Where the Walls are Soft…

I don’t use a lot of “real” names on my blog. That started with my Little Old Land-Lady, Ruby, who doesn’t trust the internet. At. All. Since then, I’ve re-named pretty much everybody I write about, just in case someone I write about is Internet-Shy.

Louie

Louie is my On-Again, Off-Again Employer. I first met up with him while employed at The Store-Formerly-Known-As-Stereo-Hut. He was the boss at the “competing” outlet across town. He scared me.

Then I met up with him at a swimming pool. My kid and his kid swam in the same organization. We would sit and drink coffee, complain about work, and eventually, I transferred to his store.

A few years later, he gave the store back to The Company - sick and tired of it all. I took the lay-off, thankful for my luck, and tried to make a go of a different type of business with a partner. The only one to hire us was Louie, to build a website for a new business he’d started. He paid us money, even, which was odd, as web-site-building was not what we were in business to do. That was the only money to ever come into that business, which is now gratefully defunct.

Then Louie, in a fit of nostalgia, perhaps, bought another Store-Formerly-Known-As-Stereo-Hut, and since he now owns several different businesses, he continues to call me for this-that-and-the-other-thing, when he needs help.

He no longer scares me. I’m lucky he’s around.

And, by the way, my kid quit swimming for that organization several months in. Louie’s kid now brings medals home. It never fails…

Ruby

Ruby is my Used-To-Be Landlady. It was suggested to me by a friend who once lived in her building, that I should pay her a visit when I was desperate for a place for myself and the Idiot Child, then 7 years old, and much less of an idiot. Said friend told me how wonderful, friendly, sweet, nice and generous Ruby was, and I was convinced.

I called Ruby on the phone, and she invited me over for coffee and a chat, along with my kid. I made my then mostly brainful-for-her-age child promise me that she would not act up, be polite, and remember that if we didn’t get this place, we would be stuck suffering where we were… which was not a particularly nice place to be.

Off we went.

At first blush, Ruby was not wonderful, friendly, sweet, nice or generous. She did not smile at me, although she managed a small, rusty grimace for my child, who was on her best behaviour.

No, actually, at first blush, Ruby scared hell outta me, and I could barely speak without stuttering.

To make matters worse, I was rather bereft of funds at the time, and could not come up with more than a small portion of the first month’s rent, along with a promise for the rest of it… to be delivered, ummmm…. half-way through that first month. Ruby, who had been through a couple of decades of drug-dealing, non-rent-paying, dead-beat tenants, and who had had the place up for sale with no takers for the last decade, was iffy on handing me a key.

It became a stand-off, or rather, a sit-off, the two of us at opposite ends of Ruby’s kitchen table, my still cute Idiot Child in the middle with a glass of milk and a cookie, looking from one to the other of us, as Ruby wouldn’t take the little money I had, and I wouldn’t leave beaten.

Finally, the Idiot Child spoke up, being overly forward (although polite) and most certainly knowing how grounded she would be for sticking her nose into her mother’s Grown-Up Business…

“Mrs. Daniel, would it be okay if I went into your living-room to watch television…? ‘Cuz my mom is about to cry.”

Ruby took her into the living-room, milk, cookies, and all, turned on the tv, returned to the kitchen table, and without another word, took my money, wrote me a receipt, and handed me my key.

I was her tenant for exactly six years, until the building finally sold, and the first and most importantest requirement on my new-apartment hunting list was that it be near Ruby, so I could continue to visit her kitchen table 4-5 times a week, for coffee, a cross-word and a story.

When I found the place I wanted, a full 90-second on-foot commute from my door to hers, Ruby cemented the deal for me by writing a shining recommendation, without which, I may not have got the place, being a single, poor mom, with an Idiot Child and all…

Ruby Daniel is even more than family, now, and I’m grateful to be able to call her my friend.

(And I still call her my Landlady.)