The Landlady
"Rent's due. He can't pay. She has other arrangements in mind."
The eviction notice is sitting on my kitchen counter.
Seven days to pay outstanding balance of $2,400 or vacate premises.
I've read it fifteen times. The number doesn't change.
I lost my job three months ago. Unemployment ran out last week. I've applied to everything—fast food, warehouses, ride-share—and gotten nothing. Twenty-six years old and I'm about to be homeless in a city that doesn't give second chances.
There's a knock at my door.
Mrs. Patricia Kowalski owns this entire building.
Sixty-one years old. Widowed. Built like a woman who spent her life cooking for a family of eight—massive everywhere, breasts like pillows, hips that require her to turn sideways through doorways. Her hair is bottle-blonde, her nails always painted red, her perfume strong enough to announce her arrival from two floors down.
She's standing in my doorway holding a clipboard.
"Mr. Reeves." She doesn't smile. "We need to talk about your rent."
"I know. I got the notice. I just need a little more time—"
"You've had three months of time." She pushes past me into my apartment, surveys the sparse furniture with a critical eye. "I've been patient, yes? More patient than most landlords. But patience has limits."
"I'm trying—"
"Trying doesn't pay heating bills." She turns, faces me fully. Her eyes are sharp behind her bifocals. "I have thirty-seven tenants in this building. If I let one stop paying, they all stop paying. You understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good." She consults her clipboard. "So. You have seven days. After that, my nephew—the lawyer—starts proceedings. You'll be out in thirty days, with an eviction on your record that will follow you everywhere."
My stomach drops. "Please. There has to be something—"
"There is." She pauses. Looks at me over her bifocals. "But you're not going to like it."
"I don't understand."
We're sitting at my kitchen table now. She's explained her proposal twice, and I still can't process it.
"It's simple." She folds her hands on the table. "My husband has been dead for five years. Five years of sleeping alone in a king-sized bed, keeping myself company. I'm tired of it."
"And you want me to—"
"I want companionship. Physical companionship." She's utterly matter-of-fact about it. "Once a week. Whatever I ask. In exchange, your rent is forgiven. Not reduced—forgiven. For as long as our arrangement continues."
I stare at her. At this massive, sixty-one-year-old Polish grandmother, proposing that I become her—what? Kept man? Gigolo?
"You're joking."
"I never joke about money, Mr. Reeves." She stands, moves toward the door. "You have twenty-four hours to decide. After that, the offer expires and the eviction proceeds."
She leaves.
I sit at my kitchen table and wonder what the hell my life has become.
I think about it for exactly eighteen hours.
What are my options, really? Sleep in my car until it gets repossessed? Crash on friends' couches until they get sick of me? Move back in with my father and listen to his daily lectures about what a disappointment I am?
Or sleep with my landlady once a week and keep my apartment.
The math isn't complicated.
I knock on her door that evening.
"Mr. Reeves." She's wearing a silk robe, her hair down around her shoulders. She looks different like this. Softer. "I take it you've made your decision?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And?"
I swallow hard. "Where do you want me?"
Her apartment is nothing like mine.
Where mine is sparse and depressing, hers is full—overstuffed furniture, heavy drapes, photographs covering every surface. The smell of cooking and her perfume combine into something overwhelming. Suffocating. Strangely comforting.
She leads me to her bedroom.
The bed is enormous. King-sized, piled with pillows, covered in a floral comforter that probably cost more than my monthly rent.
"Sit." She points to the edge.
I sit.
She stands before me, hands on her hips. "Let me be clear about how this works. I am in charge. Always. You do what I ask, when I ask, how I ask. If you have limits, you tell me now. Otherwise, you are mine to use as I see fit."
"I understand."
"Do you?" She moves closer, close enough that I can see the fine lines around her eyes, the softness of her unpainted lips. "I'm not a pretty young thing, Mr. Reeves. I'm old. I'm fat. I haven't had a man touch me in five years." She reaches down, takes my chin. "Can you handle that?"
I look at her—really look, past the judgment I've been programmed to feel. At the confidence in her stance. The hunger in her eyes. The sheer presence of her, filling the room like a force of nature.
Something stirs in me. Something unexpected.
"I can handle it."
"Then take off your clothes."
I strip under her watchful eye.
She doesn't react—just watches, evaluating, like I'm a piece of property she's considering purchasing. When I'm naked, she circles me slowly.
"You're young." Her hand traces across my back. "Fit. Haven't ruined your body yet." She stops in front of me, looks down at my cock—half-hard despite my nerves. "And you're responding. Good. That will make this easier."
