A Perfect Tenant

by Steve Richer

  But the girl was new in town, and stuck, and this was one of her first commissions here, and…

  “Sure,” he said. “No problem. You don’t have to pay me, though. Happy to help out.”

  “Oh, thank you so much!”

  And before he knew it, she’d stepped forward and planted a brief, wet kiss on his cheek. “I’m so grateful!”

  He shrugged, smiled, didn’t know where to look, his cheek still burning.

  It was like he’d thought when he opened the door and saw who was there. Libbie Burchett, like nobody else he’d known, could make you smile at the same time she made you painfully uncomfortable, but she never failed to make things at least interesting.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  That afternoon tested the balance between smiling and painful discomfort almost to breaking point.

  “So what’s the shoot?” Tom asked as they pulled up in Libbie’s Toyota in the parking lot by the high school sports facility.

  “Oh, some local kid. She wants to get into modeling and she wanted some portfolio shots. Her parents are paying, and they might turn out to be good contacts, so I’m happy.”

  They gathered together Libbie’s gear from the back of the car and walked around the corner of a building. The football team was going through their moves out on the field, all grunting and testosterone, and down in front of the bleachers about twenty cheerleaders were leaping and kicking.

  “Funny,” said Tom. “So many people say they wish they could go back, but can you imagine actually living through all this again? I’m so happy not to be a teenager.”

  Libbie squinted at him. “You can never escape it, though, can you? It stays with you wherever you go.”

  Tom grunted. He always felt uncomfortable visiting schools, all the memories triggered. He was very glad to have left all that behind. Getting older was good for something after all.

  “So what’s the plan?” he asked brightly.

  “There she is,” said Libbie, waving as one of the cheerleaders broke away from practice and came toward them.

  “Hey, Marissa,” said Tom.

  “You know each other?”

  “Marissa’s a neighborhood kid,” he said.

  “Mr. Granger.” The girl looked at him, then away again, that teen awkwardness. “Libbie. Thank you so much for this. I didn’t realize Mr. Granger was helping. That’s cool.”

  “Come on,” said Libbie. “Let’s head over this way. I want to get the other cheerleaders and the football practice in the background. Every guy’s fantasy, isn’t it? Sports and cheerleaders?”

  She nudged Tom playfully as she said this. He didn’t know what to say. It made him uncomfortable, particularly because Alice sometimes teased him about Marissa having a crush on him.

  And there she was in her tiny cheerleader outfit, blonde hair in a long ponytail, bare arms, and mile-high legs.

  She was sixteen. Blossoming would be the word.

  He didn’t think of her that way. He wasn’t like that. But she’d reached the age where she pressed a lot of biological triggers.

  Why had he come here?

  “You okay, Tom?”

  “Sure, sure.” Had Libbie picked up some of his discomfort?

  “So. Just give me a minute.” Libbie squatted over her camera bag, taking out a swanky looking camera and fitting a lens. “You get that reflector there, Tom? See the one? Just unfold it and get in low. I want to bounce the light back up. Can you do that?”

  Tom did as he was told, holding the reflector so it bounced light up from ground level, softening the shadows cast by the strong afternoon sunlight.

  “That’s it. Just go down a bit more, can you?”

  He was aware of Libbie at his shoulder as he kneeled, leaning in close to get the angle. And Marissa striking a pose, one leg held high.

  “Less smile, okay? Think sexy. Try not to feel awkward. Remember you want to be a model, Marissa. So think of someone you like.”

  The kid looked straight at him.

  Oh God, she looked at him!

  “That’s perfect, Marissa! Hold that thought. That perfect balance between innocence and desire.”

  Tom watched the footballers. Running at each other. Bouncing off each other.

  “Hey, Tom. Just a bit closer. Just be careful where you’re looking.”

  He couldn’t remember feeling so uncomfortable. Ever.

  He should tell her to stop. He was sure she was oblivious to his embarrassment. Just doing her job. The constant stream of chatter and wisecracks must all be part of a shoot like this. Putting people at their ease. Keeping their minds occupied.

  He met Marissa’s eye then and smiled awkwardly.

  She smiled back. Awkward too. Shy.

  “Perfect! That’s the look I want. Knowing. Adult. And yet innocent.”

  Libbie was in closer now, her leg against his side making him very aware of her presence.

  “That’s perfect, isn’t it, Tom? Now, Marissa, let’s try something different. Try standing with your back to us. Then twist at the waist to look back, right into the camera. Give me that same look you had just now. And Tom: in close at the side, bouncing the light back into the side of her face. That’s good. That’s perfect. That’s the one.”

  And so Tom did as he was asked, because he was too polite not to, and that painful discomfort was tested to its absolute limit.

  Chapter 16

  Rusty approached the Granger house later that afternoon. The weather was good for the time of year. Someone had said something about global warming, but he didn’t know about that.

  All he knew was that the sun was warm this afternoon. He liked to keep things simple in his head. Clear.

  Like cutting grass. You do a good job. You get it just right. And then you do the same again a week later. You know what to expect with grass and flowers.

  Not like people.

