flames.
    “That, and some other family issues. It’s…complicated,” he swallowed. “You know, I could ask you the same.”
    “Oh,” I said, caught off guard yet again. Technically, I guess I was pretty powerful in Washington, if only through association, and it’d been years since someone had been so direct with me. “It was…just loneliness, I guess. It’s complicated, too. I know I must look so pathetic, calling you here like this. The typical lonely housewife – it’s the oldest story in the book.”
    “Facades are nothing,” he said, motioning at the luxury surrounding us. “I, of all