The Property Manager: You'll never rent again... (14 page)

We have a date at five, Gracie. It was the first thing to spring into my mind when opened my eyes this morning. It’s raining outside and the wind is sending my wind-chime epileptic. It’s early, so I’ll light the fire (it went out over night), make a coffee and eat a bit of toast and then I will sit down at the computer and begin recreating a visual tribute to you, my love. I’m thinking that I might play some of your conversations on the phone while flashing still photos of you, the house, your friend, your cat, your kids, your car, your surgery, your alpacas etc. Still slices of your life to the sound of your voice. I’ll edit, so that what you’re saying matches the images…you know, you might be saying –“Oh..it was fun at your place, yesterday, Jenny.” While I flash a picture of Jenny’s house. And maybe one of her little girls. You may be talking to your mother, saying “Harry is doing well at school” and I’ll flash a picture of the school and then one of Harry crossing the road in the morning. The beauty of my profession is that no-one in town will blink an eye to see me happy snapping with my work-camera. I’m always photographing buildings and shots of the community for advertising purposes. I’ve become quite good over the years.

Hang on – phone is ringing. Who the….?

Mother. She can be tiresome sometimes. She’s still harping on about the fact that I haven’t seen her since I planted her back at home after her brief stint in hospital. Never mind that I have rung her every second day or so and have stayed in contact with the Blue Nurses who give me reports on her. According to them, she is perfectly well. Her wound has healed and she’s back to being her old bossy self. Did I tell you that she was a school teacher when she was younger? Very much the spectacles on the end of her nose and the ominous, long, wooden black-board ruler that would come down with a crack on the desk of anyone bold enough to whisper to a friend. If I ever forgot to take the rubbish out or failed to shine my shoes on a Sunday night, she would have me write one hundred lines and then sit me in the laundry for dinner. She could be a tough cookie, that woman.

Could be? Still is.

Anyway, she’s just given me a good dressing down for being such an uncaring son. I’m all she has in the world bla,bla,bla. She did ask after you and I said you were wonderful and that all the worries were resolved. She wants me to bring you down to see her on the week-end. I told her we had other plans. Then she started on about how sick she felt. This is a pattern. If she doesn’t get her own way or the high level of attention she demands then she falls back on her health. She is frail and she has aged badly, looking ten years older than her age. Osteoporosis is crippling her. She bends so badly like a twisted branch that she is barely taller than my waist now. But all in all she’s still in one piece and the nurses have reported that her blood pressure is fine and her chest is clear so I’m sure she’s fine. I suppose I could drive down and bring her back up here for the week-end. If she was sick there’s always Dr Death, mind you he’d probably only have to take her pulse and that would be the end of her. Poor John, I wonder if he has any inkling that people are so irreverent about his bad track record of patient deaths. It’s hardly his fault he practices in the geriatric belt.

I’ll think about Mum and call her tonight. I don’t like her staying with me though because she’s very critical of things. She’ll complain that the fire is too hot and that I wash the linen in the wrong detergent and that I play my music too loud and that I have the paintings on the wall in the wrong place and that my car is too flashy for someone like me and that I’m too particular when it comes to women. She’ll possibly go too far and tell me what a lovely woman Vicki was and that I’d been a fool to let her go. I didn’t ever explain the lesbian thing to her. She wouldn’t have believed me anyway. She doesn’t actually believe there is such a thing as lesbianism. I remember her telling me once that women would never do such a thing and that the whole concept had been created by the media which is run by misogynist males. I could show her a few sites on the internet with live shows but she’d still not be convinced.

6:58 p.m

I’ve just come back from St. Andrew’s and I’m in a bad mood! You, of course, looked lovely. Not for me, though, was it? You are so pretty in pink. The concert was tedious. Some of those old croakers really should keep their mouths shut. Your lover boy has a good set of lungs though, doesn’t he? Quite a tenor! I cringed when he sang, particularly when the word GRACE cropped up and he gave you a faint smile. We sat with the wife. Did you feel DIS-graceful sitting beside her, thinking back to your lascivious evening of adultery? Or were you smug and revelling in your deceit?

