Sasha peered out of the bathroom window slit, with a furrowed brow as she watched the old man from across the street filling up his fourth bag of locquets from the tree in their front yard.They were used to passing strangers helping themselves to the fruit, and there was plenty, but THIS??Unsure what to do, and not one for confrontations, she flushed the toilet and headed to the front of the house, biting her nails nervously. Knocking on the door of her housemates room, she reached inside her pocket and produced a mashed up stick of gum, all warm and gooey from having nested in the air-tight crevice near her groin for the last six days.She unwrapped the foil and pulled the sticky content into her mouth, using her two front teeth to peel it away, just as the door quickly opened, and a woman of slight build though tall in stature, hopped out, pulling her sock onto her left foot. “What?” she barked. “I’m late for work”.“Oh sorry” Sasha said, in a kittenish tone. “Listen, that old guy from across the street is in the front yard, and he’s clearing us out of locquets! I can’t find the Landlord’s number.” she lied, “What should we do?”Stepping into her slip-on purple pumps, Lisa grabbed her dull red, leather handbag that looked like a giant scrunchie on her shoulder, and with one finger, she rubbed her teeth so that any lipstick stains would depart without a trace…and walked towards the front door, saying nothing. Next thing the door was slamming, and Sasha remained standing outside the door to Lisa’s room, blinking and slightly rolling her eyes. She was used to it by now.Once outside, Lisa approached the older man, who was standing on a step ladder, oblivious to her presence as he greedily stuffed locquet after locquet into plastic shopping bags. She stood there for nearly a whole minute, in disbelief at what she was seeing, and then unfolded her arms and poked him five times on his leg. She could almost feel his varicose veins through the material of his brown old mans pants.He ceased his frenzied picking and looked down upon her from his heightened position, as she looked up at him in her bemused state, a slight wry smile appearing on her face.“Uh…don’t you think you’ve had enough? I mean, seriously, can you leave some for us…in our own yard?” She asked, in the most civil and reasonable voice she could muster, under the circumstances. If it had been someone 40 years younger she would not have hesitated to kick the ladder out from under him. As it was she was holding herself back from doing just that, when he started to flick his hand towards the ground, dismissively, saying nothing to her.She looked down to see his hand pointing towards the half rotten fruit that had started to melt into the earth, under the tree, and could not believe what had just happened. “You can have that”, he said with an air of misguided authority.It was as if someone had scratched their fingernails down a chalkboard, and her face turned red as she started to fantasize about his crumpled body falling from under the ladder she had sabotaged, face first into the brown, rotting fruit on the ground, and her laughing maniacally and uncontrollably. She decided instead that she would take the “mature” approach, and draw a cartoon about it later on after she had returned from work, such was the comical nature of the scenario.“I friends with Landlord” he said in broken english, the accent was mediterranean she noticed. “He say I could take some fruit.” he said, matter-of-factly. and with a sense of entitlement in his tone of voice that she had never before experienced.“Oh, is that right? Well, I’m sure he didn’t mean for you to take ALL the fruit, did he now?” Lisa replied tersely, biting her lower lip to supress the hint of rage she perceived to be bubbling up from the depths of her emotional ocean.His accent was thick as he continued, “I been living in that house for forty years!” He asserted, as he pointed towards the house across the street. “Forty years I been here.” he repeated, as though he needed to emphasize it more to her for dramatic effect.“Aha…well, congratulations” she said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. “I fail to see how that entitles you to come in here and take ALL the fruit on the tree and leave us none but the rotten ones? Maybe you can explain that to me, because I sure don’t get it.” She threw her hands up and slammed them down hard on her hips to express her frustration.They continued like this for about 6 minutes before Lisa had had enough. Truly amazed and stunned at the level of audacity and his insistence of the logic of his argument, she firmly grabbed his withered arm through the dark blue sweater, and dragged him down off the ladder as he clutched his precious bag of fruit, like it was stolen gold.“Right, that’s enough” she said as she folded up his ladder and escorted him to the front entrance, now exit, of the garden, and watched him walk slowly across the street, carrying the four bags of ripe locquets, and protesting that he would call the landlord as soon as he got home, and report her for assault…to which she retorted that she would do the same, and meant it, whipping out her mobile phone and texting Sasha to prepare for a midnight raid of the old mans house in a week from now, with the express purpose of helping themselves to some of the jam his wife was no doubt going to convert them into. “It’s the least he could do”…she messaged, with a grin, and started humming cheerily, as she left the premises for work.“No WAY was he getting away with this”, she thought devilishly.
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