Derek knew two things about his employer. She liked her lawn mowed low and she was a single woman who was way older than he was. He observed her temperance and engaged her intelligently. She never wasted time on chatter like some of his previous employers did.
She simply hummed her greeting and waved her hands as she went by, for a jog or a stroll to the mall for grocery. He made a vague estimation of her age in his head and placed it at a number above fifty at least. It was only a difficult estimation to reach given that she looked younger sometimes.
He worked for her for over two months before they exchanged any words other than their regular bits of hummed salutations and waves. But she paid on time and she paid well. It was all Derek needed and it was all that mattered.
Derek thought she was beautiful but it was in an innocent way. She kept herself fit by her strict exercise regimen and once or twice he had seen her with a mat in her sitting room as he made his way to the back to lay off the
working tools into her shed.
He worked diligently and he worked quietly, two times a week and as long as he had his music blasting in his ears to dull the noise of the revving lawn mower, he was fine with whatever else went on in the world.
It was three months into their working agreement when a strange thing happened.
Nothing in the known universe prepared the twenty one year old for the events of that sunny but cool morning when the air was still and the atmosphere friendly.
He had stopped by her door and knocked politely just as he always did. He took two steps back and went a step down the short flight of stairs that led up her front porch.
Moments passed and the door remained shut. Derek flicked his wrist and his watch provided the eternal answer to his temporary question of what time of day it was. He climbed up the step again and as he reached his hand to knock, the door opened.
He drifted back awkwardly when he came face to face with her, subconsciously assessing her loose fitting blouse briefly.
He blushed scarlet, bathed with a dizzying rush of emotions that he could not decide upon. He opened his lips to offer salutations but he helplessly stuttered a confused jumble of words that had no meaning strung together. She was patient.
“Are you alright?” She asked at last, warmly.
He felt the lump which had gathered at the back of his throat from all of his rapping dissolve slowly upon the question. He bobbed his head and looked away affably.
She chuckled at his embarrassment and sighed. At first, he thought he had heard the noise of her giggling incorrectly but he did not bring his eyes to her to examine the truth of his own senses.
Basic human lust sluiced through his being as he deliberated with a puerile flight of imagination that she invited him in and had sex with him. He cleared his throat and his eyes dashed about the blank space in thought as the seconds passed.
“I can’t find the key to the shed. I forgot today was when you were supposed to come work” she explained and he felt tension like a weighty burden rise from his shoulder, “I was making cookies. You want to come inside and wait while I check” she hinted and with that information passed, turned away from him and back into the house.
The world was normal again. He cursed the ideas that cheap pornographic plots had planted in his mind. The woman had nothing for him.
She was a modest and quiet neighbor who just wanted her lawn mowed. How could he have assumed the laws of logic were someway interwoven with whatever went on in those flicks.
Real life is different, Derek. He thought to himself.
“That would be great” he murmured in response and nodded as he went in
and shut the door behind himself.