Chapter 2-We are the Champions
The straw that broke the camel’s back(or Thomas’s back, in this case), happened a week later. There was another rollicking party at Rob’s house on Friday night, a loud beer bash that went on far into the night. Thomas stuffed earplugs in and covered his head with a pillow, managing to get a few hours of sleep. At least it was the weekend, he thought as he shuffled wearily into his kitchen Saturday morning to put on his coffeemaker. And he was used to this by now, although he didn’t like it, of course. He yawned as he turned the pot on, then went to the refrigerator to get himself a grapefruit and some milk to go into his oatmeal. He worked on auto-pilot, since he always ate the same thing for breakfast every morning. A grapefruit-half with a touch of sugar, plain oatmeal with just a bit of brown sugar sprinkled on top, and wheat toast. Plus, a cup of coffee with a touch of cream in it. Strong and nearly-black, it would help to wake him up.
He scrubbed at his face wearily as he gathered the pieces of his breakfast and sat down at his table to eat. He was looking forward to puttering around in his garden, then taking a nap in the afternoon to catch up somewhat on his lost sleep. He neatly rinsed his plate and coffee cup, and stacked them tidily in his dishwasher. Then he went into his bedroom to put on his gardening clothes, which in the summer consisted of tan shorts, a short-sleeved green t-shirt with the words: ‘Life is by the numbers’ written on it in white letters, Birkenstocks, and a wide straw hat that would protect his pale skin from the sun. He picked up a basket from his hall table, one that contained his various gardening implements, including a pair of soft leather gloves to keep his hands from being scratched by the thorns on his rosebushes.
Thomas felt a bit better as he left the house to go out into his garden. The day was beautiful, his neighbor would be sleeping the sleep of the thoroughly sodden by now, and he’d have plenty of time to trim his rosebushes in peace. He rounded the house, approaching the neat strip of rosebushes lining the fence between his house and Rob’s. He pulled the gloves out of the basket, and started to pull them on. He was thinking about cutting a few of the blooms to put in a vase in his living room. Maybe from the Lincoln rosebush…
He came to a sudden halt. At first his shocked eyes couldn’t quite take in what he was seeing...It couldn’t be, so his eyes must be playing tricks on him. His rosebushes, his precious rosebushes, had been stripped of their blooms! It just couldn't be...but it was. Each and every one of them that lined the fence was denuded. Moreover, some of them had had leaves pulled off as well, and they looked scraggly. His mouth hung open. He stood frozen, his mind not able to function. His eyes dropped to a few orphaned petals drifting on the ground, sad relics of the bushes' former glory.
Volcanoes were going off inside his brain. Molten lava bubbled and heaved inside his skull. Rage beyond rage was literally making him see red. A small sound like a dying animal burst from his throat as his mouth worked. This was all Rob’s fault. That wretched man was the cause of this! His precious babies – his carefully tended and pampered rosebushes – were ruined! And all because of that…that…asshole and his horrible friends! This was too much, this was the end. He had had enough. He was no longer afraid of Rob Carleton. He was no longer worried about manners or morals. As Bugs Bunny would have said at this point: “Of course you realize this means war.”
There was only one thing for him to do. Get rid of that man. Make him so uncomfortable that he’d move. Thomas took a deep breath, his eyes narrowing. He was a very, very smart man. And he intended to put all of his intellect and ingenuity into getting rid of his horrible neighbor once and for all. He turned and marched smartly back into his house, now totally awake and alert. He had to go and make a few purchases before he set his plan in motion. Rob Carleton was going to wish that he’d never moved into this neighborhood, by the time that Thomas Merriweather was done with him.
*****
He returned about an hour later, taking several bags of things into his house. Then he reemerged holding a wax paper-covered package in his hand, skirting the end of his driveway and making his way into Rob’s instead. Glancing around to make sure that there were no witnesses, Thomas carefully knelt next to the battered wreck that passed as a car for Rob. He had no worries about the rocker appearing and finding Thomas fiddling with his car, since the man would be passed out for many hours yet. Moreover, he always slept in a room swaddled in curtains to shut out the daylight. So Thomas didn’t concern himself with Rob Carleton as he lay down on his back and wriggled under the man’s car, a moue of distaste on his face for the filth under there.