  Maybe that’s why he didn’t have many friends, and rarely kept the ones he had for long. You never knew quite what to expect with people. The Grangers were different though.

  Mrs. Granger was different.

  She treated him kindly. She remembered things about him that other folk forgot. Mr. Granger, too. They were good folks.

  He could earn more elsewhere, he knew. Uncle Rick always wanted people at his garage. Even the fast food places in the mall paid better rates, although he knew greasy food and the acne that still peppered his face were not a good combination. Money wasn’t everything though.

  Give him grass and flowers and trees any day. And the Grangers.

  The Grangers got him, like other folks never did.

  He liked it simple like that.

  He did his usual round of the garden first of all. The Boston ivy growing over the shed needed trimming, but not at this time of year when the deep red coloration was so vivid. The grass needed cutting, although the growth was slowing now as fall progressed. The flowerbeds all needed attention. Dead-heading to keep the flowering going as long as possible. Cutting back the herbaceous perennials to ground level. Pruning and shaping the woody varieties. It was the time of year when suddenly there was a lot of work to do.

  He knew the Grangers were too busy to manage it all, which was why he’d volunteered. Mrs. Granger with her high-flying job downtown. Mr. Granger so important he’d left a similar job to go freelance last year. They were good people to be around and he had the stupid hope that some of their success would rub off on him some day.

  He came round to the side of the house where the paved path led to the door to the basement apartment where that new girl was living now.

  He didn’t know what to make of her. She was hot. There was no denying that. The kind of hot you stored up in your head for those quieter moments and then felt guilty about later.

  But there was something about her.

  Like when Marissa Sigley or her cheerleader friends spoke to you and you didn’t know where to look or what to say. She had that about her.

  The house was built so the base
ment was part below ground and part above, so the apartment benefited from a row of little windows at ground level. Rusty had never set foot in the place until that day he’d helped Libbie move in. It was nice. The kind of place he could imagine himself in one day. That big flatscreen. And the almost cave-like sense of isolation. Of shutting the noisy world away.

  That would be cool.

  Checking the flowerbeds by the house, he couldn’t help but see in through those windows, triggering memories of that day.

  When he saw movement inside, he was startled.

  He hadn’t known anyone was home. He felt guilty for snooping even if he hadn’t been, not really.

  But Libbie was down there in the den. Kneeling over something on the floor, her perfect ass pointing at him in a way that made him uncomfortable all over again.

  She liked to wear her jeans tight. He’d noticed that about her before. Couldn’t help but.

  He couldn’t quite see what she was doing. There were papers spread out on the floor. Pictures. Wasn’t she supposed to be some kind of photographer?

  He looked away. Bent over a clump of asters and picked at a few flower heads going to seed. You could keep these in bloom way past Halloween if you treated them right.

  He tried to stop thinking of the new tenant. The way she’d been kneeling.

  He moved along, looked in through the next window. Saw better what she was doing. Scratching at something with a small implement of some kind.

  At a photograph.

  Weird. Was that the kind of thing photographers did? Scraping at images to somehow make them better? He remembered seeing an old movie once where a guy had been in a darkroom, printing a picture from a big enlarger and shaping shadows with his hands to change how it printed. Rusty liked art and that image had stuck with him. That you could change things like that, just by shaping light.

  That wasn’t what she was doing, though. He could see better now. See that she was gouging viciously at a photograph.

  At the face of the person photographed.

  It was a repetitive, obsessive movement, as if it was somehow therapeutic. Like scratching at an itch, Rusty thought. And you’d carry on scratching even when it started to hurt. When it started to bleed.

  That wasn’t just anybody in the photograph.

  You couldn’t see the face any more, but the guy was wearing a white baseball jersey.

  Mr. Granger was the only person Rusty knew who wore a white baseball jersey. His wife teased him about it whenever he wore it, but he still did.

  If Mrs. Granger ever teased Rusty about something like that, he’d never wear it again.

  The Grangers’ tenant, Libbie, was scratching Tom Granger’s face off that photograph. Scratching it so hard she must surely have gone through to the carpet by now.

  Rusty struggled to understand what that might mean. Why would she do something like that? Did she hate him?

  What kind of a person would do that?

  Rusty backed away from the window, careful now not to pass across in front of it in case she saw him.

  But what he hadn’t worked out was that in doing so he passed in front of the sun. He only saw too late, when his shadow passed across the floor, right by where Libbie kneeled.

  Still, he thought he’d gotten away with it.

  Then he saw her body tense, her head turn.

  He didn’t dare move, because he understood enough about physics to know his shadow would move too.

  So when Libbie spun and peered out of the window into the sunlight, her eyes narrowing in the glare, he was standing right there in full view.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  He waited what felt like several long seconds until she looked away again, then half-walked and half-ran away from the house.

  She might not have seen him. And if she had, she might not have recognized him.

  They’d only met that one time, after all. Rusty knew he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy that stuck in folks’ minds. A wallpaper kind of a guy, his mom had called it, although she’d been talking about someone else when she said that.

  He went to the shed and let himself in. Closed the door and leaned against it.

  He’d cut the grass. Lose himself in the noise of the mower. Try to forget the world. Her.

