LOWER THE MOAT---WE'RE HOME (Part Two)

One day, when the scythe man arrived at the Princess Garden Apartments, our neighbor began screaming, “Stop him! Stop him! Don’t let him start chopping the grass, I’ve lost my toddler.” We knew that things had gotten out-of-hand when the grass was taller than a child, but we linked arms and discovered the tike asleep in the grassland not far from his front door.

No one wanted to mess with the landlord. No one had ever seen the landlord. It was rumored that he wasn’t a very nice man, and had business connections with some other---not very nice men---so no one ever complained about anything. We tenants just mailed our rent checks on time and skipped through our meadow on the way to campus.

I was curious about our landlord. “Have you ever met him?” I asked W.S. “Nope,” he mumbled. “Surely, when you rented the apartment you must have seen him?” I said.  “Nope,” he answered. I said, “How can that be?” W.S. replied, “I just called him on the phone. He sent me the paperwork. I signed it and that was that. Never met him. Never saw him.” So, I figured, our landlord was going to remain a mystery man forever, and I would probably never talk with him. But, that was before I knew that even when something is not probable--- anything is possible, and the possible was about to happen.

One winter morning, I awoke, crawled over W.S., and stepped onto the floor with my bare feet. “Oh,” I exclaimed, “the floor is so nice and warm.” W.S. rolled over, sat up, stretched, got out of bed and proceeded toward the bathroom. “What do you mean warm?” he shouted. “The floor isn’t warm. It’s hot!” I followed him into the bathroom and he was right. Not only was the floor hot, it was getting hotter.

 “I think you’d better call the landlord.” W.S. suggested. I said, “Why me?” He lovingly replied, “Because I have to get to class, and he probably won’t kill a woman.” So I called the landlord. The phone rang once. He picked up and said, “Yeah?” Taken aback, I replied, “Yeah.” “Who is this?” he growled. I said, “This is the tenant in the end apartment. The floor is hot, and I think maybe you’d better come check it out before we burn our feet,” and I hung up.

When I returned from campus that evening, a crew of workmen was digging a huge trench around the place. “What’s going on?” I asked W.S. “Is the landlord digging a moat?” “No.” he answered. “It’s a broken water line. You saved him big bucks with your phone call.”

During dinner, the phone rang. I answered, “Hello.” “What can I do for you?” said the man on the other end of the line. I had no idea who was calling, so I said, “What do you want to do for me?” He replied, “I’ll have somebody cut your grass,” and then he hung up.

I think it was the landlord calling, because from that day on, ours was the only apartment with a manicured lawn. It looked a little off-balance compared with the rest of the place, but no one had the guts to complain.

Esther Blumenfeld

CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld c. 2006