YEAR ONE
House
Bank Account: $600.00
Mortgage: $507.00 - $513.48
I
was sitting at home one evening, contemplating snuggling down in my soft bed,
when the phone rang.
"Um
. . . this is Greg . . . from Manson Street," a voice stammered. It sounded as if the owner of the voice was
having difficulty enunciating around a mouthful of mashed potato.
"Yes?"
I ventured after a silence.
Interspersed
with hems and haws and long pauses, Greg finally managed to choke out the
information that he had just been beaten up by Natasha's brother, Johnny. Johnny had then apparently proceeded to kick
dents in both street doors.
At
this early stage of the landlord game, the news alarmed me. Later on, when I had grown more wise as to the quirks and foibles of
some inner city Schemmerhornians, I realized that beating up on people and
property was not an unusual pastime in that neighborhood.
Resigning
myself to the thought of the twenty-five minute journey to Schemmerhorn, and a
delayed bedtime, I promised Greg I would be over soon. Then I telephoned Wim.
"Come
on over. We'll go together," he
sighed in a tired voice.
I went to
uproot the girls from their sleep. Fifteen
minutes later, Mummy gathered her sleepy granddaughters inside, and Wim and I
took off for Schemmerhorn.
Upon
our arrival at 5 l Manson Street, we were greeted by the sight of two badly-dented
front doors. The dents added some
character to the house. The left-hand
door opened, and a shadowy figure beckoned us into the murky hall. Judging by the bulky form, it wasn’t Melissa.
We
followed the bulk into the apartment and emerged into the somewhat brighter
light of the dining room. The bulk
turned out to be Greg. Otherwise, I experienced
a sense of déjà vu; although the
exercise machines were missing, the oil marks on the beige carpet remained, and
Melissa and Tom were still sitting on the couch. Come to find out, the exercise machines were
now gently dripping onto the pale blue carpet in the back bedroom.
After
a few moments of silence, during which we took stock of one another, I said,
"Well? What happened?"
"Mm,
y'see," Greg began, "those people upstairs have been making trouble
for a while now, right?" And between
gulps and stutters, the story eventually came out.
It
appeared that Natasha had a penchant for frequent, large, noisy parties. Groups of her friends would sit on the
balcony and drop cans and papers and such over the railing onto the heads of
the unwary beneath.
"Yeah,
we clean up all the time out front," Melissa piped up in a breathy
whisper. "We'll just have finished
clearing up, and they'll drop a candy wrapper over just to bug us."
"Yeah!" Tom came to life with a husky baritone. "And their garbage stinks! It's strewn everywhere."
Sure
enough, when we went outside we could see and smell the garbage which littered
the alley between number 51 and the next-door neighbor.
"We've
even cleaned up their garbage for them," Melissa breathed, "but they
just keep throwing their bags over the side, and they split open like
that. We’re tired of it."
We
stood and looked at the rubbish - but not for long. The stench was overpowering.
“I’m
sorry this happened,” I told Melissa, Tom and Greg. “If you want, you can report Johnny to the
police. Meanwhile, I’ll speak to Natasha
and advise her that her brother is no longer welcome on the property. I don’t see what else I can do at this point.”
"Yeah,
well, mmm, okaaay . . ." the threesome murmured in disconsolate tones.
I
left them standing there in the dining room, hands in pockets, staring at one
another.
The
following day, I wrote to Natasha to inform her that her brother was not
permitted on the premises, and that this landlord would not tolerate that kind
of conduct. I also told her about her
downstairs neighbors' complaints about the garbage littering the alley and
suggested she buy herself a garbage can.
Was
I naive, or what?
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