I’m on the phone with my girlfriend as she’s arriving home from her newly appointed student teaching internship. Her day was good. She gives me details about some of her kids but it will be some time before I start absorbing their names. She misses a little girl from her last center named Serenity, an adorable little lady who left a child-sized hole in her heart after she finished out her two week notice. As of yet there’s no emerging replacement.
We’re strategizing over the phone. We adopted a Jack Russell terrier over the weekend after wrestling with the decision to graduate to ‘dog people’ for most of a year. Now every day has a set itinerary. Give Annie a treat when you get home. Don’t let Annie get too close to the cats. Take Annie outside every four hours. We were warned.
I hear the lock to the backdoor turning over the receiver. Kaitlin’s voice gets quiet. She asks, “What happened to your bike?” My mind blanks. Nothing happened to it. It’s been weeks since I’ve used it. “The tires are missing,” she adds. Missing tires goes a bit beyond casual roommate borrowing, something that surely warrants a text message beforehand. Something clicks. We’ve been robbed.
A wave of uncertainty hits me and I feel a fleeting sense of desperation, suddenly aware of myself standing outside my work office. I encourage Kaitlin to explore the house, a decision I will later regret. Anybody who’s been robbed before would know to get the hell out of the house and immediately call the police. Don’t chance things. In this moment the morbid curiosity of what else I lost supersedes thoughts of an intruder still inside our house. I do not know this because I have never been robbed before today. I have been lucky.
The important things are still there. Annie is safely stowed away in the bathroom, we sanctioned her there as we continue to warm her up to being fully crate trained. Our two cats, naturally adept hiders, emerge from the murky shadows of bedroom closets. Not to be accounted for is a custom Fender guitar belonging to my roommate, Kaitlin’s school computer and the iPad I only recently received for Christmas. We do not have renter’s insurance. Nothing will be replaced for us.
The police are on the way. I want to be there. I’ve already left work at this point, recklessly weaving through rush hour traffic. I’m exasperated, throat coarse from talking in circles. Suddenly every car in front of me is an obstacle. There’s a highway patrol car drifting on my left in the HOV. I need an escort. I wish I could display my sense of urgency to the drivers around me. Why don’t they know? This is more than the typical crawl home from work weeknight – how much more I’m not entirely certain.
I pull up to the house twenty minutes later. Kaitlin is in the lawn with Annie, looking back at the house in shock – the type of thing you might see someone do during a house fire, watching their home crumble beneath a dense plume of smoke. But this is different. It’s beautiful out. There’s a light breeze. Conditions are eerily pleasant. This place doesn’t register as my house, it’s as if it belongs to someone else now. The impulse to go inside and kick off my shoes after a long day is replaced with committal to sit on the lawn and wait for something to happen.
Soon we’re walking through the house with the responding officer. Right now I’m walking past the laundry room with a complete stranger equipped with a gun, wondering what happens next. In the first room my bike is helplessly splayed on the ground, sans high performance tires that run about $40 a piece. I’m thankful the more expensive vintage frame can still be accounted for. Someone out there knows the intimate layout of the house and everything inside it. I don’t even know what their face looks like and it makes me sick.
We fill out the police report. I give the officer a serial number for my stolen iPad. I ask him what the likelihood we receive our stolen property back will be. “To be totally honest with you, not very likely at all,” he says, confirming my expectation. My heart sinks.
Soon after I’m standing in the middle of the street talking to our next door neighbors, drinking one of three remaining beers from the fridge. They’re veterans of the neighborhood. They promise to keep their eyes peeled for us. They ask us how hard we’ve just been hit, saying it out loud makes the reality finally sink in. Monday afternoon we lost $2000 in electronics and an additional $500 in missing cash is discovered that night.
Broadcasting our collective misfortune over Facebook results in an outpouring of sympathy from our extended social circles. Turns out the answer, at least in this case, is good friends and beer. Several people declare they’re bringing over drinks and end up following through. It’s a good feeling to fill our little house with familiar faces. It’s a welcome distraction that prevents any reflection of my own material loss until tomorrow evening when things quiet down.
Not to be exempt, my parents voluntarily drop by that night with a pizza and a six pack of beer. They meet the new dog under unprecedented conditions. I’m aware being robbed hours before trumps any possible lecturing about dog responsibility. I’m almost thankful.
It’s late for a Monday night by the time everyone leaves. As I go to sleep that night, I look over at my nightstand where my iPad was charging just last night. Someone I’ve never seen before was standing over my bed. I wonder what they looked like before I fall asleep.