Thomas slid on his back under the car until he reached the engine block. He opened the wax paper package, revealing a large lump of limburger cheese inside of it. He held his breath at the awful smell, as he carefully positioned the cheese in a place where it would melt and fuse to the engine block when Rob started the car again. It would literally bake to the block, and the smell of cooking limburger cheese would drift into the car through the floor and would foul up the air in there – more than it already was. In fact, the odor would be all-pervasive to the point of being choking, and it would be almost impossible for Rob to find the origin of the hideous smell even if he took it to a mechanic’s shop, since Thomas was sticking it in an inconspicuous place. They’d practically have to take the engine block apart to discover the lump of melted cheese. Apparently the smell of the horrible cheese would linger for months, at least according to what he'd read on the internet, anyway. Rob would be in hell every time he drove his car from now on.
Thomas carefully wiggled out from under the car, a terrible little smile on his face. Phase One complete. He strolled away to his own house, feeling rather like whistling under his breath as he did so. Inside his house he claimed yet another bit of his plan, and took it outside to the garden. Thomas pretended that he was leaning over to inspect his ravaged rosebushes, but what he was really doing was reconnaisance. With another quick glance around(although he had less chance of anyone seeing him back here at the side of his house), Thomas pushed his wheelbarrow over to the fence, and used it as a ladder to nimbly climb over the low barrier that separated his house from Rob’s. Once in the rocker's pathetic excuse for a backyard, he carried a small bag over to Rob's favorite seat, a battered wooden deckchair with a floral cushion on top of it. He knelt down next to the chair and used a small knife to slit the bag open at the top, his nose wrinkling yet again at the smell of almost pure dung. This manure was mainly used in compost heaps as a base. Usually. That’s not what Thomas intended to use it for, however.
He pulled up the edge of the floral cushion, and used the knife to cut a slit in the bottom of it. Donning his gloves, he began to carefully scoop the smelly stuff in among the stuffing of the cushion. Thomas packed in as much as he could get in there, and since the cushion was rather flat, there was a surprising amount of room. Once he was satisfied, he set the bag aside and took a needle and thread out of his basket. He could sew well enough to put buttons back on his shirts, and he could also do a credible seam stitch. Thomas took off his awkward gloves, and nimbly sewed the bottom of the cushion up again. Then he lowered it back into place, and made sure that there were no crumbs of dung or little bits of stuffing on the ground around the chair. Satisfied at the job he’d done, he rolled the top of the bag tight and carried it back to the fence. It was awkward to get over it and back into his yard from this side, but he managed.
Feeling smugly satisfied, Thomas took the bag to the small tool shed in his yard and stored it away out of sight. Then he went back inside and fetched a third thing, carrying it out to the side of his house and using a small stepstool to stand on as he hung it from the eaves. It was a large and colorful birdfeeder, which he filled with some luscious-looking birdfeed that he'd purchased at the same time. He also had a decorative birdbath, which he positioned under the feeder and filled with water from the garden hose. It was an attractive place for feathered friends to come to eat and play. Thomas was hoping to attract many birds, in fact. The food he’d bought said on the side that it was well-liked by songbirds. If that were so, his yard would soon be full of twittering, singing birds. The more the better. If he got enough the racket they made should be awful - and a certain slumbering rocker should find it a bit harder than normal to get any shut eye…
Thomas dusted his hands together once he was finished. The birdfeeder and bath were surprisingly attractive. He liked the look of them. Maybe he’d keep them once he’d run Rob off for good. He marched back into his house to take a shower and clean himself off. He had other ideas, but for now these would do as his opening salvo in the war against his horrible neighbor. He felt good, better than he had in months. Despite the damage done to his precious roses, this was the best day that Thomas had had in a long time. Maybe since Rob had moved in next to him, in fact. He was finally doing something about Rob, instead of stewing in passive-aggressive anger all the time. The best part was that Rob couldn’t get angry at him over these measures, since he wouldn’t be able to prove that Thomas had done two of the things. Also, the rocker couldn’t prove that the accountant had deliberately bought the birdfeeder and bath just to drive him crazy and rob him of sleep. His brown eyes gleamed with malicious glee as he imagined how Rob would react to these various annoyances. He settled down with a good book on his couch, sipping a cup of coffee. Now all he had to do was wait.
