The Welcome Wagon

As the luck o' the Irish would have it, only a few hours after I sent off that last post, I was launched into one of the most eventful--if not hilarious--evenings yet.

Around one a.m., just as I was drifting off into sleepland, Maggie shook me awake.
"Jenna. There's someone in our apartment."
It took me a minute to realize she meant someone, as in someone other than us--but as soon as I sat up, I heard banging around in the kitchen beneath us. She had already locked the door, but the two of us sat upright in my bed like that for a long time, just listening to what sounded like a caravan of elephants being butchered on our dining room table. The sounds continued, doors slammed, and eventually we heard footsteps climbing up the stairs right outside our door... at this point, both pee-our-pants scared. Granted, most people would have assumed that this was a roommate--a big DUH when you're sharing a house with people--but we were told ours weren't arriving until Sunday night. And who arrives at 1:30 in the morning, anyhow? It is also useful to point out that the night can do crazy things to your brain, and when you've been woken up in the middle of it, it is more than easy to assume that the thing clomping up and down your stairs (in your foreign apartment, in a foreign country) is more likely to be a mad rapist than your friendly neighborhood Irishman.

Having settled on the idea that this was, in fact, someone who was going to kill us and then steal our laptops, we called the security number for Gort na Coiribe. An old man answered the phone in a creaky voice, clearly woken up by the call, and--when informed that the tenants in Unit 23 were terrified for their lives--politely asked us, "so what do you girls want me to do?" We responded, not so politely, that we'd like him to send someone over; and no less than fifteen minutes later, he called us back and told us he would. Great. In the interval, we stood shivering in the bathroom, contemplating what would happen if it really WAS our roommate, and we had to spend the next five months justifying our lunatic behavior. That, and a lively debate over whether we--in addition to getting the apartment without the functioning water heater, and tire tracks on the ceiling--had gotten the one with ghosts.

Soon after, someone pounded on the door, and we leapt up. If it was security, they would let themselves in. Right? And if the intruder was our roommate, he'd open the door. Right?

WRONG.

Nothing happened, so after a few minutes, Maggie called the security desk again. The same man answered. After telling her that they weren't allowed to enter the room unless it was opened for them, and listening to Maggie's repeated assurance that we aren't crazy, really, but there's no way in hell we are going downstairs--the guard banged on the door for a second time, and this time it was answered. Through the door, I could make out two voices coming from the foot of the stairs.

I opened the door a crack, Maggie hung up the phone, and in the tiniest, girliest voice imaginable, mustered: "hello?"


We walked to the top of the stairs, and next to the security man--clearly pissed off--was a small, scruffy boy in a t-shirt and PJs. No baseball bat. No ski mask. Just a head full of rumpled hair and an expression that read of both confusion and awe at how utterly stupid two human beings, both from planet earth, could be.

Turns out, the breaker-and-enterer was Andrew, our roommate for the semester...who from this point on, we will have to make a conscious effort to convince that we are anything other than American psychopaths who wanted to have him arrested for stepping onto the property that he has lived in for almost a year. It's a hard launching pad to jump off from, but on the bright side, it will make everything else we do seem sane in comparison...

or at least, I hope so.

As we went off to bed, both laughing so hard that we could hardly catch our breath, we decided it's a hell of a first week story. And in terms of picking out her Irish husband, Maggie thinks it wise to write off Andrew for the time being... although if anyone ever asked how they met, it would make for an entertaining icebreaker.

"You know, I thought he was a burglar... so I called the cops on him. But we get on great, now! Just great!"