The Property Manager: You'll never rent again... (18 page)

BG _ Naughty boy….I think you’d better turn off the hot water.

AC – Never….this feels too good.

BG _ Well, save some for me…

AC – (whispering) Gotta go…about four. We’ve got people coming for lunch – family. Amanda is doing the famous roast.

BG _ Fine, I’ll just hang around and wait for you! Enjoy Amanda’s culinary expertise, won’t you?

(I detected a snappy hint of jealousy there, Bad Grace. Are you all put out and sulky because you weren’t invited? You’re not his wife, honey. You’re his whore. And what a cheap whore you are – he doesn’t pay a brass razoo for you – you’re like the free local rag.)

What is a brass Razoo, you might ask? It’s the most worthless Indian coin ever issued.  A dumpster full of them wouldn’t come close to a dollar. That is what he - the Cox bastard - thinks you are worth. You are the crumbs off his birthday dinner table, you silly cow. Why do you degrade yourself – debase yourself – so badly?

He is someone who treats a partner, his wife, like dirt.

She looks like his mother, acts like his mother and that’s because he has turned her into his mother. Because he can’t do nothing without his mummy. Some men do that. They marry a woman in order to move away from their overbearing mother. Over the years the men become more and more lazy and apathetic. They let the woman do all the cooking, cleaning, child-minding. They refuse to look after themselves. Pick up after themselves. They run their women ragged, until they’re frazzled, frumpy and forty and all of a sudden they’ve become the mothers they moved away from. No-one wants to sleep with their mother so they go looking elsewhere for someone vibrant and vivacious and vacuous – like you. Then they leave their wives and start a Pygmalion job of turning you into their next mother-figure. He’s a spineless libertine and you’re a fool to be fooling about with him. 

Well, the tale continues in the same sordid vein –

4:25p.m comes and I’m waiting. I watched your friends from Rose Hill come and pick the boys up – all of them – for a few days break on their farm. I sense that you are upping the ante and looking for some QUALITY fucking time with your sex-buddy.

How extraordinarily intuitive of me! Because here comes the fuck-stud down the driveway. He’s in such a hurry. Pathetic. Like a dog with his tongue hanging out. You’re the chair leg, Bad Grace…the chair leg that Andy Cox rubs his cock against.

I’m in the forest just past the boundary of your property. I’ve got the old binoculars out and my lap-top in my lap. I’ve got stereo vision…binoculars and screen. I can look from one to the other. I’ve got boyfriend in the lens and you on the computer.

There’s been no chance to get into your bedroom to change the camera’s batteries over the last few days but I’ve got a visual of you in the kitchen, cooking something on the stovetop…could be spaghetti sauce. Is that bottled crushed garlic? God, how awfully pedestrian. Nothing bottled tastes as good as it does fresh. The aroma being released from a clove of garlic as you chop and dice is incomparable.

You are bottled, Bad Gracie while my darling Good Gracie is fresh and wholesome. Untouched by anyone but me.

She is completely accommodating and remains unwaveringly supportive of me – her love is unconditional and she is mine – lock, stock and barrel. I’ve even got the receipt to prove it!

God, that was a cheap shot and I apologize for making such a tawdry joke at G.G’s expense.

Your secret dick has entered the sliding doors leading to your dining room. Don’t you look pleased to see him? I’ve put the binoculars down. Nothing more to see outside.

“Happy birthday” is about all you get out of your mouth before he slips his tongue in. The two of you indulge in some tonsil hockey for a few minutes, before you dip out of sight below the kitchen bench and it becomes obvious what he’s getting for his thirty-fifth birthday. He’s probably had his wife’s pussy wrapped around that already today. Doesn’t the thought of that make you gag? Oh that’s right – you bought the party line that he doesn’t get any at home! Foolish, gullible Gracie.

His head is lolling back as if his throat has been slit( I wish) - and his eyes are shut. I touch myself and imagine Good Gracie’s cherubic round pink lips wrapped around my own cock as I ride her head like a hopper-roo bouncing ball.

Hmmmmmmmm. Oh Yeah!

