My landlord-proof disguise
Dear Diary …
I am Anne Frank this week, just waiting to be discovered and exterminated. OK, exterminated is too harsh. I am waiting to be removed from a duplex where the landlord does not know I exist. My landlord has the scent something is up – she saw my Mitsubishi Lancer with its Louisiana license plate in the driveway while passing the house – and she is out to uncover me. She might hate Gingers for all I know.
As part of her curious sleuthing routine, the landlord is doing a three-hour home inspection Saturday. My roommate tells me I have nothing to fear. Just make my room look like an extra room, as opposed to a bedroom, he says. Sounds easy enough. I don’t own a mattress. I don’t own much of anything. Funny how easy it is to shed things when you’re living in your fourth house in 20 months.
What if this Nazi, I mean landlord, looks at one of my books and determines it proof a second person – a Ginger, no less – lives in this house? Or she finds something fishy with my clothes, which my roommate is prepared to say are his own? (The Saints jerseys are going in my car trunk.) What then? An invitation to find a fifth house?
