Violated

Our home life at 765 Grand Street in Williamsburg was not always so grand.

Somewhere in our first year of living there I came home to a rather disturbing realization. It had been a bad day. It started with a prolonged doctor's office visit in which vials and vials of blood were taken to test for everything under the sun. This was followed by an excruciating day in the casting office working on something I cared little about. Followed by an unbearable three hour evening with the flying car at Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Broadway. Whoever thought that was a good idea?

So I get home after 11pm. My roommate is on the couch watching tv. The puppy is furiously running around my legs hoping, in vain, for a late night walk. I just want to go in my bedroom and shut the door and forget about the world. I mumble a 'hello.' The roommate asks how the show was. I answer with my standard "Awful" and head to the bedroom. My door is shut. That's weird. I never shut my door. The dog likes to lie on my bed and stare out the window during the day.

Were you in my room? I call out.

"No." She answers.

I turn the knob and push the door open and let it follow the hinges to its full extension. I stand on the lip of the entryway, not taking the step down, into the bedroom. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. I scan the room slowly from left to right. Finally, my eyes come to rest on the night stand.

We were robbed, I call out. My computer's gone.

I hear an abrupt movement on the couch and a "WHAT?" She runs into her room and I hear her opening her closet door.

"SHIT! My computer is gone too!"

I slowly move into the room. I'm afraid to touch anything but I want to see what else is missing. My favorite Diesel watch. Gone. I open up the closet doors. The computer bag. Gone. Some books on my shelf were in disarray. I pulled out a plastic container from my closet. Checkbook. Gone. Other than that, nothing else to take. I call out to the roommate. She's missing some jewelry. We call the cops. We call our parents. I don't remember if we called our landlord at that point. And we sit and we wait.

A terrible stillness settled over the apartment as we waited for the police to come. Neither of us wanted to be there. Neither of us had anywhere else to go. And neither of us would leave the other anyway. But I kept thinking of me, sitting in Washington Square Park that morning thinking I should call out of work because I was so overwhelmed. Would I have stopped it? Would I have been there when the thieves stole in? Or would they just have come some other time.

I think they've been our apartment before, I say. I've noticed little things from time-to-time. Like your door being left open. Or a toy on my shelf being in the wrong place. I never said anything because I thought I was just imagining it.

"Yeah. I felt the same way."

We checked the front door. There was no sign of forced entry. Windows near the fire escape were locked. How did they get in, if not with a key? And no one, except for my parents in Jersey, had an extra set of keys. Except the super.

The buzzer went off and we both jumped. I went down to let the police in. They were quick. And there were many of them. They worked there way through the apartment from the front door to the kitchen window. I showed them no signs of forced entry. I showed them all window gates locked. I showed them all windows closed except for one in my bedroom but there was soot on the window sill. They dusted for finger prints. Black powder all over my white night stand and the new sheets. The finger printed us. The front door. The window sills. They might as well have paw printed Ripley. They asked us questions. They gave us their card and they left.

We, unsettled, resumed our positions and stared at nothing. Not wanting to be awake anymore. Not wanting to go to sleep.

Should we get a hotel room?

"What about the dog?"

Right.

I won't be able to sleep tonight. Go ahead. Go to bed. I'll stay on the couch.

She shuffled off to her room shutting the door and I took up watch on the sofa. I wanted a bat. And a drink. I had neither. I slept fitfully on the couch that evening.

As the days passed, our things were never located. The shock and overwhelming feeling of violation slowly began to wear away. Ripley was not harmed. That was most important. And theories were formed. Most likely, the super had come in and taken our things. Over the course of the next few weeks we noticed how friendly Ripley was toward the man when he entered our apartment. A man he had never met before. He would run up to the Super and lick him and beg for his attention. This man came into our apartment while we were at work. We had the locks changed. The landlords did nothing.

My thesis paper and my writing had been on that computer. In the computer bag were all the back-up disks. I would have to start over. A few days later, after changing everything at the bank, I found my check book. We canvased local pawn shops at the recommendation of the police but didn't find our laptops.

Loneliness and fear were overwhelming. I began taking Wellbutrin again. Something I had started after the break up with Present Ex and the death of my grandmother and, slowly, weaned myself off of.

Almost exactly a year later, we come home to the same discovery. Laptops stolen. That's all they could take. We had nothing else. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Police. Fingerprints. Landlords. Etc...

This time, the police theorize that the intruder made their way into the apartment through one of the front windows. Creeping along the ledge, bending down to lift the window, then the screen.

Unless he's Spiderman, I said to the police, I think that's unlikely. And don't you think people on Grand Street -- a busy fucking street -- would notice someone creeping along a ledge at 2 o'clock in the afternoon? Someone used a key to get in.

"We really think they came in through the window."

I heaved a heavy sigh, knowing there was no use in trying to convince them otherwise.

At least there was someone I could call this time, someone I could lean on: The Mormon. I called him briefly when I was waiting for the police to come but didn't have time to talk long. I was on the verge of tears and trying very hard to keep myself together. I wanted comfort. I wanted him to come over and hold me. I wanted to feel safe.

Hi, I said. The police just left.

Silence on his side.

Uhm...and then I went through everything they had done and told us and what I believed happened.

"Well, I'm sure they know what they're talking about," the Mormon said.

Yeah. Uhm.

"So I'll talk to you later?"

Yeah. Sure.

"Ok. Bye."

I hung up the phone. Nothing. Not an 'I'm sorry.' Not an invitation to come over. Not an offer to come to me. Not a question about my feelings. He had turned off. My being vulnerable had caused him to completely shut down. He was acting cold, stoic, aloof, uninvolved. I didn't know what to do.

I felt doubly violated.