[agoraphile]

I was living alone in a flat that was too big for myself. I’d had a roommate but they moved away, leaving me with an empty bedroom and a rent about 30% higher than strictly necessary, so I told the rental agency I was moving out. That meant I had to make accommodations for possible tenants to come look at the place. I usually tried not to be around, but sometimes I really didn’t want to go out of my way to find outside activities.

One time a woman in her forties or fifties brought around a daughter in her late teens or early twenties. I think the daughter was getting her first apartment and the mom was helping her choose. Probably helping her pay too. The daughter was very attractive — long blonde hair, medium height, evenly-tanned skin, great complexion and smile. But this wasn’t going to be a hook-up, so I set such thoughts aside and went to the back porch to read while they looked around.

After a few minutes I felt a presence nearby. You know what I mean — a change in the air movement, or the pattern of sound, that tells you the space has a different shape to it. I glanced away from my book and the shape was that of this beautiful girl, standing right next to me in a summer dress that hung no lower than mid-thigh. I was sitting low with my feet up, and as I turned my head to acknowledge her arrival my eyes could only land on her smooth, tanned leg and follow it up to her face.

My friends, I was fucking assiduous about reaching that gorgeous smile in a tasteful and appropriate amount of time.

But for three seconds, my optic nerve worked instant double overtime to take in every detail. Her warm, firm thigh was an arm’s length from my face. Soft blonde hairs sprinkled her leg, completely invisible from any respectable distance but burned into my memory from three hands away, tiny blonde shadows cast below them and fading away against her almond skin. “Excuse me, I just had a question about the apartment?”

I have no idea anymore what she asked, but I coughed up a dry tongue and answered. “Thank you. It’s a nice place,” she sweetly replied.

It was a nice place. This porch was warm and sunny, with a gentle breeze on a warm day, and I didn’t really want to move anyway. Later that afternoon I called the rental agency and renewed my lease for another year. If only I’d been looking for a tenant for that spare bedroom.