A Bright Ribbon in Darker Times

A flower in a pot, a card and Heroes sweets in Morrisons brown paper bag warm the spot behind the door. I pick them all up, stunned, after reading his message, “I dropped a little something on the doorstep for you.” We are not lovers, not even friends.

Being a landlord doesn’t give him the right to flood me with gifts. A few weeks before he left Exceptional Mince Pies from Morrisons in my kitchen as a welcoming gift. He didn’t have to do that.

I hate flowers. It’s because of my mum. She loves them. And because she loves them, I hate them. I hate toffee too, since she’s been showering me only with these sweets since I was little. But I’m not little anymore.

Over the years, I’ve had terrible landlords. Not all of them, but they mostly took care of the business, and not of me. I thought I was supposed to be their business since I was the one paying rent. But apparently, that’s where I was wrong. They listened to the others, and the others had more influence on them than I did. I was the one paying them rent, not the others. It turned dangerously into evictions and escapes. What for?

And now, for the first time in my renter’s life, I feel something for my new landlord. Since he mentioned family, a wife and two kids, I assume that he’s happy. Why wouldn’t he be, if he has everything a person like me would ever dream of and will never have? I gave up these dreams a long time ago.

That doesn’t stop my heart from feeling something deeper occasionally. Like this time. I don’t even know exactly when it started. Was it when he agreed to meet me and show me the property, while others kept rejecting me for a good two months? Or perhaps when he waited for me that day and showed me around, and I talked to him and felt that this house was heaven? Was it on that fatal day when the delivery guys were late an hour, and this unforeseen event stalled the time? He waited patiently for my things to arrive and for me along with them. But I haven’t arrived. I got stuck on a train, crying because I was leaving the city I had fallen in love with. “I don’t fall in love with people anymore, just places” that’s what I’m used to saying now. But this city gave me something much more than any love could ever give me. And it required nothing in return, just my being there. Unconditional love, pure and simple. And as I was about to leave to live somewhere else, this fragile bond became broken beyond repair. That’s why I was crying.

When I arrived at the place, nobody was there. He left the key under the doormat outside the house. He trusted me that much. I picked it up, entered, and saw all my things already inside. All enterprise of moving in happened without my interference.

He came later to sign the contract. Just a formality. He complimented my handwriting, saying that it’s better than his. That is his style. To turn everything into a positive.

My memory flashed back to all the past moments when I had to pull all my documents out, as if from my pocket, after traveling and waiting for hours without food or rest. This time, that didn't happen. This time, they were tears of joy and assurance that I mattered. He came especially for me, after picking up his son in an adjoining town. He showed he cared, undressing me with a touch full of sweet and positive words.

That day we talked about Dickens and Shakespeare, exchanged glances, laughed. His presence brushed through my arm and my life, enveloping it in the finest mist, a mist I will never forget. For the longest time in my life, I finally felt alive.

I felt little love then. Maybe he felt more than I did. Maybe these gifts are proof that he felt more for me. I didn’t. I thought my heart was irreparable after all the time it had shattered into tiny pieces and been devoured by beasts. He was none of those beasts. He was real. He was human.

And now this. A flower, a card, and candy. Christmas and my birthday were approaching, so officially, that was the purpose of gifts. But I can't even repay him. I can't go to the next town and tell him how much his kindness and generosity saved me. I wouldn't do that for anything in the world. To disrupt the fragile pattern of his life, just as I'd just disrupted mine. I think that was the official reason I'd been telling myself for the past month. But my heart isn't a good listener. It misbehaves too often, much to my surprise.

But something tells me a different story. A story about a broken marriage and hiding it from me. For the good of all, of course. But you can't hide such things, especially with men. They externalise, they want us to know, so we know. Since no words of affection were exchanged afterward, I gave in. I stopped thinking about him, and my heart kind of forgot. We don't miss things we can't see; that's the rule of this life. But he's my landlord; sooner or later he'll show up, and I'll have the same problem as before. Was it love, limerence, or something else entirely? Will I ever know?

He touched me with his words, and from then on, I remained naked, without ribbons, like the most precious gift he always wanted in his home away from home.