Leonora

A story about a person named Leonora, surprisingly.

Leonora

You´re such an inspiration

for the ways that I would never ever choose to be

A Perfect Circle - Judith

It's been a successful day, Leonora reflects.

She knows that her enemies (and there are quiete a few �" she is smart enough to know that) deny her that very ability: being able to reflect. But they´re wrong. If she wasn't capable of reflection, she wouldn't have made it this far. She always takes her time to contemplate the day when she´s alone after work. Sitting in her apartment (modern, IKEA, nothing fancy �" and there is an irony to it, since her profession suggests the assumption that she´d appreciate home decoration. She´s working for a company called PRIVILEG; real estate game), drinking black Russian tee, she reflects the day.

She got up earlier than usual, the alarm rang at 6 am, her first appointment was at half past seven and in all her years in the real estate game she´d never been late. She lived alone in the apartment, it contained two rooms and a kitchen and a bath. She kept it clean; she liked it clean, which might have been a heritage of her mother Nina, her Ninotschka, still alive and well with her 79 years, still complaining about the fact that Leonora had not yet found a man to marry.

She made herself a good strong coffee, she always needs one to get herself started, that and a cold shower. Leonora is in her early forties and she´s proud of her appearance. For this appointment she dressed casually; sneakers, jeans and a blouse, after all, she was dealing with students. She left the house at quarter past seven, more than enough time for her to get into her unobtrusive VW and to be five minutes early.

The house in question was an old building in pastel shade. It was at the end of a cobble stoned road which lay quietly in the summer morning light. She took a moment to gather her thoughts. In the house lived six flat sharing communities, each of them consisted of students. PRIVILEG prefer students for two reasons: one, they are quiete easily to be manipulated and intimidated. Two, you get state subsidies for them. The students are picked by using a system that´d been developed within almost two decades; it was designed to get students with parents that are not particularly rich (there´s nothing more annoying than a father who happened to be a lawyer) but, on the other hand, are able to pay for their children, if the money can´t be taken from the children. Students are cash-strapped by nature. They prefer younger students, those who've never lived outside their parent´s houses. Less experience means more leverage for Leonora.

The plan has been to find reasons to throw them all out, all six flat sharing communities living in the pastel shade house. They had to be thrown out because PRIVILEG wanted to sell the house; there was more money in it that way. Leonora has been working on that for two month now. She has succeeded to throw out three of them. This morning she was to throw out another couple living together in a flat sharing community. She would have to make up reasons for that, while she was in the apartment and once she was in there, she would find them. That part she liked most; improvising, finding reasons while she was there, making up laws that have been perpetrated by the tenants, intimidating them with sheer nonsense. It was something which she hadn't explicitly learned as a business student but with her growing experience in the real estate game, and she was proud of her ability to show up and improvise.

She opened the door and went up to the second floor. While doing that, she adjusted her face to the expression that most tenants see; the brisk expression of a bailiff who takes away your last possessions, perfectly justified, a woman on a mission, her steps thudding in the stairway foreshadowing impending doom. She never rang the doorbell, she knocked on the door, in a steady, slow, powerful rhythm. She had not announced her visit, of course. Part of her philosophy was to catch the tenants wearing their pyjamas, quite literally.

A not so young man opened, unshaven, wearing a t-shirt of some rock-band. He was looking at her confusedly and Leonora had learned to use this moment of confusion. She stepped in and shut the door behind her.

The rest was just routine. She invented laws with the same creative energy a writer draws from to make up new characters for a novel, uttered threats and made vague allusions to non-existing laws.

You keep rabbits on the balcony? But paragraph this and that surely says that... You have hung those pictures? But it´s explicitly regulated that... She continued for 15 minutes and the not so young man shrunk, looking not so clever anymore in his KISS t-shirt and barefoot.

There was one critical moment, in the surprisingly clean and tidy kitchen with pans and pots hanging on the wall in neat rows, when Leonora threatened him by announcing a termination without notice: His face twitched from suppressed anger, his fists clutched and suddenly there was a willingness to revert to violence. It came and went and the guy, looking lost in his too big t-shirt seemed to be as surprised from this emotion as her. In the end, he offered her a coffee. Too damn stupid she thought.

Ten minutes later, she was leaving the apartment, successfully having managed the first point on her agenda.

She get into her car and headed north, entered the autobahn towards Hamburg.

Exactly 2 hours and 14 minutes later she arrived at Hamburg.

She never felt quiet comfortable in the city; too big and still, to a large extent, unknown to her. She preferred Osnabrück´s straightforwardness, there she knew every alley and lane. She turned on the radio and drove even more briskly than usually, changing lanes even more ruthlessly than usual, while some plastic-pop straight from the 80s interchanged with a radio host, who wished their listeners another great day at the office.