Just swimming in the moment.

Now I feel woozy and light-headed. Shivers up and down the spine and a tingle deep in my groin like the beginning of a stitch. Birthday boy has his pants back up and you look like the cat that got the cream.

You’re like a married couple, chatting away while you finish cooking your sub-standard spaghetti sauce. Stirring and adding salt. He’s pouring you both a glass of red wine from a cardboard box - suitably cheap and tacky to go with the food and the present company. He’s stuffed full of his boring wife’s lunch and apologizes off a sample-taste of your dinner.

The scoundrel told his family he was off on a long bicycle ride. He joked with you that he had fooled them into thinking he was taking up a fitness campaign to drop a few kilos. The joke of course is that YOU are in fact his exercise bike. At the rate you two are going at, you’ll both be skin and bones in no time.

When you tell him that you have no kids for the next two days, Mr Happy Cockbrain gets very animated. He starts moving around the kitchen with his glass, conjuring fanciful ideas. He’s trying to come up with excuses to get away for a whole night and day.

He tells you he’s a member of a four wheel drive club. What a plebian past-time. I can’t think of anything more rancid than sitting around with a posse of flannel-shirt clad, bearded, beer-gutted boof-heads, slurping beers while boasting about the size of my engine. These mountain-men are responsible for carving scars all over the forests. Have you seen Deliverance? I’m quite sure my sphincter would be trembling with fear if I happened upon a 4Xdrive club meet in the middle of the national park.

Listen to the two of you hatching some devious plan. He’s talking about faking a four wheel drive trip…says he knows someone who’ll give him an alibi. Tom someone? He even uses your phone as I write, to confirm that this bloke will cover for him. He tells the mate to ring him at home in an hour to invite him on a bogus trip. Crafty! Very crafty. You two can spend all night salivating over each other. Play mummies and daddies....without the kiddies. I just picked up the binoculars again and focused them on those whacky alpacies. The alpaca is a strange creature lost somewhere between a camel and a horse and a goat.  

The ground is cold and I can hear something rustling in the undergrowth. It’s too cold for snakes. Might be a lizard or a fox.

I’m packing up and going home now. It’s bitterly uncomfortable and I’ve got a cramp in my leg. I’ll have a hot shower and some dinner and then I’ll…..

Hang on, you’ve just said that you are off to town to buy some champagne and bread for tonight and stud-boy’s suggested you rent a video. How sweet. You can cosy up on the couch and watch some sickly, romantic movie starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. Knowing you fornicating freaks, however, it is more likely that you’ll settle down to something like “Deep-throat” or “Debbie does Dallas”.

GG and I watched “Moulin Rouge” the other night and she thinks I look a little like Ewen McGregor but with shorter hair. I got quite turned on by Nicole Kidman in her fine corsetry and got a little too frisky with my darling.  She’s fine now but I had to make her a little band-aid of gaffer tape.

Okay! So I’ll wait until you have departed for the township and then I’ll quickly replace the batteries in your room. I have them in the front pocket of my laptop bag. Bicycle-boy has peddled up the driveway on his way home to spin his woman a yarn and you are just behind him in the car.

19
th
July, Monday.

Boat. Snorkel. Helipad. Mosman. Scooter. Random word association because I’m trying to distract myself from reality. Grace and Andy sitting in a tree….k.i.double s. i.n.g. You ridiculous pair of rutting clowns. Sitting on the couch watching some awful B-grade Hollywood film. You wouldn’t have passed a comprehension test or been able to write a film critique, would you? Before the opening credits had finished rolling, you had mounted him on the couch, with knees astride while your rounded haunches bobbed up and down like a jack-hammer.

By halftime, you’d been lapped at like some giant sloppy ice-cream until you squealed like a piglet having it’s tail razor-bladed off. And while the final credits were on, your head was bobbing for apples in Cockles crotch. You left the blinds to the living room open, so I had a clear view from the alpaca fence. My handheld camera managed to capture some rough footage but it’s a little unclear and unfocused. Messy. Like your lovemaking.

