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

by NS Thompson

  I flipped out when I saw the ex-lover arrive at the surgery on his new bike. So much so, that I left the office and went straight across the road to find out what was transpiring.

  You sat behind the front desk with a pair of tinted glasses on your face. His royal baldness looked like he’d been run over by a bus and was handing you an envelope. I hung back at the door. You thrust a folded piece of paper back at him and said coldly –

  “This is for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered under his breath.

  “I’m sorry I met you,” was all you had to say and went back to the computer.

  He skulked out, without even noticing me. I stood there for a minute and then moved forward and coughed. You looked up.

  “Hi,” you said flatly.

  “About the rent…” I began and you nodded seriously.

  “This week. Sorry. I’ve been all over the place.”

  “I know, like at Pretty Beach. That was uncanny, bumping into you and what’s her name?”

  “Jenny. How was your sister?”

  “Good. She’s doing well. It’s a nice spot, isn’t it?

  “Hmmm.”

  “Any chance of a quick consultation with John?” I whined and pointed to my ear.

  You looked through the bookings and then sighed.

  “Just take a seat, Jack. I’ll squeeze you in next, if you promise to be quick. If he starts talking about the weather or showing you stuff on his computer just say you’re in a hurry.”

  “I promise.” I put a hand to my heart.

  I took the nearest seat and strained a little in the chair to watch you read the letter you’d been given. I heard the word ‘bastard’ slip from your lips and I smiled. It really was all over.

  I breezed through the afternoon at work, feeling like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders.

  Thursday 6th August

  Morning

  Not a cloud in the sky. Got the sun in my eye and I don’t actually remember how the words go. I rang Department of Child Services yesterday and put in an anonymous complaint about your substandard parenting. I think you need a kick up the backside in that regard and they might just scare you into behaving like a responsible mother.

  Life is a set of balancing scales and it is not my fault that you slipped and nearly let that man become your de facto lover. You will realise how desperate and silly you were. Little punishments I throw your way will help to work as signposts. Things will go wrong when you go the wrong way but very, very right when you stay on track.

  Already you have been very accommodating and went out of your way to let me see the doctor. You don’t do that for everybody, do you Grace? This was definitely special treatment for me. That, my dearest will not go unrewarded.

  BIG NEWS! No sign of any Moorebank DNA was found in my car. No blood. No hot chips. No fibres of whatever fibres are fibres of. All clear. “For now” the cops pointed out carefully. I guess I’m still a suspect but perhaps a little more so now.

  I still haven’t gone to Bosley House to talk to that fat fellow who runs the place. I will. I am about to sit down and find out all I can on the internet about the murders. I’ve got all the articles from the local papers because I keep a pile of newspapers outside and I put the newest ones on the bottom of the pile. I don’t feel the cold so much so I don’t need to have my fire blaring like something out of hell all winter long. Hence I don’t burn as many papers as some folk. Mr Potter, next door, is a walking icicle and spends half his life cutting wood and the other half tending his fire. His complexion is as ruddy as if his own face was ablaze.

  Jenny is annoying me. I don’t want you being her friend. She’s too outspoken and wayward. She’s like a little guard dog. A lot of what has happened is because she is an ABYSMAL influence on you. And now she’s trying to turn you against me, inferring that my gesture of leaving flowers upon your arrival at your new home was CREEPY!

  I’m going to speak with Jill Buxton about inviting you to her next dinner-do. If she’s going to set me up continually, I might as well give her a few pointers. I trust that she will be discreet.

  Off to work. I’ve got a couple coming in to sign a lease this morning and I’m doing all the ads for rental properties for the news- paper this afternoon. We have quite a few on the books at the moment. During winter they can be hard to let.

  Your son has started a band. Benny and the Goths? Not exactly. They are called “The Bathory Boys.” Quaint sounding name until you realise that the dead benefactor of their name is Elizabeth Bathory, a Transylvanian noblewoman from the sixteenth century who tortured her servant girls and bathed in their blood to retain her youth.

  I think your son needs some counselling.

  I don’t like the way Jenny looks at me. It’s as if she sees more of me than I am revealing. Maybe she’s a lesbian. A man-hater. I haven’t seen her with a date and haven’t heard her name linked with anyone. She’s always bemoaning the fact that she needs a good man but that might be just a party line because she’s got a crush on you. She might see me as competition. You’ve got to watch out for lesbians as they often masquerade as normal people and then bang, reveal their true identity, hurting a lot of people in the process. I hate lesbians more than I hate faggots. I’m with the church on that one. And I think marriage between same sex couples is the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.

  I’m going to watch her a little more closely. I want to know more about this woman who has such an influence over you. Her ex-husband is still somewhere local. He’s a painter. I might contract him to do my eaves and bait him for information.

  My cameras and my microphones can pick up a lot about you but information from sources who are close to you – acquaintances and friends – fill in a lot of missing gaps. My social scene is very much a concentric circle to yours. There are a few common acquaintances like the Buxtons, whose daughters you teach drama. There’s Karen at work whose daughter dates your son. I suppose that’s all really. The way to enmesh myself more into your life is to make that little shaded area where our two social circles overlap, larger. I plan to do that by playing puppeteer. You will get an invite to the next Buxton –dinner- do. That’s a start. I’d rather integrate you more into my circle, as Jenny and the sloth and the barmaid just don’t do it for me. They have got to go.

