Confronting the Bully

I realize today that Effie is a bully.

This morning, my Sweetie and I had to return to our abode to retrieve a forgotten bus pass.  Effie was fussing in ...well, it's not even really part of her garden.  It's part of that extra four feet of walkway she fails to recognize.

"That's a nice smile," she said--all the snark in her voice, as usual.

And then I let her have it. "(Real first name) (real middle name) (real last name), leave us alone." 

In her complaint to the landlady, she said I was shouting.  Nope, just a clear enough voice so I could be sure she was hearing.  Definitely not my infamous "hockey-fan" voice.

"Leave YOU alone?  You leave ME alone!" she retorted.  Note here, please, that she repeated my command back to me, so I *knew* she heard it.

My Sweetie did the logical thing, namely asking what we'd done to her, "What exactly have we done to you?"  And then she made her threat:  "Oh, you'll find out later."  (Sorry, she wasn't more specific, but a woman knows when another woman is making a threat.)  Her voice was movie-sinister!

I repeated my command.  "(Real first name) (real middle name) (real last name), leave us alone," and then encouaged Sweetie to follow me into the house, telling him in a softer voice, "We know who she is and what she's done.  You'll never get a reasonable answer out of her."  (Ref: The heroin drug mule charge from 1980. More on that later.)
 

We retrieved the bus pass and headed back out our door.  By this time, Effie had passed our door.  She said something about our needing a mirror to see our faces. (??) I repeated my command a third time, "(Real first name) (real middle name) (real last name), leave us alone."  And then we turned and walked on our way back to our bus stop.

I was so proud of myself for standing up to the bully with the one weapon she couldn't fight:  her real name.
***
I spent much of today wondering what her retaliatory activity would be.  I should remember that she waits about two weeks for retaliation.

My Sweetie assuaged my worries by putting together an after-work conference call with the landlady.  Indeed, as soon as Effie got back into her side of the duplex, she wrote a (probaby nasty) email to her, accusing the landlady of having shared her personal information with us.  (Nope, Google!)

The upshot of our conversation:  the landlady knew Effie's real name and about the house foreclosure.  A background check showed "something minor." Apparently, the background check gave no details.  She didn't know about the heroin and the drug mule charges.  But it's logical that if she ratted out someone up higher in the supply chain, of course she would do it to get her own situation improved.  Landlady (name) seemed surprised and interested to learn my evidence we have a true felon living next door.  (I don't care what deals she made with the justice system; she was committing a felony and that's that!)  She was also oddly amused at Effie's 6 AM "barbecue"--she, too, wondered what that was all about!

We're home now.  Oddly, no evidence of tampering with our property has occurred.  But it's dark, and we haven't gone out to the back patio.  I fully expected something done to our vehicles.  But even her favorite rubbish bin was left where the collectors would have left it.

Oh, and the landlady confessed she and her husband want to evict her--our state requires 60 days' notice based on the length of her tenancy.  But they believed some story that Effie was going to have surgery of some sort in October.  I en't buying it, of course.  They were going to wait until January.  They haven't yet promised a date, but they have agreed that it shouldn't wait that long, and that they should tell us as soon as they inform her, so we can watch out for the building and the property for them.
Meanwhile, the landlords are living in fear that Effie will destroy this property somehow.  Ever see that movie, "Pacific Heights"?  Weird tenant manages to completely destroy a rental property--and even take it over legally.  Strange movie, but not completely impossible.  But Effie has a record, so that's a little different.
 
Sweetie predicts Effie will leave the landlords no choice but to enact an "FED" (Forced Eviction Decree), which ties up money and time.  Over a year, he says.  (He used to work for a local county...knows a lot about this stuff.)
 
Shhh!  Don't tell her!