Your cat began serpentining about my ankles while I was filming the two of you in the shower. I kicked it away but it was relentless, purring deeply while rubbing its white furry body against me like a feline slut. I got so distracted that I stopped filming and picked the damn creature up and got a brilliant idea.

  He was a fine passenger. There was the worry that he might go ballistic in the car but he sat on the front seat, taking it all in his stride. I presented him to GG. She was thrilled and has decided to call him Larry. Cats don’t do it for me but I’m willing to make that sacrifice for my darling girl. Larry can keep her company while I’m at work and moonlighting as a film-maker.

Hiho hiho it’s off to work I go. The phone just rang but it’s probably mother’s doctor and I am not talking to him. I might just disconnect the phone permanently.  

6:56p.m.

Pope. Melon. Skull. Print. Basket. These are words are random but have no association with one another at all.

GG looks a bit flat today. I’d better see if she needs an infusion of some description. I am the wind beneath her wings and I’m thinking that she needs a breath of fresh air. The band-aid might need replacing.

It’s a cold winter’s evening. We had sleet today and I feel it might snow overnight. I wonder if my mother smells like a rat soaking in preserving fluid.

I rang the city universities from work today and they told me that I needed to sign form a, b, c, d , e, f, g,h,I,j,k,,l…before they would take my mother’s body for practice butchering by medical students…it sounded like a nightmare of paperwork so I’m just pretending that I had little to do with my mother and that I am not having anything to do with her funeral arrangements. It makes me sound like a prize prick but it’s too much to deal with right now. I’m not religious or spiritual in any way so I’m most certainly not afraid that she is lurking behind my door as some horrifying spectre ready to leap out in her nightie and go “BOO”!

In many ways I feel free for the first time in my life. Like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. She really was a beastly burden. I wanted to move back to England years ago but always had her welfare at heart and SHE wanted to stay in Australia. I found the Antipodean crassness all a bit stifling and missed the culture and sophistication of all things British. I love the veil of grey clouds and the cold. Mother liked sunshine and space.

Do you know, I only married Vicki because my Mother LOVED her? She pushed me to pop the question. She even bought the engagement ring. Months after our divorce was final, I discovered that my mother had continued socializing with the Vulture…inviting her for tea etc…They spent many days locked in conspiratorial talk about what an absolute bastard I was. I think Mother felt cheated that she had lost the daughter she had always wanted. I had been daughtered as a son. She had brought me up to be soft and weak. She had discouraged sport and encouraged feminine pursuits. She taught me to knit and crochet. I was made to read Little Women and later, all the Bronte girls’ work.  Mum once found a few books by Ernest Hemingway in my cupboard and burnt them. He was a” hard-liquor drinking, woman-hating, mental misfit”, according to her. They were school library books and I was given the cane for losing them. I never admitted to the headmaster that my mother had destroyed them.

She didn’t like to talk to me of my father. Dead and buried was all I got. I gave up pressing for more information while still a child. There were a couple of photos of the two of THEM but none of him with ME. I definitely look like him. His name was also Jack. I don’t know how he died. I don’t know where he is buried. I don’t know if I can vaguely recall him or whether I simply remember my day-dreamed father. I promised my mother that I wouldn’t ask questions or go behind her back for information because it was all too painful for her. But NOW I feel released from that agreement and intend to track down as much information as I can.

Perhaps Vickie the Voluptous Vulture might pay for the old woman’s funeral. I don’t know if they continued to see one another. Mother stopped telling me of their soirees but there were times that I visited that I could detect the definite stench of lesbian in the house – like a stale tuna sandwich.

Well, I have wiped my hands of the problem.

I fed the cat. He’s a bizarre creature. I’ve noticed that he has two different coloured eyes. One green. One blue.  Perhaps GG should have called him Bowie. His purr sounds like a growl and he has a permanent heinous smirk on his face, like the Joker out of Batman. Having said all that, he is growing on me. GG seems to really like him. Her eyes follow him about the room. He likes leftovers. He’s eaten a whole bowl of chicken fricassee.