  I got all the info on your son’s musical endeavours from Karen. Her daughter is their manager – and her nickname is the “Queen of the Damned.” That’s a title from an Anne Rice book, I believe.

  Work beckons.

  9:35 p.m.

  It was lovely to see that you drove home in a legal car. You walked to the mechanic at lunch time and then sped off toward Boowah. Back two hours later, a little tardy for work, but with a shiny registration sticker on your front windscreen. You are back on track, Grace. Good to see. All that nonsense is behind you. You are back in the driver’s seat.

  I have Jenny’s ex, Mark, coming over to give me a quote on the eaves, first thing in the morning, before work. I’ll try to get him to work on the week-ends so that I can subtly pick his brains for information on his former wife.

  Speaking of which…… You won’t believe who I got a call from this evening. Guess. Come on….guess. VICKI!!!!!!! My ex-wife!!!!

  She sounded like a vodka- addled prostitute and in a smug and triumphant voice, enquired as to whether I would like any small personal item from my mother’s estate. She invited me to the house on Sunday. She and Tina would be clearing out the place and getting it ready for final inspection. I didn’t refuse outright. She would have expected me to do that. I left it hanging and said I might drop by in the afternoon. That made her catch her breath. She asked how my life was going and I said “just peachy” and hung up with my teeth and fists clenched. I just might drop by too. Just to irritate her. She always loved Mum’s collection of plates. There were plates hung all over the walls, depicting all manner of things. I think snake-bitch liked the Greek ones. If I
take anything, it will be those and then I’ll smash them on the front bonnet of her car and drive away feeling a sense of satisfaction. It’s all fantasy, because I probably won’t go. It’s a long way to drive there and back to smash a few bits of china.

  Thursday 6th August

  6:25p.m.

  Met Jenny’s ex-husband. He’s a mild-mannered type. Typical genial tradesman. He gave me, what I thought, was a reasonable quote and arranged to come back this week-end to make a start. He mustn’t be too busy. I usually have to wait weeks to get tradesmen to do anything for me.

  I invited him in for a coffee. He was reluctant but I made noises about needing a contract painter for the real estate and his ears pricked up.

  We went inside and while I made a real coffee on the espresso machine, I asked him how long he’d been in Babylon and what he thought of the town.

  It didn’t take me long (one ham and cheese croissant later) to get his lips loosening about the ex. If you are to believe him, she’s a conniving, penny-pinching, man-hungry banshee. They broke up a few years back and although there was no third party involved then, Mark is adamant that Jenny has slept with every man in town, since. It was all a bit clichéd. I have seen no evidence of her dating anyone. She spends every spare minute swilling champagne with you. I think I’m barking up the wrong tree in a dead end street with him. He’s just a paranoid ex. I’ll ring his answering service later and cancel the job.

  I’m coming over now to see how you are coping with everything. You looked radiant today at the café. You had lunch with the surgery staff and I gave you a little wave through the window as I went by. As I returned from the post office, I bumped into you leaving the café. I took a deep breath and decided to strike.

  “Gracie, you’ve slipped behind in your rent again.” I gave a disappointed shrug. “How about I buy you a coffee here in the morning before work and we can get our heads together and come up with a payment plan to help you catch up?”

  You looked momentarily dazed, as if you hadn’t understood me.

  “Ummm. Yeah..Sorry Jack’’, you spoke slowly and deliberately. “I’ve been very slack. A lot of personal stuff I’m wading through.”

  Yes….. Sewerage….thought I..

  “But, I will get it all together. You don’t need to buy me coffee. I’ll just start paying extra every week, until it’s all fixed up.”

  I tried to coerce you into the coffee, explaining that it would be no trouble and that we needed to talk very seriously about the situation and make a formal arrangement. I could see you were getting flustered. You finally relented and I felt like throwing a victorious fist into the air. I know how you people work. You like to play hard to get. You were always going to say yes..You just didn’t want to appear desperate.

  We arranged to meet at 7:30 a.m. at the café. They open at seven.

  12:45 p.m.

  What an emotional roller-coaster of an evening. I had all but packed up my equipment after a fairly mundane evening viewing of the Templar show, with a bit of generational angst between mother and teenage sons. Some bedtime reading with Harry at the dining room table. The cat, it would appear, is now an inside cat as one of your domestic blues was about who was going to clean the kitty litter out of the laundry. Needless to say the job ended up in your lap.

  You looked tired and stared at the television for a while after all had gone to bed and then retired yourself.

  I had shut down my computer but still had the earpiece to your phone bug in my ear. It was at about eleven that the phone rang. My pulse quickened and for good reason because it was HIM on the other end of the phone. He was hysterical, out of breath and almost sobbing down the line, the only intelligible word coming out of his mouth was “help me”. You slowed him down. Bad girl. You should have simply hung up. The bastard breathed deeply and told you he needed your help. That Amanda and he had been fighting about the affair for days and she had drunk herself into a stupor and smoked a whole lot of marijuana.

