Throughout most of my life I've lived with a feeling that I was missing something. The feeling is as permanent and reoccurring as a first memory; it hums and clacks and sputters in the background of my life's work like an obsolete machine. I've lost so much, become so used to that dissonance that wakes me up before my alarm goes off in the morning, before the sun is up. Now I've learned the patterns. I drum them out calmly with my fingers at my desk. At one point there must have been panic and anxiety, because most people feel that way with loss. Now I just get on with my day, confident that I'll just as soon forget about whatever it is that is not there. I've realized that some of us have a talent for loss, a trait born not out of habit but in our genes. People like me know that with time, whatever substance that is within us will absorb the memory of the loss. Some people were made to remember. I was made to forget.
Also, the fact that RAZR is so thin really makes things more difficult for me. It has a ton of cool features, but the one I love the most is the "Fall to the Deepest Crevice Between the Couch Cushions" app. You can't turn it off. In fact, the battery it doesn't even need to be on for the app to work! Droid does, indeed, do.
Cell phone, wallet, keys. The three items any person needs to function at an adult level in 2013. If you're like me you're content with knowing where two of those things are at one time. The third one is in the pockets of the jeans I wore yesterday, or in my car, or on the sidewalk next to your car. Or in the keyhole of my apartment door, adjacent to the crazy old lady who thinks I stole her ring.
People don't think so, but I try my best to keep track of my belongings. I am interested in self improvement. I know I'm an organizational wreck. I want to do something about it! So I have developed a frequent "wallet, keys, cell phone" Pat-Down that has increased my efficiency particularly in my pre-work morning routine. The casual self-grope, if done effectively and often enough, can eliminate the possibility of losing your "Big 3". And while I'm alone I'm usually fine; It's when I see people I haven't seen in a long time or who know me well that I freeze up, that I forget to do the Pat-Down or just perform lazy, sloppy Pat-Downs. It's too much pressure! And next thing I know I'm calling Bank of America to cancel my debit card.
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"Floor four"
The voice of the elevator wakes me up. My neck hurts, because I'm using my wallet as a pillow. I'm also in the hallway and my mouth tastes like dirt and plaque. But why?
"Somebody call a locksmith?"
"Yes" says a tired voice, the voice of my roommate. Then I remember everything. The beers and then the cab and then some sweet beverage with liquor and wine and then a frantic, unsuccessful search for keys, and then another cab, and then a wish that we had left the door unlocked. Now a headache and a locksmith.
I also remembered that we were with friends; a couple who my roommate knew from high school that had graciously contributed Longboard Ales that evening. They were visiting from Santa Barbara and had planned to stay the night on our couch, or at the very least inside our apartment. They were now sleeping soundly, a blonde girlfriend in fishnets on her boyfriend's lap by the fire escape.
I stand and brush myself off. I can't be angry at my roommate. I had left my own keys behind for the evening, trying to eliminate the high probability of losing them, because I lose everything. But part of me relished that, for once thank god, it was the other guy who fucked up. For once I was helping him retrace his steps, calling the cab company in vain for his keys.. It was his frustrated voice trailing off in half sentence for the past several hours, a flabbergasted inflection that I am quite familiar with "I don't know where..." "I coulda sworn there were..." "No I couldn't have left them..." "Where the fuckin...". My keys are on the kitchen table. I know it for a fact.
"I can't pick this lock", says the locksmith, without having even moved within twelve feet of our door. He was unlike any locksmith I had ever seen, although I suppose the only time I have ever interacted with one was when I locked myself out of a storage unit in Westchester. I remembered a rotund, sweaty white guy with a beard, and that he was nice enough to explain to me exactly why he was making me pay a fortune. That was a locksmith. This guy was Aladdin in patent leather shoes and an expensive peacoat; he looked like he just walked out of a club except he was holding a toolbox. "If it was any different type of lock I could pick it in literally three seconds. I'm going to have to drill it."
My roommate and I share a look. "How much is that going to cost?" he asks.
"$367.00"
"Uh...what?"
"Dude let's just wait it out", I say. Luckily the security at our apartment complex has back up keys available, for a fee of course, for just such occasions, but they inexplicably weren't available until 6 AM. Plus we weren't about to wake up the whole building with a power drill at 3 AM, and something about the indifference in Aladdin's tone tells me that he knows that too. "Can't afford that."
"Ok so you'll just have to pay the cancellation fee", says Aladdin, pulling out a ticket. He jots down a number and hands it to me.
"$167.00?" I ask, the number adding do the grimy taste in my mouth. My roommate snatches the ticket away from me to see for himself.
"When I called the lady said it was $19 for you to come and check it out", says my roommate, his voice rising.
"This is emergency service, and after hours service, so there are additional fees". The tone in Aladdin's voice was matter-of-fact and infuriating. "It's all standard."
"You want us to pay you $170 for showing up at our door and not doing anything?" My roommate's shake starts shaking uncontrollably, "No. No. I mean no. I'm not doing it. I'm calling your fucking manager, because this is bullshit, and because fuck you". He's still quite drunk; if he were a different type of guy he might've tried to fight Aladdin, but instead he steps out onto the fire escape with his iPhone.
I stand sheepishly beside Aladdin as we listen to my roommate, endowed with new purpose, rant at the dispatcher, explaining unnecessary details of the evening ("it was my friend's birthday, and we were all having this great time, and playing all kinds of drinking games") referring to the locksmith as "this fucking asshole/douchebag/motherfucker". I suspect my roommate thinks we are out of earshot, but our walls are paper thin.
Aladdin's staring daggers at me, "Bad things happen to bad people" he whispers, taking a seat on the floor and pulling out his phone. "You're too cheap to get back into your apartment, and your friend is the biggest piece of shit I've ever met.". It's clearly an overreaction, but like a coward I let the insult slide.I step outside just to escape the awkwardness.
It's a chilly morning. My roommate hunches sadly over the railing, the last reserves of his energy now spent. He turns and sees me.
"What did that fucker say?"
"Nothing."
"My phone died."
"Mine too"
"I was thinking that maybe I could climb over to the window." he says. The closest window to our apartment is about 10 feet from the fire escape, four stories up.
"I don't think you'll make it". I'm almost ready to restrain him, because I almost believe he'll try to make the climb anyway. He'll do anything to get back into this apartment.
"This never happens to me"
"Did you do the Pat-Down?
"I always do the Pat Down!" he says, exasperated. He taps hopelessly at his deceased phone. "Dude, how the fuck am I going to get around?"
"We'll figure it out." I say, and as he looks again to make the impossible leap "...let's go back inside"
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After additional arguing and ad hominem attacks we end up giving Aladdin sixty bucks just to leave, and a few minutes before 7 AM security finally shows up. They apologize for the delay and mercifully end our ordeal. We wake the sleeping couple, who, polite like old friends, jokes about the whole thing and won't hear any of my roommates apologies. They settle on the couch as I make a beeline for my bedroom. Out of curiousity I stop in the dining room, just long enough to realize that my keys are, in fact, not on the dining room table, and that I have no idea where they are. But the hangover is setting in so I'll figure it out later.
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