Her job in Hamburg was of a more delicate nature than the one in Osnabrück. It was, in a way, less covertly criminal. Here, in a cheap Chinese restaurant in the middle of the city (there´s no place like the city center, when you want to talk anonymously) she was to meet two people. She was there half an hour earlier and had noodles with chicken as a kind of lunch.

Aforementioned people had to be instructed by Leonora and paid in cash (always cash; Leonora always had about 500 Euros in her purse). Tenants in Hamburg had been complaining about PRIVILEG not taking care of certain things they had to; renewing a mould-infested wall and repairing a water damage. By law, the tenants were right and they eventually reduced the loan. PRIVILEG´s approach to such cases was fairly simple: Get those tenants out as fast as possible. PRIVILEG proclaimed via e-mail that they will need the apartment for their personal use and that they need it now. In order to strengthen their point, Leonora engaged these amateur actors who were supposed to play an old couple that owns the house. They should show up to put pressure on the people currently living in the house. It was a standard procedure that worked more often than not.

The amateur actors appeared ten minutes too late and Leonora had to swallow her anger. Coldly, she laid out the details of the plan to them. They seemed not too bright and Leonora talked slowly and in simple sentences.

After that episode, she was happy to leave the city again. It was a dirty business and interaction with people like those always makes her want to take a shower. It was a dirty business but someone has to do it, she told herself, fully believing it.

She returned to Osnabrück and immediately felt better.

Although it was a pretty hot day, she kept the windows shut, she felt safer that way. She found herself singing along the lines of Solsbury Hill as she had to wait at the Neumarkt, a four-track lane and the city´s junction that had turned into a huge construction area since the city had planned to renew it. The sun was beating down relentlessly and absentmindedly she watched a construction worker, carrying a push-cart containing gravel.

Her father Jegor - enthusiast for the books of Anton Chekhov, German football, movies of Andrei Tarkovsy and Beluga Vodka (the latter turning out to be his downfall) had been a construction worker, too. Leonora was born in Germany, but her family came from Nowgorod, north-east Russia. He died of a heart-attack when she was only 10; too much work, too much Vodka and a chronic sense of estrangement in a country where he found no friends and with a language was complicated and bulky. She only remembered him covered in sweat, working all day in various construction sites across the cities they lived in. He´d always said that he´s working so much so that Leonora will be better off than him and Leonora´s mother. And she succeeded didn´t she? She´s made it. She earned about 60,000 per year, had an apartment in a prestigious area. She...

...did not realize that she´d lowered the window but she must have, subconsciously. A cyclist was passing her to the right, shouting, “I hope you f*****g die, b***h!”

Quickly she pushed the button to shut the windows, catching a glimpse of the rider: athletic, military cut, wearing a sport bag.

Must have been one of her enemies. A tenant she had at some point thrown out of this or that house, tricked, backbitten, framed, fooled, offended, cheated or deceived; infinite possibilities opened up before her. Leonora had learned to steel herself against such incidents. This time, maybe because she had been in a weak moment, it´d hurt.

Next point on her agenda was a meeting with a friend. Nothing, professional, strictly pleasure.

It was half past three now and they met in a cafe that was highly frequented by students. In Osnabrück, it´s hard to find a cafe that is not highly frequented by students, they´re basically everywhere. Which was, by her profession´s nature, sometimes tricky; she had to watch out for familiar faces, irate glances. By habit, she scanned the faces of the people sitting at the tables for a seat from which she would have a good view at the entrance area. She sat and eyed each newcomer with distrust.

Her friend was late, ten minutes late, and Leonora had already ordered a coffee. Natalya also was Russian, also in her forties, they had been going to the same school. This time, Natalya had brought her son: Valerian, six years old and lippy as only boys in that age could be. Leonora liked him, she actually has a way of dealing with children, especially boys.

They talked for a while, that is, Natalya talked. The house, the insurance, the boy, (although Leonora found it rather rude to speak of him in the third person when he was present, and said so.), their husband, the work. Leonora mostly listened.

They had been going to the same school together; both children of guest workers in a time were names like Natalya and Leonora were not as common as they are today. Natalya had married early. His name was Cheslav and he´d left Natalya when he´d found out that the pill doesn´t always work quite properly. She was alone with the boy but, as far as Leonora could tell, seemed to be content.

Now, Leonora said, while looking at Valerian who was shuffling through the menu, trying to read this or that word, forming them silently with his mouth: “I wish they´d stay as young as he´s now.”

Her boss lived on the countryside.

It was her last point on the agenda and, of course, she was on time, passing the gate (electronically secured, two video cameras surveying the entrance area), at exactly half past six.

There was something burdening her; some pricking going on the back of her head, hard to spot, even harder to regulate. Has she forgotten something? She knew that feeling she also knew that it´ll disappear eventually. What she needed, was work.

On her way, she´d found herself thinking about Valerian and her father, not paying attention to the city, giving way fields and planes, all lit in bright summer light she would have appreciated if she had not been that distracted.

