Cal » Blog Archive » he came in through the bathroom window

he came in through the bathroom window

I knew something was wrong when the key to my apartment wouldn’t fit in the keyhole. I figured it was an honest mistake: one of my neighbors was drunk or just stupid, mistook my door for his, got frustrated when his key wouldn’t work, and tried so hard to get it to work that he broke his key off in my lock.

When I climbed up the fire escape to break into my own apartment, this was still what I thought. When I dislocated my left shoulder struggling to pull myself, hand over hand, up the rusted black ladder that hung down over the alley, all I was thinking was how annoying it was to have such stupid neighbors. It wasn’t until I actually got up to the fourth floor that the truth began to dawn on me.

I reached my window, which I remembered leaving unlocked, and found that the screen had been left partially open. This I did not remember.

I also didn’t remember throwing my clothing out of the closet and dresser, scattering it around the room. I didn’t remember leaving my guitar case open on my bed, the guitar sort of half-way out. And I certainly didn’t remember removing my computer and MP3 player from the premises.

Slow though I sometimes am, when I saw the guitar I realized that I had been robbed. I took a minute or so to mourn the possessions that I loved so well and would never see again. Then I started to clean up.

As I did this I began to realize that the laptop and walkman were the only things gone. Many other things had been picked though, moved aside, or dumped out, but clearly only in pursuit of something else. A couple pairs of pants that I had hanging in the closet wound up on the bottom of the closet, but it seemed clear that this was done accidentally as part of the process of searching for something else - a nicer pair of pants, I suppose.

My dresser, too, had been emptied of clothing, but none of it seemed to be missing. I imagined that the thief had done this in an effort to find the jewels and rolls of hundred dollar bills that he figured I must have hidden somewhere. The guitar case, as I mentioned, had been opened, which seemed to indicate that he was in theory interested in stealing a guitar. But the fact that my guitar was still lying in it showed clearly that my guitar was not the one he wanted to steal.

It was at that point that I went from feeling relieved that most of my possessions were still there to feeling a little insulted that the burglar had decided to leave so much behind. I mean, I know my guitar isn’t a vintage, 1930s Gibson or something, but it looks nice enough, and sounds pretty good. It’s a Fender. Why didn’t he want it?

And what about my stereo? Not a tricked out hi-fi, I’ll admit, but if you position the speakers right it gives a pretty faithful sound. It’s not that big - he could have put it in a box along with my laptop and carried it back down the fire escape. But he clearly just didn’t want to.

I fixed myself a drink, nursed my rather perverse feeling of rejection, and called the police. They arrived maybe two hours later, which I thought was a pretty good response time for a non-violent burglary on the island of Manhattan. The team consisted of a nice lady named Jane, maybe 5′6″, probably a few years younger than me, and Carlo, a Greek-looking man only slightly taller than his partner and about the same age.

I took them on a tour of the place, explaining my theories on why and how the guy got in.

‘My super found two long pieces of metal lodged in the lock, so I figure that he tried to jimmy the door first, and then went up the fire escape.’

‘Maybe,’ came Jane’s endearingly husky voice, ‘but sometimes they work in teams. One guy tries the front door, and the other guy tries the window.’

I was unsure of her theory, but I also figured that there was no way that this guy would ever be caught anyway, so the question of entry seemed fairly moot.

‘So was there - Jesus! What the hell is that?’, Carlo asked with wide eyes. He had turned the corner and was looking at one of my most prized possessions: a reproduction I bought from the Prado of Goya’s ‘Saturn Devouring a Son.’ He gave an uncertain and confused laugh as the Titan Saturn, father of Zeus, stared back at him with mad eyes and slowly chewed on the arm of one of Zeus’ brothers.

I explained what it was, and he nodded at me with one eye squinted; it was clear that if he was accepting my praise for Goya at all, it was purely for the sake of argument.

We sat around and talked for a while, filling out about a quarter-inch of forms. They took my cell phone number and told me that someone would be by later to dust for fingerprints. I should expect a call from some detectives.

I shook the cops’ hands, thanked them for coming by, and offered them a scotch. Jane said she didn’t drink. Carlo said he did, but not on duty. As I led them to the door, Carlo took another look at Saturn, who was as always gnawing on his child’s corpse. Shaking his head and looking sympathetically at me he left saying, ‘Man, you gotta burn that painting.’

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 11:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “he came in through the bathroom window”

Paul Says:
September 15th, 2006 at 12:57 am
Wow! I’m glad you didn’t lose more of your stuff, though honestly, I kind of sympathize with the insult of the thief not stealing more of the cool stuff.

I guess even criminals don’t have much taste these days.
Josh Says:
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:27 am
Cal, I love you man. You managed to weave the tale of your robbery into elegant prose. A joy to read!
Josh Says:
September 26th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Forgot to mention that my brother could set you up with a good pet psychic if you need any leads on the burglers!

he came in through the bathroom window

3 Responses to “he came in through the bathroom window”

Leave a Reply

Archives

Other Weblogs