Where the heart is

We're back from our little exursion to TLB to get the fisherman's house back. It was definitely another saga to add to my yearbook of criminals and con artists. I had thought the book was finished but apparently not. We keep adding pages!

The renter Mssr. G left the keys with his illustrious daughter (the mini conne artiste) who now lives up the street. She smiled sweetly and handed them over saying her father was travelling but he'd be back in a week to talk to us about everything. Okay whatever at least we had the keys! We walked into the house to find a huge mess, dirty sink, dirty floors--everything filthy. There were cupboards full of food and so much junk that we thought he hadn't moved yet. There were old, stained mattresses and a horrible cigarette-smelling sofa set. He'd moved but he'd just left the mess for us to clean up. I got emotionnal and started crying. I think it was the combination of coming home, seeing Marcel's house with new renters and him gone, and facing another big mess in our lives. Seb took me to the port and we had a drink which is definitely what I needed.

We spent a week cleaning and discovering what he'd broken. We would have kept the caution check if we'd been smart enough to actually deposit it. He broke two interior door frames prying open doors because of forgotten keys and he'd apparently left open some skylight windows because there were water stains all over the new wood floors in one bedroom and no floor in another bedroom's mezzanine because he'd taken out the warped floor but never replaced it. Our new mattress left in the house and covered in plastic had been used and was stained too but I think they were just water stains from the deluge---I mean I hope they were (there were condoms in my bedside table). I'd left the bed in a boarded off bedroom for us to use if we came back in the summer. (The original deal was that we'd come back and get the house for two weeks in the summer--never really worked out though)

The worst was the living room floor which is ruined and will have to be resanded. It was a brand new walnut floor just finished the day we walked out the door, we had just sealed it the night before we left, but now there are so many scratches, cigarette burns and wine stains that there's no hope but to start over. The terrace had grease stains on the new boards from where he'd used a fryer outside and everything I left in the house was gone or broken-- iron, ironing board, vaccuum cleaner, food steamer. It was a hard lesson to learn but we will never be so naieve again.

When he finally came back a week later he started screaming at US which was odd but I think relatively common psychopathic behavior. I asked Seb to please be calm and rational but it's true that we were exhausted from cleaning up his mess so it was hard not to scream back and launch into his game. We didn't say much, just said we were disappointed by his lack of gratitude. He started shouting and said some nasty things about us living in Paris with our fancy life (if he only really knew!) and Seb just let him go off. He stormed off and a few days later sent us a bunch of threats by text message. One was just a string of obscenities. We immediately changed all the locks on the house.

The neighbors got on well with him and we didn't air our problems with him very openly because we weren't sure who his friends were. A few neighbors were worried about him because he'd had a difficult year but we know now that most of his stories are fabricated for sympathy or gaining time or money. He always has a story. We have a stack of letters and emails to prove it. In one of his text messages he said we'd never be able to come to TLB because our reputation would be ruined and he'd be doing the publicité. I was really curious what he could say about us. I guess we'll find out next time we go back...or not!

Right before we left we found something really shocking. There was a cable going through our unfinished bedroom outside onto our roof. It lead to the skylight window of our neighbor the dragon lady. He'd been stealing electricity from her house! Seb remembered that he'd mentioned once being friends with a renter in the upstairs apartment and the girl was having dragon lady problems. Evidently he'd convinced the girl to share electricity with him since the dragon lady pays the utility bills for all her little rental apartments. We didn't have time to deal with the problem. We definitely can't call the dragon lady to sort it out. She's a loose cannon and you never know what she'll come back with. We don't want to try to sort it out with EDF because who knows if they'd believe it. We just hoped he'd come back on the roof and pull it out himself. Next month we'll have to do something about it.

In the end we spent one week cleaning and then two weeks vacationing in TLB. Seb crammed in lots of traveling during the extra weeks so we could spend more time together and he came and went from Geneva instead of Paris's airport. We fell back in love with our house and all I could think about was moving back, --eventually one day. To me the house there is home and you can't really argue with that feeling of where your heart feels you need to be. But it was a little bittersweet like seeing an old lover you can't have. The flame was burning strong but there wasn't much we could do about it but lock up and think about who will rent the house next.

(here's the houseblog for The Fisherman's House because I no longer link it here)