Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction
The Lesson
Everyone should meet a D—- —– before they turn twenty. He should be in your past by the time you are twenty-five. He will cost you a lot but, as you are still young, you can afford him. You have plenty of time to recover.
In a way, when you do meet him, it’s your own fault. It was you who placed and paid for the ad in the paper which brought his pretty girlfriend to your door.
She waves it at you. “You’re looking for a couple to share… or have you already found someone?”
“No, not yet, come in.”
She sits on your sofa and drinks your coffee. She’s a petite woman, her clothes are smart, her fair hair is cut in a short style, her eyes are a vivid blue. You tell her your names. She tells you she is called F——, she’s twenty-six, her fiance is called D—–. He’s a year or two older than she is. It’s unfortunate but he can’t make it this afternoon. “Work, you know.”
Ah, work. Not another student like you. That might be good news.
“I have to get back myself soon. I’m on my lunch.”
“What do you do?”
“I work in a travel agency.”
Better and better, regular money coming in, not a student loan that might have all been spent by the time the rent is due.
Only a few weeks ago you escaped from a bad situation. You were sharing with three other students. Some of them had pretty strange habits and none of them had any cash. Real, working people must be steadier.
You ask, “When can you move in?”
“What about this weekend?”
You shake hands. You wave to her as she closes the gate. You’re pleased to have found so pleasant a person to share the large, old house you can’t afford to rent as a couple on your own.
But you haven’t met D—– yet.
Saturday comes and you are a little excited. You agreed with F——- you would help D—– move in as she can’t because it’s the busiest day of the week for booking vacations and she has to work. You volunteer the use of your car, as his has problems with the engine and is stuck in a downtown garage for repairs.
He lives in a seedy townhouse. It’s shabby, with a mountain of trash in the garden. You knock on the door with its faded paintwork and cracked glass pane. It opens… and you meet D—–.
He’s a big man and much older than F——–. He’s a little intimidating but you’re here now and you have already agreed with F——- they can move in. Besides, yours is a large house, two living rooms. All you’ll have to share is the kitchen and the bathroom.
He’s ready to load his things into the trunk. He has very little to move: a couple of boxes of books– at a glance, they’re about martial arts –a pile of magazines about the military, plastic bags of clothes, jeans and shirts, a scattering of odds and ends. The furniture is ancient, falling apart. He doesn’t invite you to sit down, provides no coffee. He’s in a hurry to leave.
Perhaps you are uneasy.
Ten minutes later, after speaking with D——, listening to D—–, you have forgotten your first impressions. He is such a charming man. You are naive. The number of people in your circle of acquaintances is quite small. You have never met anyone remotely like D—— before.
Two weeks and you believe every word he says. Why not? F——- paid the first month in advance before you even had to ask. What he does for a job is a little hazy. You can’t quite pin him down. He tells stories to distract you. He has had an interesting day.
F——- is happy to take turns at cooking the evening meal. She makes great pizza. Sometimes there is even a bottle of wine. You do notice D—– does nothing around the house, no cooking, no tidying, no washing up. F——- defends him. She says, “He’s tired. He works too hard.”
His car is still in the garage awaiting parts. You help out with lifts into town and transport to and from the shops. He says he will reciprocate once he gets his car back.
He tells you he was a Delta Force soldier and now does something vaguely connected with the military but he’s no longer enlisted. You start to wonder if he might be a spy.
Every morning he practices tai chi in the front garden. The neighbors watch. He gives the impression of skill, even of grace.
His car is written off. You never saw it. You continue to give him frequent lifts to town.
Why are you not becoming a little suspicious?
Another month end comes but no rent. He promises checks. You wait a little longer. Still no rent. You tell him you need the money. He says he needs a new check book. He says he’s told the bank, they are sending it and he should have it in three days. You ask again. He says he’ll leave it on the table in your living room. He does… but it isn’t signed. Sorry. He forgot.
A few days later he sits you down. He has wonderful news. He’s left his job. It’s not a problem. He gets a generous pension from the army. He has plenty of money but he would like you to let him pay the rent he owes and what he will owe for next month in a few weeks’ time. You must understand, it’s nothing more than a temporary cash flow thing. You see, he’s renting a disused factory. It is to be a martial arts center. He hopes to have it up and running in a very short time.
Perhaps you frown.
He grins. Of course, if delaying payment would cause you a problem, he will have F——- pay it but, as she is saving for their wedding…
You are still quite young, impressionable but perhaps not stupid. “Where is this factory?”
He gives you an address. Do you question him?
He says he would like to show you it. Why don’t you go now?
You take him in your car.
The building is huge and close to derelict. He has an impressive bunch of very large keys. The second one he tries fits the lock. Inside, he shows you round. It was once a textile mill, one of hundreds in the town but the looms are long gone. Several stories, echoing, empty and deserted… He throws open the doors on the top story to reveal an enormous, dusty space with windows coated in cobwebs. He tells you this will be his dojo.
You stare at him. It’s nineteen seventy-eight, you are only twenty and you have no idea what he’s talking about.
He flings out his arms and tells you, dojo means “place of the way” in Japanese. It will be the center of everything. He will pass on his skills to willing groups of pupils. He has, he tells you, a bit of a reputation and is already building a waiting list. He told you when you first met him he had passed the highest levels in at least three martial arts. You have seen him wearing his judo outfit with the red belt which, he assures you, is a higher grade than black.
There is nothing in the room, no equipment, except a pile of thick, green exercise mats. You spend some time helping him move them from one side of the room to the other. You have no idea of the psychology involved in touching objects. To you this is now a dojo and D—– has won his extension.
Weeks pass. You are struggling to pay the rent. You wanted to share with someone so this wouldn’t happen.
A letter drops onto the mat. It is a notice to quit. The landlord’s real estate agent is evicting you for subletting. You didn’t realize sharing the rent was not allowed. Ever since you started college, you had always shared the rent with fellow students. You had believed subletting meant making money by getting someone else to pay all or at least most of the rent.
You go to see the agent but he won’t listen. He is unwilling to believe you didn’t understand and, in any case, what difference does it make? You still broke the terms of the lease. Besides, he says, “I know you haven’t been paying the rent. Mr. —– assures me he and his girlfriend have paid all of it for the last three months.”
You stagger out of the agent’s. They have seized your security deposit because you broke the rules. They give you no more than a couple of days to move out of the house, now being rented exclusively by D—— and F——–.
You never see D—– again. You do see F——-.
Months later, you meet her on the street. She is no longer with D—–. He left her when she told him she was having his baby. He drained the joint account he had persuaded her to open, the one into which her employer paid her salary, the one they were using to save up for the marriage.
She is now three months pregnant. D—– vanished during the night, took all the keys and she woke up to find she was locked in the house. She had to climb out of a window. She now has debts it will take her years to pay off.
She says she misses him.
You are glad your own lesson from D—– was less expensive for you than it was for her…
…but it was a lesson and in years to come you will discover how much you did learn. You are no longer so naive. You know the signs now. You look for the discrepancies, the lies.
There may be one born every minute but, thanks to D—–, that’s not you.
Denarii Peters was born in the north-west of England but now lives in Lincolnshire. A former teacher, she now spends her days writing stories and drinking a lot of coffee. In the last two and a half years she has achieved longlist or better in almost seventy competitions and over twenty of her pieces have been published in various anthologies. A collection of her work, Will You Walk into My Parlour, was published by Crystal Clear Books in early October and her debut novel, The Reluctant Reaper, is to be published in April 2025.
Website: https://denariipeters.substack.com/
Publisher: https://crystalclearbooks.co.uk/product/will-you-walk-into-my-parlour/