THE LANDLORD'S DAUGHTER

The Revisit.

Days seemed to drag by. The weight of keeping her in my head was heavier than her body weight. Sometimes I thought I was being silly for expecting friendship from my landlord’s daughter. I had built castles higher in the air than the normal people build, and when the castle threatened to crumble, my heart was crushed.

A few days after her visit to my house, I had walked past the door of the cafeteria where we made eye-contact. I flashed a smile on her face, a smile that I had been perfecting in front of my bathroom mirror for days hoping that it would attract her attention. It didn’t. She lowered her face back to her job as soon as she saw me. A painful snob, a snob that pierces through your heart and crushes your ego into pieces.

I was going to no place in particular. I had been hovering around the place aimlessly hoping that she would see me and offer a smile. She had the kind of smile that you would love to see pasted on the faces of your kids, an efficacious and infectious smile. All I wanted to see was her smile. When she didn’t smile back, I was crushed further. I went back to being the introvert that I am; reading books, writing, and doing a lot of social media.

Two weeks passed since that day. I was reading Chimamanda Ngozi’s Americanah. I had bought it because I knew the book would interest her. At that time, the prospects of even seeing her were a bleak wish. I finished reading the book and dropped it on the puff stool; exhausted from the torments of the book’s plot. I sat up on the couch when a knock came on the door. The knock had a distance familiarity, but I couldn’t guess whose knock it was.

I walked to the door unprepared for what awaited me. The door swung, and her body came into my eyesight. A bliss, an uncontrollable euphoria ran through my body. She was facing on the floor, and when she lifted her face with an angelic smile pasted on it, I felt like asking her to tell her father to double my house rent. 

At that time, with her smile on her face, I started noticing things on her that I had not noticed before. When you start falling in love with a girl, your eyes start noticing little things that you hadn’t noticed before. Then you wonder why they said that love is blind! Like I noticed her height, her hair and the tiny things that mattered. 

I had not noticed that she was carrying a box in her hand. ‘Hi, Collins!’ she said while waiting for me to invite her in. Not that soon my dear. She had to stand on that door a little bit longer to be seen by other tenants. I mean, I had to announce myself to other tenants. Daah, whose house is the landlord’s daughter visiting?

Luckily to my ego, pride, and bragging rights; my mean neighbor walked towards her house from whatever errands she was coming from. I waved at her, something that I had never done before. ‘That is my neighbor!’ I said gesturing toward my neighbor; a woman at the peak of her mid-life crisis. The landlord’s daughter turned and faced her, just like I wanted her to do. I wanted that woman to see the face of the person that I was rolling with.

When she saw the girl, she waved back at us with a mid-life crisis smile that is usually forced on a frowning face. You see, this woman one day reported me to the caretaker because I was playing loud music. 

With my pride and ego at their peak, I felt like carrying my home theater and having it play right from her door. Then I would walk back into my house, and the landlord’s daughter and I would listen to our music playing from her door. The landlord’s daughter waved back at the neighbor. I invited her in, eventually.

I took the box from her hands and placed it on the puff stool. She walked inside the house and bent down to pull off her shoes before walking onto my carpet. Bending down allowed my eyes to wander on her tit-flesh and at that time, I noticed that she was not wearing a bra. I told you when you are interested in a woman, you start noticing small small things. I wouldn’t have noticed that she was braless if I didn’t have lewd interests in her.

‘Hope you enjoyed the book?’ I asked curiously.

‘Patterson has never disappointed me!’ Pride circumnavigated in my bloodstream, at that moment I felt like I was Patterson. When a woman loves what you are reading, it’s an upgrade to when she tells you, ‘I love your music taste!’

‘True.’

‘Do you take pizza? I brought one!’ she said while pointing towards the box. I would have been offended if she wasn’t the landlord’s daughter that I was increasingly liking; I mean, where I come from we don’t have any other substitute for ugali. Pizza is taken as a dessert or as an appetizer or both sandwiched between ugali. 

‘Of course, I do!’ I nodded. ‘I love pizza!’ I lied.

‘You do? Most dudes don’t love pizza!’

‘They just don’t know what they are missing!’ I replied. She unwrapped the pizza box. She was sitting directly opposite to where I was sitting with the helm of her dress resting just above her pelvic region.

