The Three Tenants, Part 2: Tangled Webs

So, yes, the truth was out there, but questions, answers, & stories remained:

1.  The boy admitted leaving the garbage.  So why did the white woman blame the black man, when she clearly didn’t see him doing it?  (a) Was it racism?  No, because she’d dated black men herself.  (b) Was a flirtation spurned? (She was a bit of a dog.) Or (c) was she just a pathological liar and troublemaker?

The answer is “c”, and maybe “b”.  I know that because my attorney was apparently also hers.  She went to see him for something, and during the course of their conversation, was complaining about her landlord.  She told him she was moving as soon as her lease was up.  He called to give me a heads-up about an unhappy tenant, in case I wanted to try to resolve her complaints. Problem was, she had no lease.  All she had to do was give me the usual 30-days’ notice, and she could go.  So why bother to lie about it? And why was she still here?

2.  My secretary, who was in the office the day the man stormed in, asked me why I would apologize to a tenant.  She thought I should never apologize to a tenant.  I thought she had grown another head, and it went a long way towards explaining her lack of people skills.

3.  The guy in the house had presented himself as a writer.  He was really an unemployed, lying and b.s.’ing slob.  He left owing rent, and the house was trashed (which also helps explain the son).  He was also delusional.  

One day my son, who was an impressionable 18-year-old at the time, told me he met a guy in Burger King who started talking to him about his writing, blah, blah.  My son was really impressed -- impressed enough to relate this story to his mother, who he usually managed to ignore.  I told him not to be so awe-struck, because I recognized the guy by my son's description.  This was the same slob who lived in the house that my son helped clean out recently.  The hot-shot eating at BK should’ve been a clue.


"O, what tangled webs we weave..."