*****
Rob Carleton awoke to a sound outside. Okay, not a single sound – a plethora of sounds, in point of fact. Twittering and wordless whistling and singing, loud enough to drag him from his sodden sleep. He groaned as he rolled over and peered muzzily at his clock. Fuck! It was only one o’clock in the afternoon! He and his friends and bandmates had been up partying all night long, and he’d only staggered in drunkenly and fallen on his bed at eight or nine this morning. Four hours of sleep! Christ! What the hell were all those sounds? And where were they coming from? He dragged himself off the bed, swaying and finger combing his shoulder-length dark hair, going over to the window to peep outside.
He groaned as sunlight hit his sensitive eyes. Jesus, it was bright out there! When they finally acclimatized to the light, he saw a startling sight over in his neighbor’s yard next door. A mass of wings fluttering and heads bobbing, as a large group of birds attacked something hanging from the eaves of the house across the way. Yet more were splashing and singing in a bird bath situated underneath what had to be a large birdfeeder. There were dozens of them! No wonder the sound had woken him up. He cursed under his breath, wondering if his neighbor had finally graduated from weird to just plain crazy. Whatever the case, he intended to go over there and yell at that guy for buying something so stupid and annoying. Annoying to Rob that was, and that’s all that counted.
He staggered out of his bedroom, and made for the front door. He growled more curses under his breath as he struggled with the doorknob. Finally it opened, and Rob threw up a hand to shield his eyes from the holocaust of sunshine falling directly into them. He squinted against it as he moved down the driveway and rounded the hedge. He made for Thomas’s front door, intent on making the other man take down that shitty birdfeeder, and the birdbath too. Reaching the door, he used the brass knocker vigorously. But no amount of pounding made anyone appear at the door, even though the other man’s car was still parked in his driveway.
Rob cursed some more, scowling at the firmly closed door. Was his neighbor avoiding him? But just then the door swung open, showing Thomas standing there holding a cup of fragrant coffee in his hands and looking cool as a cucumber. The eyes behind his glasses looked Rob over coolly. “May I help you, Mr. Carleton?” he asked, sounding only mildly interested in the answer.
The rocker scowled at him. “Yeah, you can help me! You can take that fucking birdfeeder down so I can get some fucking sleep!”
The other man blinked, looking mild and slightly puzzled. “Birdfeeder? What’s wrong with my birdfeeder, Mr. Carleton? It’s already attracted some very pretty and pleasant birds. Why would I want to take it down?”
“It’s BECAUSE it’s attracting those goddamn birds that you have to take it down!” Rob yelled furiously. “They are fucking keeping me awake, okay!”
Thomas actually sniffed. “Oh, I see. But if you didn’t stay up all night and slept like the rest of us, you wouldn’t be having trouble now. Those birds aren’t nocturnal – they’ll go away when it gets dark. Then you’ll be able to sleep, I’m sure.”
“I want to sleep NOW!” Rob screamed, glaring at him. But for once his furious look didn’t make Thomas back down or cringe. He was still too furious himself over his rosebushes.
“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Carleton, but I’m not taking it down. I like it,” he replied. “You’ll just have to live with it, I’m afraid.”
“No, I damn well don’t! I’ll take it down myself!” the rocker growled, heading for the side of the house to pull that birdfeeder down.
“Mr. Carleton! You are trespassing on my property! If you damage my birdfeeder, I will call the cops and have you arrested for both trespassing and destruction of property! And I assure you, I will have no problems pressing charges,” Thomas rasped, squaring his shoulders as he met Rob’s angry eyes.
A glaring contest ensued, but for once Rob didn’t win automatically. He didn’t remember what had happened at the party last night, when his male guests had decided to give roses to the women they hoped to bed, and had scavenged them from the enticing bushes by the fence. So he had no idea just how angry his neighbor was, angry enough that he refused to cower or give way anymore. Baffled, he finally had to back down himself. “Well, shit. I cannot believe this,” he muttered angrily, before stalking back to his house without a backward glance at Thomas.
Watching him stride away, Thomas felt all of his muscles relax enough that it was a wonder he didn’t ooze down into a puddle right there on his doorstep. He closed his eyes as triumph flowed through him. He’d done it! He’d actually faced down the awful Rob Carleton and lived to tell the tale! He felt like breaking into song – specifically, Queen’s victory song ‘We are the champions’. Freddie Mercury was a gay man who hadn’t let anything stop him - he'd lived as he wanted to, right to the very end of his life. Closeted, uptight Thomas knew he could learn a few lessons from such courage. But this was a good start, he felt. A very good start indeed.
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