The concert went on for about twice as long as it should. I dissected your mate. Looking at the parts instead of the whole package. I was trying to ascertain, what exactly, was the attraction.  If I could understand what you were drawn to in him, I might be able to work on being more of what you want and less of what you don’t.

He’s taller than me. Not astoundingly so, though. I can’t add inches to my height anyway, so I’ll forget about that. He’s very swarthy. Dark curly hair.  Black clown hair. I have close cropped hair although it was dark once. It’s very salt coloured these days. I whitened early. In my twenties.  I’m not about to run out and get a silly wig. The goatee makes him look like Lucifer. I would never ever let my facial hair grow to more than an afternoon shadow. He’s heavier set than me. I’m not scrawny but I don’t have a lot of body mass. I’m lean but lithe. I look fitter than him. He has a hedonistic halo - definitely a man with an indulgent appetite for life. He likes a drink, rich food and is highly sexed. You can see that in some people. He’s got a decadent Roman emperor attitude to life, I’m guessing. I can see him in a toga, reclining on his couch, being fed grapes by some palace harlot while another one massages oil into his feet. I’m more of a serious, disciplined centurion or a well-trained gladiator. He’s a Nero to my Mark Anthony. Or in a Greek mythology analogy – he’s a decadent Zeus to my Apollo!  I suppose he is good-looking by a woman’s standards but he’s altogether too alternative and relaxed. He’s a man that seems a bit unravelled.

My thigh brushed against yours as I sat beside you. It burnt and my leg was the only part of me that felt alive. You sat, entranced by the music. I sat beside you, entranced by your womanly scent. You are definitely not a perfume woman. I like that. My ex-wife wore so much perfume that I became allergic to her.

The pianist at the church was a little all over the place and the elderly woman conducting looked like she’d popped too much Prozac. But the most entertaining member of the singing troupe was the fellow I silently dubbed – ‘the wide-mouthed frog’. Honest to God, you could drive a semi-trailer through those stretched lips. He was enthusiastic to the point where I thought he was going to swallow himself. So all in all I guess you could call it entertaining. I was surprised that your lover-boy was so professional- sounding. He stood out like a sore thumb from the rest of the caterwauling.

You didn’t say more than a few words to me afterwards and made it quite clear that my presence was no longer required. I went over and congratulated Mr. Cox on his performance. I shook his hand, squeezing just a little bit too hard. He gave me a cold smile with his flashy white teeth and I sneered back and nodded, before walking away. For obvious reasons I am not that family’s favourite person at the moment. My hand was sweating where he had touched it and I imagined it caressing your skin and diving into your depths. I looked back at you as you chatted to him. His wife and daughter were schmoozing with the older folks and I could see the smug, arrogance wafting between the two of you. “Haha…we know something you don’t know” etched all over your faces.

You would be over there now eating their food at their family dinner table. You really should be ashamed of yourself. How did you manage to put my comment about him being a sleaze bucket behind you? Lust is blind, I guess.

I’m going to park at the end of their street again. I’ll take a nice CD to listen to, otherwise I’ll just get anxious and irritable, sitting outside THEIR house, knowing that you are laughing and drinking and playing fucked up mind games with that couple in their own home. I’ll take the handy-cam to catch you leaving. Maybe.

Panis Angelicus is the piece that your tenor soloed toward the end of the concert. I was trying to remember where I knew it from. Possibly from school. Hardly appropriate. He’s not terribly angelic, to my mind!

8/07/05 Thursday

6:55a.m

I’ve just rung Mum. She does sound a bit flat. She had only just woken up which is unusual for her. She’s usually up before the sun. I explained to her again that I really think I’ve found the perfect woman and I told her I was going to ask you to marry me. That is true, Grace but I think it would be unwise to approach you on that subject for a little while yet.

