The Property Manager: You'll never rent again...

by NS Thompson

  10:05a.m

  I’m sitting at the window table at the Park Café. Chris makes a good Latte. I’ve got a coffee machine at home but it’s always nicer to have an excellent café latte made for you by a good barista. This is fun. Writing while out in the actual landscape of my scribblings. Watching the passing traffic. This village is an entertaining melting pot of personalities. There’s Jenny and her girls coming out of the newsagency. She’s got a newspaper under her arm and a packet of cigarettes in her hand. Disgusting. I was passing her place last week and through the bushes along her fence, I saw the two of you on her balcony, sipping what was probably champagne and you actually had a cigarette in your hand. I don’t know why I didn’t write about that earlier. Something must have made it slip my mind. Perhaps I was in denial. I don’t think Jenny is a good influence on you. She drinks too much, smokes and should have taken a stronger stand and forced you to sever your ties with the Cox freaks. I know how she feels about it. She’s counselled you on the matter and thinks that it’s either some sick ruse to get you into a kinky threesome or that it is tom-foolery that will end in tears. She’s right about that. This is morally wrong and there is always a price to pay for evil. Not being religious here you understand but I feel strongly about the philosophy of karma and balance….for every good deed there is a reward somewhere and the same goes for a bad deed. You are contemplating sliding into a very, very bad deed. I urge you to step back and be the woman I know you are, not the whore you are currently masquerading as.

  A gaggle of teenagers just walked by the cafe, laughing and swearing. The language of youth is so crass. Don’t they realize how ridiculous they look and sound? I think one of the girls was Karen’s daughter, Sofia. It’s hard to tell because they all look alike. Black and spiky. Metal bits jammed into lips and eyebrows. Self-mutilation. And what is the thing with the tattoo revival? Once only the decoration of sailors and criminals…..now every healthy young woman sports an arrow on the small of her back, screaming ‘fuck me from behind’ or a barbed wire chain around her upper arm, like some kind of slave mark. How ridiculous will these women be as great grandmothers in nursing homes? Oh hello Mrs Brown, let me roll you over for a sponge bath and hey, there you go, I’ll fuck you from behind like the arrow says……little Johnny will wonder why great-granny has saggy, baggy, barbed wire around her arm. It’s a bizarre world. I hope your son doesn’t buy into the body art. It’s a lifetime pictorial scar. And let’s face it, what we like looking at, changes over the years.

  Got the bill. Good coffee but Chris charges like a wounded bull.

  See you in a tick, Grace!

  later

  I’m pleased it was my monthly Saturday off. What a ridiculous day. I went to your place as planned and it all went a bit pear-shaped after that. If this wasn’t all so serious, it would be hilarious. No sign of bastard’s truck upon arrival at Chateau de Grace. I parked in front of the garage. Knocked. Harry answered with his charming grin.

  “Mum home?” I asked him.

  Silly question as your car was out the front. And while I think of it Gracie, your registration sticker clearly tells the world that you are nearly two months out of date.

  Every time you have driven since the 10th May has been illegal. I hope Michelle doesn’t notice your criminal lapse, while walking down the main street, past your vehicle! I didn’t bring it up though as I may have embarrassed you.

  You appeared behind Harry, munching on a bit of toast.

  I could discern a coolness. Poor Gracie was expecting someone else. Were you planning to leave all the kids to their own devices while you boned your man in the bedroom?

  I gave you my spiel about the imaginary burglaries, after apologizing for turning up unannounced. I explained that I was dropping flyers to all the tenants but as we were friends I thought I’d drop yours in personally. You didn’t sound too concerned. I urged you to keep all your doors locked. Funny really, considering I am your home intruder and I have a front door key. Ironic. Don’t you think?

  You were about to shut the door on me when I began my academy award winning performance. I winced a little in fake pain and put a hand to my chest.

  You showed immediate concern. Good medical receptionist reaction. Before I knew it I was sitting on your blue couch with you taking my blood pressure with some whacky device that you had BORROWED from the surgery. Needless to say, it was healthily low. You insisted on ringing Dr. John at home to ask his advice. Harry chatted to me while you were on the phone. He’s such a personable little chap.

