I needed a new place to live for May and June in Austin. I advertised the fact and got a few offers. I met Sharon at the place she rented as she returned from work. She was a fine looking woman in her thirties, wearing a smart black dress. We approached the door to the place – it was a lovely large house in a quiet street, shaded by large pecan trees. Sharon announced she didn’t have the key, and told me about her cleaner not returning it, or leaving the front door opened as arranged. Leave the front door open? Alarm bells began to faintly tinkle.
She made to push past the bushes in the front garden to gain access to a window, that she said she left open just in case. How queer. I offered to climb in on her behalf, given that I was wearing neither stockings nor a dress. Prising the window up, I pushed past the blinds and landed on the wooden floor of a spacious bedroom. No burglar alarms went off, no dogs attacked, and no homeowners with shotguns appeared. As I type this I remember that Guy, my gun-toting room-mate had explained that you are perfectly entitled to blow someone to smithereens if they are on your property with whatever hardware you have to hand. He also explained that it’s quite hard to get assault rifles these days, that they have to be manufactured before a certain date and so on. At the time, the thought didn’t occur to me at all.
I went out of the bedroom and found the hall. Still no attack dog. I let Sharon in to what was allegedly her own house, and took a tour as Sharon slipped into something more comfortable. The bedroom. Her current room-mate arrived at the door now, and there was a bit of tension. The room-mate didn’t appear to know that she was moving out, and appeared puzzled. I decided to leave, and didn’t look back. Maybe the two were accomplices. The seductress house burglar, and her getaway driver. I was just the stooge. Perhaps they planned to leave my bleeding body in the house as they whisked away all of the valuables. I’ll never know.