  “Call an ambulance,” was your very calm and cool response.

  “She can’t breathe!” he moaned.

  ”I can hear her raving in the background.”

  Even I could hear the silly woman carrying on with “I can’t breathe” “I can’t breathe.”

  “If she can talk, she can breath. Tell her to throw up.” You betrayed no emotion other than annoyance and I was very proud of the way you were handling the situation.

  “I think she’s dying. Help me, Grace. You know about medical things.”

  “You think that your wife is dying? I think you must have the wrong number Andy! Call someone who cares.”

  “Please..” he sounded like a wounded sheep.

  You slammed down the phone and then there was nothing. All was quiet and dark outside the car. The computer was off so I had no visual. I was confident that the foolish bastard had called an ambulance because I waited a few minutes and there was no return call. I fired up the engine and headed for home. As I crested the hill, I saw your car up ahead of mine, going faster than the speed limit.

  “You stupid bitch!” I growled under my breath and followed you from a distance. I knew exactly where you were headed.

  You walked to his balcony where he waited feverishly. He showed you in. I parked down the street and then left the vehicle and moved down the side of their house. The only light came from the master bedroom. Fortunately that was on the other side of the house to the dog although I am confident that that particular beast would need a red hot poker jammed up his backside to elicit a response.

  The curtains were slightly apart and I could stand in the shadows on an angle and look in but no-one in the room could see out to me.

  Amanda Cox lay on the bed in a nightie, rolling and groaning and still carrying on, saying that she couldn’t breath.

  You stood beside the bed and took one look at her in disgust and shook your head.

  “What a crock of shit. Get her a big glass of water and a bucket. Make her drink it all and then stick your fingers down her throat.”

  You walked back out of the room and sat on the balcony, on the top step, with your arms around your knees. That made it impossible to return to my car. I was only metres from you, tucked around the corner of the house.

  Within a minute, sounds of very productive retching came from the bedroom. Why the hell were you still there? What were you waiting for?

  Him? Of course.

  Minutes later he joined you on the balcony.

  “She’s asleep. She’ll be alright.”

  “I’m so happy for you, Andy?” you snapped back.

  He sat down on the bottom step and looked up at you with big, pathetic, puppy-dog eyes.

  “Do you miss me?”

  You fought the tears unsuccessfully and bit down on your bottom lip.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Do you think we could be friends?” he begged.

  You thought for a few seconds and then shook your head and said very firmly.

  “No, Andy. That would never work and you know it. I miss you so much my heart is in tatters. Good night. Please don’t call me again.”

  You strode away in the darkness and drove off like a mad rally car driver. I had to wait until the buffoon of a man had recomposed himself. I was shocked and deeply concerned to see that he too was shedding more than a few tears. I guess he missed the free, illicit sex.

  I drove home disconcerted but pleased that you had ended the evening appropriately. You were being very strong. I was sure that you had buckled when you drove to save his wife in the middle of the night. I thought you had completely lost your mind. Good girl for calling that idiotic woman’s bluff and standing up to that weak man. How could he honestly expect you to be his friend after the way he has treated you?

  I’m off to bed now but must remember to go to Bosley Park tomorrow where I have an interview with the fat man who runs the place. He’s a psychologist, I believe, so he may have some of his own insights into the murder of
my daughter and her cousin. Naturally, I will not reveal my physical connection to little Sarah.

  Friday 7th August

  It’s an uncharacteristically warm morning for this time of year. I will, however, take a jacket to work with me as this place is renowned for its four seasons in one day. I’ve set the alarm on my mobile phone to remind me to see Keith Noonan at Bosley House at ten. I will go shopping in Moss Vale for a few gifts at lunch-time. It’s lovely to have someone to spend money on. I often bought little things for my mother, though indubitably, she would complain about them. I bought her a pair of slippers, only to be told that fluffy shoes give her tinea?????? I gave her a lovely opal pendant on a chain which I was to learn from her, was very bad luck and the last time I bought her a case of free-range eggs from the Hill’s farm, she presumed that I was trying to kill her with bird flu.

  You appear to appreciate my presents to you. I have seen the sapphire around your gorgeous neck. You put my first flowers in a vase and drank the champagne and spent the money on your car, so I have no reason to doubt that you will appreciate whatever I buy today.

  7:45p.m.

  God, I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten all day. I just kind of forgot. I’ll make a chicken sandwich in a minute. I got so wrapped up in spending money on beautiful things for you, that I lost track of time and had to rush, not to be late for a tribunal hearing at three o’clock.

  Sipping coffee with you this morning was like a religious experience. You were so humble and reserved. I knew you’d had a rough night. It showed in the shadows beneath your eyes. I had my usual Latte while you went for the Cappuccino. We talked business and you have agreed to pay an extra fifty dollars a week until you’ve caught up the two weeks you lag by. I had to warn you that it was my job to hound you and it would end up in the tribunal if you slipped behind any more. You were very appreciative of my lenience and made your promise to keep up the payments.