another_year raze jerry owns the house we've lived in for fifteen years. it'll never be ours. he bought it a lifetime ago for about a hundred grand. it's maybe worth twice that much now. it's dated and dented from water damage. the driveway has a crack running through it that's longer than my body. i freeze in the winter and bake every summer. all but one of the vents on the top floor are dead. with what the housing market's been doing lately, if he decided to sell he'd ask for at least half a million. probably more. and he'd get it. he's raised our rent beyond what the law allows half a dozen times. "if you don't like it," he says, "take me to the landlord and tenant board. i've been there before." and then he smiles. he has a lot to smile about. jerry's in his early eighties, and he has more money than god. he's made his fortune breaking the backs of people who need a place to stay and are unlucky enough to find him at the end of the line. he buys run-down old houses and fixes them up a little. just enough to make them fit to live in. then he waits for someone desperate to come along and lies his way into another nice chunk of change. he says he's doing this for his wife. she's never worked a day in her life. he wants to make sure she's taken care of after he's gone. but she might die before he does. and then he'll be alone with all his money. jerry knows everything. he'll tell you. he knows about carpentry. he knows about wiring. he knows about plumbing. he knows about extortion. he even knows how to twist his face into something that almost looks sincere. before he started buying and flipping houses, he was an automotive engineer. he designed molds other men used as blueprints when they made cars. "a long time ago," he says, "i used to be somebody. now i'm nobody." when the city was planting free trees on the property of any home owner who wanted one, he saw a skinny little sapling show up on our block. he didn't really want a tree. but he couldn't stand the thought of someone else having something he didn't. so he got them to dump one on his front lawn. he got one for us too. a maple tree. the thing doesn't know how to stand up straight. jerry pruned its branches. as if hacking off its arms would give it a stronger foundation. when that didn't do any good, he tied it to a yellow brace to straighten its spine. it doesn't seem to be working. every time a strong wind takes hold of its trunk, i'm surprised it doesn't disintegrate. and he keeps watering the grass. like he thinks he can stop the sun from killing it. like he thinks he's special, and what burns everything else won't touch him. maybe he's right. he beat prostate cancer. he's almost died a few times in my dreams, but he always pulls through. in every one of those dreams, i've done whatever i can to help him. if i saw him struggling in the waking world and had a chance to save his life, i want to believe i'd do the right thing. but i don't know if i would. we used to rent month to month. three years ago we got jerry to draw up a rental agreement. that protected us for a while. it expired last month. he's threatened to throw us out on the street if we don't pay him what he wants. i've lost count of how many times he's tried to sell the house with us still living in it. he gave it one last shot after we signed the agreement. no one was interested. one of the people who came to look at the place told us everything jerry didn't want us to know. "that man's a muslim," jerry says. "and he's a liar." his name is mo. he isn't anything. he's just someone who was too wrapped up in his own shit to remember he wasn't supposed to open his mouth. "i don't care what anyone tells you," jerry says. "everyone's a racist. those people — you know what would happen if they moved in? they usually have ten or twelve kids. they let them do whatever they want. and they're dirty. it would change the whole neighbourhood." a while back, we got something in the mail that was meant for him. i could see the shadow of a real estate agent's name through the thin white envelope. i tore it open. because fuck him. a woman with glasses and curly brown hair smiled at me from a glossy piece of paper. junk mail. jerry says these real estate people call him all the time. he says they're vultures. he tells them to leave him alone. he hangs up on them. now that the rent's always paid on time, he acts like we're best friends. as long as we don't complain about any of the things he does or doesn't do, he's happy to let us kill ourselves for the privilege of living on his land a little longer. he just raised the rent by another four hundred dollars. he says he wants to take it twelve months at a time from here on out. he isn't putting anything in writing this time. that would make it harder for him to commit tax fraud. all we have is the promise of a dishonest man. but it just might hold. and that means we still have a home. we've bought ourselves another year. 220809 what's it to you? who go blather from