  I was regretting the whole farce when you came back to tell me that the doctor had ordered an ambulance. Leaping up with sudden energy, I blustered that I’d ring to cancel because the pain had gone. You stood firm, refusing to let me call. I was panicking then, thinking I’d be stuck in casualty while you and lover-boy rolled through the day in your bedroom. I was flapping like a headless chicken and then the phone call came. I listened in and realized almost straight away that it was the adulterer. Your long face and murmured disappointment told me that ‘migraine- woman’ had not ventured north but was still laid up in bed with a sore head. Victory!!!! It was a happy man who was taken away in an ambulance, fiddled with by hospital staff, given the all-clear and then taxied back to your place to pick up my car. You were out. I drove past the Cox house to make sure you weren’t there and fortunately you were not.

  On my way home, I discovered that you were at Jenny’s. Loud music coming from her backyard suggests something of a party going on. I will be around to see you later this evening so I do hope you go home. I need some more scenes for my movie. I will spend the next few hours catching up and editing the bits I’ve taken of the boys at the bus stop and you at the Trivia night. I thought it was an inspired move to film scenes from the fundraiser, claiming that I was making a short documentary about Babylon for the Real Estate. Even Karen thought that was a great idea and offered to help me in any way. If only she knew…..Off the subject a little, I thought her questions for the night were a bit too difficult for the average Bundy moron. Even the Buxton’s table had trouble scoring with her question sets.

  I have no intention of following the documentary idea through, I’ll say the tape stuffed up and I lost interest.

  You looked like a little girl just bubbling with excitement when your table won the competition. I’ve watched it on screen and you just light up. Karen took some photos of the evening as well, for the monthly village newspaper that she edits. I might suggest that she do a profile of you for the next issue. She did one on Chris from the café last month.

  I’ll be around to take some footage tonight.

  I’d like to get some of you in the shower. I don’t mean that in a crude way. I mean it in a natural and beautiful way. With the steam and the soapy water, it would look ethereal. Unfortunately, I can’t see into the bathroom from the smoke alarm in your bedroom.

  Perhaps I’ll be bold enough to take the had-held camera and film through the bathroom window. I’m sure you wouldn’t notice the tiny light on the machine because you’d mostly have your eyes closed anyway.

  I’ll take the handy-cam and play it by ear.

  11/07/05

  Sunday morning

  It’s 3:14a.m and all is not well. In the cycle of life there comes a time when decay sets in and begins to eat away at what was beautiful, leaving a shrivelled mess that inevitably dies. For every-thing turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn. A time to be born, a time to die. The ant. The tulip. The baby harp seal. The sun…………………and you!! You have your time coming too. You have begun to decay. The only difference between your death and that of an ant, or the sun, is that I’m going to decide exactly what time you are going to suck in your last breath.

  I’m not sure how I’m going to pull this off. You’re not a stupid woman and you are highly intuitive. I’m going to take my time with this. I don’t want to just shoot you in the head -. one minute you’re prancing around town like Queen Muckty-Doo an
d then BAM. No. I want you to feel it coming but not know it’s me. I want to smell your fear. I want it to fill my nostrils….hot with panic and sweaty with terror. I want to watch you through the secret crevasses in your life and laugh at your confusion, paranoia and utter helplessness.

  This is going to be sublime and delicious. I want you to look into my eyes one day so that you can see how much you have hurt me. I want to slit your throat and I’ll revel in your surprise that it was me all along. Will you feel guilt oozing from your veins? Will you gurgle ‘sorry’ at me? Beg me to stop? Probably.

  Well it will be too late for apologies….

  And so dis- Grace,

  In life we all choose our own path. When you quietly opened the sliding glass door to your bedroom tonight and let that man into your bed, you took a very serious wrong turn. For the last week I’ve been hinting at you, sending you a clear message – “WRONG WAY – GO BACK” but you’ve been blind and cruel.