She undoes her robe.
I try not to gasp. Fail.
Patricia Kowalski is massive.
Her breasts hang heavy, larger than my head, nipples dark and wide. Her belly is a landscape of soft rolls, cascading down to thick thighs that press together. Her arms are heavy, her hips enormous, her ass—when she turns—a monument to excess.
She should be grotesque. By every standard I've ever been taught, she should repulse me.
She doesn't.
"You're staring." She sounds amused.
"I'm sorry—"
"Don't be." She sits on the edge of the bed, spreads her thighs. "Come here."
I go.
"On your knees."
I kneel before her. Her thighs frame my face—warm, soft, smelling of soap and something deeper. Her pussy is hidden in the fold of her belly, but when she lifts it—unselfconscious, practical—I see her clearly.
"I haven't been touched in five years," she repeats. "Do you understand what that means?"
"No, ma'am."
"It means I'm going to use you until I'm satisfied. It might take a while." She guides my head forward. "Start with your tongue."
I start.
She tastes like salt and heat and something I don't have words for. I lick her clumsily at first—I've done this before, but never with someone this size, never having to navigate this much flesh. She's patient, though. Guides me with her hands, tells me what she wants.
"There—right there—slower—"
I find her clit buried in soft folds, work it with my tongue while she moans above me. Her thighs press against my ears, muffling the world. All I can hear is my own heartbeat and her pleasure.
"Good boy—good boy—keep going—"
I keep going.
She comes with a sound like relief—like something long denied finally granted. Her body shakes, her thighs clamp around my head, and I can't breathe but I don't stop until she pushes me away.
"Jesus Christ." She's panting. "Where did you learn that?"
"Practice." I wipe my face. "Was that—"
"That was acceptable." She's smiling now, her whole face transformed. "Now. Get on the bed."
She rides me like she owns me.
Because she does, in a way. I'm here because she allows me to be, kept man in her kingdom, and the reminder of that power dynamic makes everything hotter than it should be.
Her weight pins me to the mattress. Her body surrounds me—breasts in my face, belly pressing against my stomach, thighs gripping my hips. I'm buried inside her, her flesh enveloping my cock, and every movement she makes sends shockwaves through my entire body.
"You feel that?" She rolls her hips, grinds down. "Feel how tight I am?"
"Fuck—yes—"
"Five years of nothing. Five years of using my fingers and wishing for this." She increases her tempo, bouncing now, her massive body rippling with each motion. "You're going to make up for lost time."
"Whatever you want—"
"I want you to come. Fill me up. Show me you're worth keeping."
I try to hold back. Try to make it last. But she's too much—too hot, too wet, too present—and I come with a groan that echoes off her walls.
She follows a moment later, clenching around me, her whole body seizing with release.
We lie in her massive bed afterward, her body draped half over mine.
"Same time next week," she says. It's not a question.
"Yes, ma'am."
"You'll be ready?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good." She traces a finger down my chest. "You know, you surprised me. I expected reluctance. Disgust, even. Men your age usually prefer women your age."
"Maybe I'm not like most men my age."
"Maybe." She studies me. "Or maybe you're just desperate."
"Can't it be both?"
She laughs—a real laugh, warm and throaty. "I suppose it can." She shifts, presses her lips to my shoulder. "Get some rest. I'm not done with you yet."
I close my eyes and let her massive body anchor me to the bed.
The arrangement continues for months.
Then years.
What started as desperation becomes something else. Anticipation. Comfort. I find myself looking forward to our weekly sessions—to the way she takes control, to the way her body surrounds me, to the moments of unexpected tenderness between the commands.
"You could move in," she says one night.
I've gotten a job by now. Could afford my own place. But the thought of leaving—of not having this—feels wrong.
"Would you want that?"
"I'm asking, aren't I?" She pulls me closer. "I'm old, Marcus. I won't live forever. But while I'm here, I want someone beside me."
I think about it. About what people would say—the young man shacking up with his elderly landlady. About the judgment, the assumptions, the cruel jokes at our expense.
Then I think about her. About the way she makes me feel seen. Wanted. Useful in a way I've never been.
"Where do I sign?"
She kisses me, soft and slow.
"Right here," she whispers. "Forever."
We never tell anyone the truth of how we started.
Let them think whatever they want—gold digger, sugar mama, desperate loneliness finding company. They wouldn't understand, and we don't need them to.
Every week, in a bedroom that smells of her perfume and our shared history, a landlady and her tenant negotiate a lease that has nothing to do with property and everything to do with need.
Rent paid.
Balance settled.
Terms indefinite.