The Landlord
I let myself in Monday evening, spare key on the green plastic tag, three months of unpaid rent and a smell in the hall that already told me the rest. and there you are. dangling in the middle of your one-room shithole, toes pointed south, shame finally heavier than the rest of you.
good rope, I’ll give you that — manila, the proper stuff, bag from the hardware shop on Commercial Road still on the table, receipt and all. you don’t skimp on the one thing, eh. it sings a little dry creak up there in the rafters like a drunk humming off-key.
Nina Simone going round on the turntable, needle stuck in the run-out groove, click… hiss… click… hiss… “my baby just cares for me” on a loop, and the real baby, that mangy cat, must’ve pissed itself in the corner days ago, stain dried yellow, stink baked in. that’s how I know how long you’ve been up there: the cat gave up before you were found. you let go the same way, I reckon, right at the end, the last of your dignity down your own leg.
forty years of nothing, I’d guess, looking at you — cheap wine, jobs that chewed you up and spat you back into this same crummy room. then one Friday you tie the knot, kick the chair, and the world doesn’t even blink. I certainly didn’t, I was chasing the rent.
and God forgive me, I don’t scream. I light a cigarette. I look at the cat, I look at you, swaying like a broken metronome, tongue fat and purple, eyes open like you’re still trying to figure the bill. and what comes out of me is: “Jesus, mate. couldn’t you have paid the bloody rent first?”
my baby just cares for me.
sure she does.
then I shut the door on you and your own private jazz club, the needle still hunting a song that isn’t there, and I stand in the hall a minute, longer than I meant to.
ever-mounting debt,
the summons, the court letters,
pills and booze and fags.