  I wonder if you actually seduced him, not because you’re a desperate, slimy, single mother but because you wanted to directly cause me pain. I really thought we were friends. There was a connection. You play one game to my face and then act a whole other role behind my back. What an actress. On your fridge you’ve got that little plastic “Academy Award” reading Best Mother but it should read Best Liar.

  What you don’t understand Grace, is that my back is never turned to you. I’ve got you covered – from every angle of your sad little life. Your existence is my entertainment but the show is turning into a tragedy.

  Until now, you’ve been polite, amicable and flirtatious but it’s been a bit of an act hasn’t it? Hey Gracie?

  I know what happened last week was fuelled by alcohol. You jumped on him like a ravenous beast, believing he might fill that gaping black hole in your life but you are a fool. There’s only one black hole he’ll ever fill in and that’s the one between your legs. That’s the only one he’s interested in. You are being used. What sort of male reject gets on his bike while his family is asleep and peddles two kilometres to the desperately needy, hungry, pathetic Gracie so he can fuck her like the dog she is? What was the angle he used to get you for a repeat performance? “Oh my wife has health problems and we haven’t had sex for years. I’m a young, red-blooded man with needs and I want you to fill them.”

  YOU ARE SO STUPID!

  The old ‘wife doesn’t sleep with me’ is the most clichéd line on earth. I can’t believe someone as intelligent as you, fell for it. You have really disappointed me, Grace. We can’t be friends now and that makes me sad.

  I’m tired now. Upset and exhausted.

  Fortunately I had heard the push-bike, grinding down the driveway and managed to fall back into the shadows. Can you imagine the pain I felt when I saw him dismount and lean the bike against your back wall. Like a mad masochist, I moved forward and sat on the terrace, listening to the two of you. I ran the video – filming the dark swaying branches to the sounds of your beastly copulating.

  I waited out the back of your place under the big oak tree near the alpaca paddock until HE had ridden his push- bike out of sight. I watched you turn out your light and I could imagine you touching the tender spots he’d left on your body. I felt sick. HE took the gravel road short-cuts so I didn’t pass him. Had I – the temptation to run him down might have overwhelmed me.

  I got home and went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I got sick of lying there, staring at the slash of white light on the ceiling, thinking of his body pumping into yours. Your sighs and grunts and his throaty praises for your enthusiasm and agility have left me drained and nauseous. And so I’m here writing. My hand is shaking. The wind chime was having a noisy fit in the wind so I just ripped it down and tossed it out into the Lavender bushes.

  There’s no thrill in the gunshot to the head. I want you to die because you are polluting the earth. I’m not a murderer and I’m not mad. This is about revenge. Evening the score. Balance. Ying Yang. Karma.

  I am going to watch over you even more carefully now. You won’t know where it’s coming from but I will slowly crush you as you’ve crushed me. I’ll come from every corner of your tacky little life – squeezing and tightening those screws. It will be slow and painful. I will destroy you Grace but not in any conventional sense. I am not a violent man. I will merely use your own weaknesses and faults to help you to destroy yourself.

  I was so sure I knew you and understood you. But you are a stranger. Just like the others.

  Women! You are a gender of hypocritical liars and frauds. You complain about men…how we try to control you and don’t respect you and don’t listen to you or pamper you enough. We give you menial jobs, don’t pay you enough…treat you like sex objects. We rape you with our eyes, categorize you, discard you as you get old. We hate you nagging but expect you to do everything…..we don’t admire you for your brain only for the size of your breasts…bla, bla, bla….Well you know what, Gracie Templar, it’s true. And why not!?? You lot deserve it all and more. You are nothing more than a bunch of snivelling, whining, overpaid, inept, bossy, nagging pussies that aren’t good for anything but raping. You are sex objects because that is all you are good for. There is nothing romantic or beautiful or gracious about you! You are a whore. You stink of briny sex and you cheat and lie and steal other women’s husbands. Who shot YOUR husband, Gracie? Did they ever convict him? Find the killer? Maybe it was one of your crack-head boyfriends, heh? Maybe you gave him a super-head job and some anal action so that he’d put a bullet in Mickey’s face. Bam!

