Chicken Soup for your Landlord Ass

Darren Jakobsen had been having a wonderful year, and having a Jacuzzi installed in his home in Cincinnati's prestigious Airy Heights subdivision, was the crowning touch. To top things off, in a few months he was taking his wife on vacation to a rainforest in southern New Zealand.

Darren made a living through the rental of property. The previous year he had problems with tenants that had taught him a lesson. This year and from now on things were going to be different. The decision to evict the Washingtons, an African-American woman and her two children, had not been easy, but was the correct thing to do. He didn't understand why some people were able to provide for their family and other people were not when everybody lived in the same world, but, he told himself, it was his job to provide for his own family and not other people's and he could not do that with rent checks that were late, missing, or marked INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.

To celebrate, he invited some old friends to have dinner his wife would prepare, and then join them in the new Jacuzzi for tropical drinks and jazz. He invited Silam Paley, an old army buddy who had become quite a shrewd investor, Robert Sullivan, a neighbor who worked as a Claims Investigator for an HMO, and Ward Callahan and his son Ward Jr., friends from the Pro-Life group at church. Darren did not make it to the gathering, but it went very well.

Darren and his wife had perhaps too many tropical drinks and slept very soundly that night. Around midnight, the Jacuzzi malfunctioned.

There was an electrical fire and the house burned down and they were killed.

 
Chicken Soup for the Vegetarian Soul.