Her boss lived secluded; partly because he liked to have his peace, partly for more, say, practical reasons. It wasn't that he was particularly living in exile but it came close to the truth.

He was an eccentric, self-proclaimed and hard-working on preserving that image. They met once a month to talk business and sometimes, about half a dozen times a year, to have sex. She knew it was cliche, alright. Boss and secretary, one of the oldest routines. But it was different; they were at eye level, they simply agreed on an arrangement that was favorable for both of them.

Leonora parked her VW in front of the entrance.

Two dogs greeted her, all wagging tails and shiny eyes. She knelt down to caress them, speaking softly.

Her boss lived on a former farm, it consisted of a main building surrounded by former stables. On first sight it looked really old fashioned; timber-framed facades but taking a closer look a visitor notices the surveillance cameras, the electronically garage. As she approached the main entrance, her boss opened the door. Of course, she knew, he´d already seen her, he did not even have a doorbell.

He was tanned, slick and his 50 years did not show. He had climbed the Mount Everest, had the black belt in karate, was keen on meditation and yoga, a vegetarian, passionate cyclists and birdwatcher, had a foster child from Malaysia and, most of the time, was able to forget the fact that he made his money by cheating other people.

“Leonora, you look rather stressed out. Come in, we´ll have a tea.”

Leonora was sitting in her boss´ office, while he prepared the tea.

It was a small one, but, like everything in the house, stylishly furnished: a yellow, sleek metal desk on rolls, a simple cupboard (she recognized it from IKEA), desk chair, a metal chair behind the desk, where she was sitting now. On the wall: a picture of her boss (back then he had been in his existentialist phase; beard, untidy hair) shaking hands with Richard Gere whom he had met at an Buddhist meeting in the USA.) When you´re rich you can even afford bad taste, she thought with an uncharacteristic bitterness. Something was wrong with her, the nagging inside the back of her head continued.

They had had sex on that table. Only once.

He returned with the tea, putting it between them.

“So, Lena, has it been a successful day?”

She told him about her day, only leaving out the man on the bicycle who´d offended her.

He listened, focusing on her and drinking his tea. She suddenly was annoyed by his facade of the effective business man and top manager who has a friendly ear for every employee, she was fed up with this stylish surroundings, his photograph on the wall, his Buddha statue next to the latest apple laptop.

“Are you alright, Lena,” he asked with what seemed to be genuine concern. The problem, she thought, with guys like these was, you never get a glimpse on what really is genuine because they don´t even know themselves.

“Yeah, I´m alright. It´s been a.... successful day.”

So, that was that, she thinks sitting on the kitchen table.

She turns on her CD-Player with a Cd of Russian folk songs. Sometimes when she´s in a sentimental mood (and she is now, she isn't quite sure why) she likes listening to these old tunes. She brushes her teeth, undresses, walks barefoot over the linoleum. She opens the window and listens to the music while she falls asleep.

She seldom dreams; this time she does. It's always the same dream with only slight variations. It's always her mother, doing some work; cutting vegetables, washing the dishes, doing the laundry and she always smiles and looks content while doing it, and Leonora knows she's doing it for her.

Reviews

[Kaliope]

Well, Leonora is certainly an inspiration how not to be :-) I like how you still give her some decent moments, and I think you could go even further in that direction. There's a hint of remorse, or at least an inner emptiness, and while I'm all for subtlety, I'd love to see a bit more of that aspect.

Regarding style you should consider tightening the text. E.g. in the paragraph "The plan has been to find reasons..." you're spending at least eight sentences to say the same - she's using dirty tricks to throw people out of their apartments. One concise sentence would be enough.

There are also a few occurrences where you repeat the same phrases in two consecutive sentences, (e.g. "highly frequented by students") - try to rephrase a bit.

I spotted a few spelling errors as well (e.g. several varieties of the word "quite").

Oh, and I'm afraid I'm still not a big fan of the parentheses ;-) I can't help it, but they always feel like shortcuts to me. Come one, you're a good writer, weave the information into the narrative. That would massively improve the flow.

Lastly, you might want check your tenses. You're switching between present and past tense, which makes perfect sense in some places, but feels odd in others. Not saying it's necessarily wrong, just make sure every verb is really in the tense you wanted it to be.

Sorry if this seems overly critical, but I wouldn't point those issues out if I wasn't absolutely certain that you have the skill to fix them. Rest assured that I really like the story idea and find Leonora fascinating. It's always great to encounter three-dimensional characters with all their beauty and all their vileness!

[Bobby Garfield]

Oh, well. This is special. While writing this I at some point noticed that I had become somewhat agitated which maybe explains some repetitions. Concerning the parentheses: Hm. You might be right. I think, I' going to try to write without them and see how it works out. And yes: I tend to have a certain degree of sloppiness concerning spelling, grammar and tenses. I admit :) Thanks for the review it was really useful and constructive, I think I can work with that. I'll think about a few points. But only to a reasonable degree, so don't worry :)