  I am weary. I have to be up at 7:00 a.m., so I might try to get a bit of sleep.

  Good-night Grace. The game has changed. Get ready to lose.

  12/07/05 Monday

  Grace,

  Why the hell did you move to this town and destroy my life. You are eating up my insides like a cancer. You’re an acid bitch who presents to the world as such a vivacious, zany, sweet mother – but you’re hiding behind a mask and I’ve seen the real face. I’ve seen it without its gaudy make-up.

  Because of YOU, I missed the swab session at the hall yesterday and now I’m getting antagonistic looks from people and snappy queries as to why I did not give a sample. My head was so screwed up yesterday, it slipped my mind. I had to ring Michelle to get her to organize a special visit by the forensic coppers or whoever the hell they are. Some pathologist person will visit the office this afternoon to wipe my inner cheek with a cotton tip or whatever the fuck they do! THANKS GRACE! Now half the town will think I raped and killed the Moorebank girls.

  I chatted to you today – just shooting the breeze.

  Let’s do a replay.

  I walk into the post office with those two incompetent fools behind the counter like a pair of vaudeville imbeciles – a middle aged, married version of Laurel and Hardy on valium.

  Who do I spy walking from the bench to stand beside me? The receptionist from the local medical centre. Grace Templar. That cat-eyed red-head who has the nerve to smile at me and say –

  “You’re looking better. Bloody freezing outside, isn’t it? ”

  without any hint of what she is really thinking which is

  “I’m screwing a local married man and nobody knows and I’m still bow-legged after last night’s effort.”

  You really are a consummate actress because if I hadn’t seen it for myself – your filthy fornicating with that swine- I’d think it was all in my imagination. You didn’t have so much as a glimmer of guilt. I know you’re not a religious woman. I’m a lapsed Catholic myself. But Jesus Christ it’s not just because it’s a biblical commandment – it’s just a question of morality. You are hurting people with your secret slut act and yet you smile at me and say, “Bloody freezing out there,” as if you were a nun in church. That’s what really made my skin crawl.

  You smiled again with your orange lips and went on,

  “Someone told me it’s snowing in Canberra…and I did see a fox early this morning so maybe we’ll see some.”
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  You laughed like someone breaking a glass. Tinkle. Tinkle. I know there’s some local rural myth about snow predictions and foxes but I don’t really remember it so I just mutter, “Yeah well. That’s right.”

  I look at the queue in front of me and the thought of continuing a conversation with you is making me sweat, despite the cold. I point to my watch and roll my eyes.

  “I’ll come back later,” I whisper and walk out the door with my unstamped mail in my hand. You disarm me and make me feel foolish. I’m going to drop into your place tomorrow while you’re at work. I’ve got a few ideas, I’m tossing around. You’re behind in your rental payments. I didn’t think to mention it in the post office because I was choking on hate so I’ll also phone you at the surgery to remind you. We wouldn’t like to have to evict you, would we? I’m going to evict you from this planet before too long and I want you where I can see you, until such time.

  I’m off to bed and I do hope you rest in peace.

  13/07/05 Tuesday

  Happy birthday Harry. Your mother is a slut!

  14/07/05 Wednesday

  I’m having the day off today. I am sick. You have made me sick. I am feeling calm and relaxed and solid in the knowledge that I am very capable of making your life a living HELL. That is where you belong and that is where you will live until I decide otherwise. I am going to Sydney to do some shopping. I found exactly what I want on the net and I am off to Kings Cross to purchase myself a Grace that can’t talk or lie or cheat on me.

  We’ll have fun tonight darling. I plan to fuck your brains out.

  15/07/05 Thursday

  I have decided to stay home again today. Good Grace and I hit it off famously last night. She’s sitting beside me now. Her mouth is always open but she doesn’t say a word. I washed the black knickers I pinched from your bedroom floor. I washed off all your germs and now Good Grace is wearing them. She’s cold and needs more clothes. I will have to organize that. Maybe Bad Grace would like to donate something?