JILL: Good for you—a fling with the boss’s daughter.

MR. ROGERS: It wasn’t erotically intimate, but we spent a lot of time together. I want you to put yourself in her shoes, to talk to me like she did, to tell me your secrets.

JILL: What do I say? I’m going to need a little more information.

MR. ROGERS: Don’t worry too much about the particulars. Do you have any alcohol?

JILL: There’s some in the minibar.

MR. ROGERS: Pour yourself a glass. She had keys to the whole place, and we’d steal bottles from the wine cellar.

JILL: Okay, I’ve got some.

MR. ROGERS: So start talking, Jill. Imagine I’m with you as we sit in a humid and empty kitchen.

JILL: Well, my father wasn’t around much. My mother was sleeping with some men. There were always a couple unfamiliar faces in the house. I remember I got home from school one afternoon, and when I went upstairs my mom was riding this guy with the bedroom door wide open, and as she saw me there watching in the hallway, she paused, smiled, and waved, then started back up.

MR. ROGERS: Did she talk to you about it?

JILL: No, she didn’t. But she often said it was healthy for children to know their parents are sexual beings.

MR. ROGERS: I’d like to kiss you.

JILL: You mean over the phone?

MR. ROGERS: Yes, over the phone.

JILL: I think I’d like to kiss you.

MR. ROGERS: I lean in and part your mouth with mine. Your lips taste—

I hung up. I ran upstairs to the Butternut Wing. Mr. Rogers’s room was locked, but I searched through my set of keys until I found a match. When I crashed in, he was not on the phone with Jill. He was sitting smug, staring down the door.

“What do you think you’re doing, talking to my girlfriend?”

“She’s the one who calls me.”

“I bet the phone sex girls pay you to talk to them, too.”

“Well, it’s clear you’re doing a great job meeting her needs as a lover.”

“You think you can do better from that wheelchair?”

“Kid, you clearly haven’t the foggiest notion of what women want.”

“Don’t talk to Jill again, or I will make you regret it.”

“I shit my pants about five minutes ago. I’m going to need a change.”

Mr. Rogers was an anus. Mr. Rogers needed to die. I imagined smothering him with his favorite blankie or tipping his wheelchair down a flight of stairs or bludgeoning him to death with the phone in his room. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, bitch. Instead, I left him there, marinating in his own feces. There were several texts and missed calls from Jill on my cell, but I ignored them. In my head, I kept replaying both her and my conversations with him the rest of the night, as I drove home at dawn, and into the next day. How could he dismiss me so easily?