  He went to the mower, checked it over. He kept the motor in good shape. He was good with engines. Uncle Rick had taught him lots. That was why he kept saying he should work at the garage with him.

  The smell of engine oil was soothing. The way it mixed with the smell of old grass cuttings. Nothing else smelled quite like that.

  He didn’t know if he heard the sound of the shed door first, or was blinded by the bright sunlight as it swung open. Maybe they were both at the same time. And he didn’t know why he was worrying about that when she was there. Standing in the doorway, like a cut-out silhouette.

  “Rusty,” she said.

  So she did remember him.

  “I never did thank you properly for helping with the move.”

  He was confused. Had expected her to be angry, not nice. Not… that tone to her voice. That special kind of nice.

  “It was nothing,” he stuttered. “Jus’ bein’ neighborly.”

  “I like that.”

  She took a step so she stood just inside the shed. Suddenly the place seemed smaller.

  “All this work you do,” she went on. “It must make you so strong. I bet the girls love that.”

  He swallowed. Nobody ever spoke to him like this. Not in real life.

  She said nothing more and so he felt he had to say something to fill the silence. “I don’t know about that.”

  Another step.

  She was hot. Scary, too. He didn’t understand that. Didn’t understand how it made him feel.

  He swallowed again.

  He didn’t want to be here.

  He wanted to run.

  “Listen,” she finally continued. “Was that you I saw outside my window just now? Don’t worry if it was. It’s just… I was working on a secret project. Did you see what it was?”

  What should he say?

  He shook his head, then shrugged. “I didn’t see anything,” he said. “I was fixing the flowers. And that sun… it’s bright.” He remembered her squinting. She’d believe that.

  “I don’t want anyone to know about my project just yet. It’s a surprise. It’s art.”

  Art. He understood photography. And he understood painting things so they looked like the real deal. But there was a whole lot of other stuff folks called art that left him way behind.

  Was that what she’d been doing? Art?

  He wanted to believe her. Things were simpler that way, and he liked that.

  But he’d wanted to believe that when she’d come into the shed just now and started talking in that way that nobody had ever spoken to him before… well, he’d wanted to believe that too, but he didn’t.

  “I guess,” he said. He hoped she was convinced by that.

  He just wanted her to go. He wanted to be alone in this shed with the smells of engine oil and old grass clippings, and nothing more complicated than that.

  “Do you promise not to say anything? You’d hate to spoil the surprise, wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess.” Again, as if they were the only words he had left.

  “Because if you do spoil the surprise you’ll be in a lot of trouble, Rusty. Do you understand that? You’ll make Alice sad and she’ll never want to speak to you again. You’re lucky she talks to you at all, kid like you, but if you make her upset she’ll hate you. Downright hate you.”

  “I guess.” He understood that. She wasn’t being nice to him at all. She’d only been pretending when she came here. She didn’t like him.

  For a moment, he closed his eyes and visualized what he’d seen. Her kneeling. That repetitive movement as she gouged at the picture. Then he opened his eyes again and saw her still studying him. He didn’t know what he’d seen. Didn’t understand what she’d been doing.

&nbs
p; Art. Whatever.

  They weren’t things he understood.

  He glanced at the mower and said, “I have to get going.”

  Keep it simple. Do his job and leave.

  Don’t get involved in what you can’t figure out.

  Just carry on and hope the mad woman leaves you alone.

  Chapter 17

  The house was in darkness, apart from the glow from the big flatscreen. Tom sat on the deep leather sofa, Alice beside him, turned so her feet were in his lap.

  “You feeling relaxed now?” he asked, rubbing gently with both thumbs at the arch of one foot.

  “I’d be feeling a lot more relaxed if you didn’t keep asking me,” she said, poking him in the ribs.

  She wore sweatpants and one of his t-shirts. She said she felt like a hobo, but he knew she was comfortable dressed down like this. He thought she looked just great.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  The TV was on a talk show. Something they rarely watched, but getting Alice just to stop was such a rarity these days, he’d found whatever TV show she’d shown a hint of enthusiasm for and settled for that.

  “Oh, you know,” he said. “Transcription’s hardly gripping work, but it keeps me in hookers and cocaine.”

  She slapped at him. It was an old joke, and a sensitive one, given how little his transcription fees would ever actually pay for.

  “I sorted out the bank stuff,” he told her. “Then I called in on Franco and groveled. I said I’d see if Rusty wanted to go and help out. They could use some extra hands.”

  “That’s good. Rusty’s a sweet kid and he needs the income. Thank you for that.”

  Alice seemed a bit distracted tonight. He thought it was because she’d rather be working. He’d insisted she needed to unwind, and maybe because of their conversation this morning she’d acquiesced. She was the one who’d said they needed more couple time and she’d confessed that she found it hard to relax.

  He switched to her other foot and was pleased when she let out a long groan of release. He could feel the tension slipping away from her.

  “That good, sweetie?”

  “Hmmm.”

  The doorbell went and Tom cussed under his breath. That thing seemed to be going all the time now, and it always seemed to be their perfect tenant.