The Property Manager: You'll never rent again... (17 page)

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?

My lower back hurts from playing with G.G all night.

Mother is indeed quite sick. I popped in to see her and she’s wasting away, can hardly talk and didn’t even have the energy to harass me about anything. She smells rancid. I went through the house and took anything that tickled my fancy. I’ve got all the photo albums. Some books. My grandmother’s chess set. It’s very old and beautiful.

I don’t think I’ll go back to the house ever again. Dehydration doesn’t take long when your skin looks like Ptolemnic papyrus. She’s completely immobile and her mind has already left the building. The old carcass won’t be far behind. She’s a stinking shell, like a dead cicada. The mother I know is not there any more.

I’m setting up a hotmail e-mail account today. I’ll use some pseudonym and send you a message. I’m thinking something along the lines of “DIE WHORE”. Perhaps that’s a bit rich. It might actually cause you to close down your account. I’d just find out the password for your next one and it would go on and on and on. But NO. That is just too silly. I need to be clever about the way I do this. Your brother last e-mailed to say he was off to Mexico, backpacking for a month and being off the beaten track wouldn’t communicate until he was back in Spain, other than the odd postcard.

Brainwave! I’ll set the hotmail up in his name and tell you that I can check the account from internet-cafes. That’s a very back-packer thing to do.

I’ll have fun being your little brother for a while. We can talk. I’ll lure you into confiding your deepest and darkest secrets to me. As I send you slowly insane, I’ll be your on-line confidant, offering brilliant advice. You’re close to your brother and as I have all his recent mail to you (I printed off all your messages for the last six months), I’ll be able to make my written voice sound like his.

I did write an anonymous note to Michelle at the police-station mentioning your expired registration. That might cripple your movements a little, unless you pay your registration and fines and I’m guessing that it hasn’t been done because you’re flat broke! You have been whining to Jenny of late about your financial woes. You always seem to have enough to stock the fridge with champagne, though.

It’s not like the big city here. We’re a one-cop town and you can’t drive anywhere without the possibility of passing Constable Michelle. If you can’t afford to spend the money to register the Camry, you’ll have to walk to work and back which will mean leaving earlier and getting home later.

I wonder how quickly Michelle will take to pull you over. It’s only an offence to be unregistered if you are actually on the road.

You are nothing like the responsible, mature woman I had you pinned for. You are behaving like an unruly, anarchic teenager. What sort of role model are you for those children? They really should be taken away from you. That would really eat you up, wouldn’t it?

I’ll film you tonight. I’ll watch you put food in your mouth. Yell at your children. Paddle about on the internet. Chat to Jenny. You cackle like crones on the phone.

Until then….  

Friday 16
th
July

Good Grace looks better in pink than you do. I’ve given her a wash this morning and brushed her hair. She’s so like you and yet….so not. She’s more real than you ever could be. You are a consummate actress, always on the stage. Bad Grace pretends very hard to be Good Grace but you don’t come close. GG will never cheat on me. I know that for a fact and I don’t have to sneak around keeping tabs on her because she is reliably wherever I left her, which is generally on my bed or on the sofa.

You’ve gone all out in your quest to be the most immoral slag in the township with the midnight bike ride becoming a regular event in your dirty life.

SCHEDULE FOR DISGUSTING LIAISONS

10:00p.m. Filthy grace tries to wash herself clean in the shower, touching herself in a most unbecoming manner….

10:15p.m. Bad Grace is dressed in black lingerie and her hair is done and makeup lightly applied to her harlot-face. A lamb ready for the slaughter.

11:00p.m. Bad Grace lies nonchalantly under her bedcovers reading “The Birth of Christianity”( You are such a hypocritical sinner. What about religion interests you so much? You are probably a devotee of Satan and just want to get to know your OPPOSITION!)

12:00 midnight – Lights out and Bad Gracie has fallen asleep. How amusing would it be for me to come through those doors, stroll across the room and make bitter love to you, while you screamed HIS name? I guess when I started to hurt you, reality might set in…you might realize that the beast hammering into you and biting pieces out of your shoulder while simultaneously scratching strips out of your thighs is NOT after-all your opera singing lover but your very cross PROPERTY MANAGER!

2:15 a.m A shadow peddles around past your clothes line. The bike is rested against the dark bricks and a dark figure in a dark track-suit, takes off his shoes and opens the sliding door.

2:16 – 3:00a.m Fornication takes place in one form or another.

3:01 a.m – Male showers off all traces of Bad Gracie and then peddles home to his sleeping wife. Perhaps he gave her an extra dose of something to help her sleep very deeply.