Her thighs were out, scintillating with beauty. I picked a piece of pizza from the box and for a moment I almost squeezed it between my palm like I usually squeeze the ugali before taking it. 

‘You don’t have a girlfriend?’ she asked, unexpectedly. The landlord’s daughter asked me if I had a girlfriend. I swear even if I was dating Huddah Monroe or the heir to Queen Elizabeth’s throne, I would not have acknowledged them.

‘No. I don’t have one. Why are you asking?’ I added that question intentionally to keep the topic of girlfriends alive.

‘I am just curious. Girls must be all over you. How come you are single?’ Artists are single every day because every girl out here thinks that every girl out here is drooling over a writer.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘C’mon, if you say that you are an author then definitely so many girls admire you. Girls have weird cravings for guys who do these vintage art professions like painters and authors!’ she explained, looking directly into my eyes. Keenly, I noted a feather tattoo on her inner thighs. You see, when you are interested in a woman, you notice small small things. The feather was a quill, like the one which Plato and Socrates used to write their philosophies. She definitely had a huge interest in writers; I presumed.

‘Do you have cravings for these vintage professionals?’

‘You mean like a craving to date an author or a guy who can paint people’s faces?’

‘Yes!’

‘Maybe just to quench and fulfill my s****l desires.’ Her bluntness was scary, in an attractive way.  ‘I would never date an artist, simple. You guys have easy access to women all over the place.’ she said. I smiled subconsciously. I looked into her eyes directly and held the gaze longer than before, daring or courageous. 

For the first time, her eyes shied away from my gaze. She blushed, I noted. These small small things! ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘The next time I want to be heartbroken again and cry myself to bed,  I will find one! I am happy right now.’ she shifted her eyes back on me. Her eyes were snow white with thick darkness suspended in the middle as a pupil. She was as natural as she came on the face of the earth. ‘Why?’

‘Nothing! I am just curious?’ Have you guys ever noticed this ‘why?’ question the ladies pop up after you’ve asked them if they have a boyfriend, isn’t one of the hardness questions ever?

‘Why are you curious?’ she pushed harder. Her eyes were hard on me, and for a moment, I blushed away. The thick curves on her body stood out expressively.

‘Damn it, I am curious because I want to have s*x with you!’ brain cell one instructed my mouth to say. ‘I am just curious that a beautiful girl like you is single!’ my mouth said. She smiled. Her teeth were tiny, shappy, and perfectly arranged on her jaws. Her lips were beefy with flexible flesh on its edges such that when she smiled, the smile was full. I had complimented the landlord’s daughter, and she had smiled at it.

Looking at her, I felt something migrate from my crotch towards my heart; when lust migrates from the crotch towards the heart, it becomes love. Isn’t it a crime to fall in love with the landlord’s daughter? By the way, what is her name? As a man, I failed. She asked for my name, but I didn’t ask for her name. No one knew her name. All tenants referred to her as the landlord's daughter. 

She c****d her head on her left side, sending a shiny black wave cascading down her curly long hair. She had an affluent aura, a reason why I felt intimidated to tell her what I wanted. What would I use to lure her? She had money, she was beautiful, what would she need in someone who was just a writer, like I was? A guy who sat on his study table writing lies to entertain hope with the hope of buying the lies to display them on their home libraries? I wondered what she was thinking when a short silence waddled in our midst. ‘How is your sink by the way?’ she asked.

‘You wanna check it out?’ I asked.

‘Sure, I want to see how you replaced the tiles and did all the repair!’ she said, sounding more of the landlord’s daughter than a girl that I was interested in. What is her name? How do you ask for a girl’s name after knowing her for more than a week without hurting her pride? I googled.

She knew where the kitchen was. She rose ahead of me, partying her legs in a flash to tease me with a white lace panty. These little things. She smiled again. ‘Your eyes are very sneaky!’ she commented. I walked after her. My eyes blinked rhythmically to the movements of her ass. Without a warning, my crotch spasmed to full attention.

The bulge on my trouser was conspicuous. The state was made worse when she bent her body to inspect under the sink. The tattoo on her thighs was clearer from behind, a quill feather between her thighs, maybe she wanted me to write between her thighs, of course with my own feathers. I moved closer to her.

‘You have a bulge on your trouser!’ she noted, she said without looking at me, blatantly. ‘What is going on through your head right now?’

‘To have s*x with you on that kitchen counter, in the exact position that you are in right now!’