EXTRACT FOR
The Landlord and the Lesbians
(Lexi Wood)

Harvey knew his lodger was a lesbian.  She'd told him that outright.  She certainly didn't look the way lesbians looked in his day.  She wasn't tomboyish by any stretch.  

Neither was her girlfriend.  

Lalika had light brown skin and dark curly hair coiffed in a modern style.  Like Brooke, she wore shorts so short they left little to the imagination.  Lalika also did not wear a bra.  Perhaps this was a trend among the younger people.  Harvey didn't know what to think.

In fact, he didn't have time to think on the day the girls came home together.  The front door flew open, and his entranceway filled with the screams of young women trapped in the heat of a blistering argument.  He didn't want to intrude, and so he raced from the kitchen, up the stairs, and into his bedroom.

With the door closed, he couldn't hear precisely what they were arguing about.  It wasn't until they made their way into Brooke's room that they became aware of his presence in the house.  He hadn't closed the door, and couldn't reach it in time from the far side of the bed.  And so he grabbed a book from his side table and pretended to read as Lalika looked inside.

"Who's he?" she asked Brooke.

Brooke rolled her eyes.  "He's nobody, just my landlord."

They went into Brooke's bedroom and closed the door.  The arguing started up again, fierce as before.  Harvey could hear their voices through the wall.  That's how he knew they were arguing about boys.

Apparently, some boy at school had turned Lalika's head.  This enraged Brooke, because they were supposed to be a couple.  She didn't appreciate her girlfriend's wandering eye.  But Lalika proclaimed it meant nothing to look.  Of course she would look if she saw something she liked.

"It doesn't mean nothing!" Brooke argued.  "It means something to me!  What if I were to look at someone else?"

"Who?" Lalika asked.

"I don't know!  Anyone!"

Brooke's door swung open and she stormed into the hallway, stopping short outside Harvey's bedroom. 

"Anyone!" she repeated.  "Him!"

Lalika stepped into the hallway too.  "You're gonna look at that guy?  And that's supposed to make me jealous?"

"Yeah.  Look, I'm looking at him right now.  Are you jealous yet?"

Goodness, what was going on?  Had he become a pawn in their game?

Brooke stood outside his bedroom door, staring at him with this incomprehensible look in her eye.  Then she raised a hand to her cheek and waved at him coquettishly.  "Hi, Harvey.  How's it going, big boy?"