You leave your bathroom light on for your sessions, so my footage is fairly clear. I really would love to share some of this with the world. The Internet is the perfect place for this but…no..no…no…I will wait until I’ve completed my film. I have a strong feeling that it will not have a happy ending. Then….and only then….I will launch it into cyberspace. I had intended this film to be a private film for you and I to enjoy. Now I’ve got GG to help by being my muse and she and I watch you acting like a bitch on heat and then we make love like two people expressing the deepest form of communication and affection.

I am off to work now to deal with insolent tenants and demanding landlords who don’t understand how frustrating and unrewarding my fucking job is! I wonder if my mother is dead yet. The Blue nurses are checking on her only once a week…on a Friday….I think so I’m bound to hear from them at some stage today. She’ll either be a mass of decaying flesh or getting very close. I think it’s for the best. She had nothing to offer and nothing to gain from life anymore. She was a staunchly religious woman so she’s better off with God. They have more in common than we did. It’s nature and just the sad cycle that we are all a part of.

11:15 p.m.

Work was awful. I hate everybody there!

GG sleeps now and I am about to send a message from your dear brother to you….I have a hotmail account in the name of davege8 which is the name of his home-mail account, without the 8…..my password is goodgrace but you don’t need to know that. It will never benefit you at all because by the time I sit you down and MAKE you read this journal, you will not be long for the world.

I will do a draft of my davege8 message here

Hola sister,

Mexico rocks. Swimming with turtles….fun and good beer in Cancun. How is all with you and my nephews? How’s Ben going with his guitar playing. Send me some photos of you and the boys. You’ve got a digital camera haven’t you? Mine is broken or I’d send you pics of me with hot latino chickybabes. I’ve got a cheap disposable one and will send you copies when developed. How’s Ma and the other sisters? Do you get up to Queensland much to see them all? Your new job sounds cool…Got a boyfriend yet? Write soon with gossip. I’ll check this mail at café’s in mexico city where I’ll be for next week.

Ciao Bro xx

Sounds genuine enough. I’ve lifted phrases and tried to keep the communication as close to the tone of your brother’s e-mails from Spain.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Unfortunately the batteries in your bedroom smoke alarm are dead. The others are probably not far off either, so I must make some excuse to get into your place or wait until an appropriate time to let myself in. I don’t like doing that during the day…too risky. You’re often out for dinner and what-not but you leave the kids at home.

An opportunity will arise and if not I will create one!

Saturday 17
th
July

Ding dong the witch is dead. My mother is no more. The old grey goose, she ain’t what she used to be. I am sad. Not devastated. I’ll miss her. I’ll miss her meddling and nagging but also her green thumb in my garden and her sweet laugh. It was her time. I am being pestered by her doctor to come to Sydney today to formally identify her and organize removal of her body to a funeral home. The doctor rang last night, offering his condolences. He spoke in such a monotone that I began to drift off to the lullaby that was his voice. White Lady Funerals, Dirt and Shovel Funerals, Crispy Crematorium…honestly it was all just babble. He talked embalming and death certificates and funeral directors…giving me options and choices but my head was swirling and I just couldn’t be bothered listening. I got his number and said I’d call him back today after giving it all some thought.

I haven’t given any of it any thought. What happens when a John Doe has to be buried? Doesn’t the government look after it? The price of a funeral can be astronomical and let’s face it, for my mother, I’d be the only one there. I don’t need a five thousand dollar show put on for the priest and me! I’ll ring the doctor back and say I am not interested and he can leave her in the fridge or go and put her in the dumpster out the back of the hospital. Maybe I could donate her body to one of the universities. Yes! That is what I’ll do. That solves the problem of a funeral and the rest of it all. I’ll get on to the medical departments today and they can send me the forms and go and collect the old bag of bones.

GG thinks I should show more respect but frankly when you’re dead, you’re dead. There’s no use crying over spilt milk. It’s going to catch up with us all one day and there’s little point being mawkish about it.

I did love my mother. Or maybe I was just afraid not to.

Did you teach all those sweet little kiddies how to act and strut around pretending to be something that they are not? Word on the street has it, that you are planning a big production in a month or two. I’ll be there to watch. That’s for sure.  

Sunday 18
th
July

Well. Well. It’s been lover-boy’s birthday and hasn’t he had a happy day, Bad Gracie?

Let’s have a replay of your telephone conversation this morning –

BG – Hello?

AC – Hey there sexy.. (I swear the register of his voice just dropped into ‘Fabio-tone’)

BG – Where are you calling from?

AC – The shower. Can you hear the water? (The noise of spilling water increases)

BG – Is she home?

AC – Unfortunately.

BG – Are you coming over today?

AC – It’s my birthday so of course I am…later this afternoon.

BG – Oh, bugger. I forgot…you should have reminded me…I haven’t got you anything….

AC- Don’t be silly – you’ve got exactly what I want…I’m thinking about that right now…hmmmm.