The relationship between a landlord and a tenant is at best a tenuous one: the landlord is understandably concerned about the use or abuse of his property (after all, it is his house); the tenant understandably concerned about the maintenance and privacy of the place (after all, it is his home).

Our friends’ younger daughter begged - no, she positively importuned - her parents for a pastel colored bedroom. They relented, and asked permission of their landlord, offering to buy the paint, provide the labor and, before they moved, return the room to its original hue. The landlord, wearied by the unkept promises of former tenants and therefore wary of this proposal, refused. And so the color of the room remains symbolic of their relationship: off-white, colorless, cautious, dull.

Landlords a…