I was pleased to see you leave that place last night at the reasonable hour of nine. You need to be home with those boys, putting them to bed like a good mother.

My mother tried to get an invite to my place for the week-end but I vetoed that quick smart. She would hassle me relentlessly to bring you over for dinner. She’d want your boys presented to her in their Sunday best. She wouldn’t understand our situation. So – I’ve made you my number one priority. I need to be here to protect you from any more unwanted or wanted advances by that operatic arsehole. Perhaps you’ve put it all behind you now. It was a good sign that you left so promptly last night.

I will finish writing my five sets of questions for the Trivia night this morning. I’ve only got a couple to go.  Karen gave me hers yesterday and although I’ve only had a quick flick through them, they look quite good. I concentrated on the subjects that I am better at – local topography, history, music and art. I’ve probably got about ten or so questions in mind for you. A few on Academy Award winners and some religious questions. You’re an eclectic mix of contradictions, Gracie. The golden Oscar and the crucified Christ couldn’t be more diametrically opposed.

I plan to do some editing tonight. I want to get some more footage of the countryside surrounding the township during the day.  I’ll have lunch down at the lookout and get some film of the rolling hills and gorges. They will be the opening shots for the film and I will do some text to use as credits….The title of the film – I am going to go with “Amazing Grace”. It’s just too perfect. Naturally that will open the soundtrack, too. Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found…..was blind but now I SEEEEEEEEEE! I just sang that as I wrote it. Not like a flashy opera singer though….like a man who has seen the light. Hallelujah! Sung from the heart beautifully but from the diaphragm rather dismally.

7:58p.m.

I’ve got the first three minutes of my film in the can, so to speak. I’ve got a recording of “Amazing Grace” by Bob Snyder. He plays a haunting clarinet. I didn’t want the words sung, just the tune is enough.

Mother rang again to see if I had changed my mind about coming to Sydney. I swear she is slipping into senility. I explained myself AGAIN but did promise to make the trip next weekend. Whether I follow through with that or not, remains to be seen. I probably should. She’s not bad company – the old duck. I do like going through her old photo albums. I might bring some back home to show you, one of these days. As a boy I resembled your son Dan just a bit I think. We both have a piercing and serious kind of look. Dark hair. Blue eyes.

I just went to the bookcase and dragged my one album out. Here’s a picture of me at about sixteen. Any resemblance? Perhaps when we are finally together, you’ll see.

I’m worried that Dan is getting too heavily into that Gothic scene. I don’t think it’s healthy. Quite demonic really. All that black, vampire nonsense. It’s small town boredom that drives the youth to run around like freaks…. “Look at me! Look at me!” They think they are being unique and different but they’re all just sheep. Black sheep.

I am going to trust you to be a good girl tonight. I won’t come a –knocking. I’m too involved in my Spielbergian pursuits and don’t feel that I should interrupt my surge of creative genius. Ride it while it’s galloping along.

I’ll bid you adieu and look forward to our Trivia Night of nights tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll be spending this evening reading up in preparation. There are probably lots of trivia sites on the net. I’ve never thought to look.

I think the questions I’ve come up with are acceptably intellectual without being too hard for the average Babylon brain to tackle.

Night

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9/07/05 Friday morning.

We had a black-out last night so my microwave clock has stopped.

I got so much work done on the film last night. I was inspired. The result is about ten minutes of great footage. The camera loves you. It’s so much better having a lead actress who doesn’t know she’s being filmed. It’s so unguarded and natural. It’s not a forced performance with strained smiles and batting of eyelashes. It’s you with a genuine light shining out of your smile and your eyes. When you frown, I believe it. You get cross at the kids and I know exactly how you feel.

I don’t want to give it all away. You will eventually see it and I’m sure you’ll be touched and moved by my devotion to you.