I am hunting for a new place to live, and I'm finding that apartments tend to be like men: the good ones are all taken.
What looked to be a promising flat - convenient location, no shower head connected to the sink hanging over the toilet, less expensive than my current room - took a turn for the worse when the landlord discovered that someone (should I be afraid that he didn't seem to know who?) had locked my bedroom.
"Stupid," he muttered, over and over, as he jiggled the handle and banged the door. "Stupid."
Ah, but then he got smart. 'The best way to convince this young foreigner to stay in my apartment,' he must have thought, 'is to demonstrate that I can break into his room even if he locks it.' He brushed off an old ID card and began to wiggle it into the lock. The card began to fall apart under the pressure, so he dug around and pulled what looked like a new card from a plastic sleeve.
"Uh, I don't think you should ruin your card for this," I cautioned as he began to shape it into a fine accordion.
"No no; just can't break it," he assured me. The mangled card already looked worse than broken.
Because he couldn't show me the room itself, he invited me to get as close as I could - helping him break into it. By this time B had already headed home, and church class was at least 45 minutes gone, so yeah, why not? We alternated between thrashing the door and jamming the card, but the lock did its job. Now that I think about it, perhaps this was all some sort of reverse psychology - 'See how safe this room is? Not even we can break in!'
"I'll just come back later," I said, sweating from the humidity and the guilt.
"Yeah," he replied, as he kept on working. "Here, you try again."
More failure. He finally relented and collapsed, defeated, onto his low, blue couch. Perhaps to save some face and pretend my visit was worth my while, he invited me to sit down and watch TV with him. I sat down, if only because I couldn't just walk out on my accomplice; but I escaped at the first commercial break. "I have to go knock over a liquor store," I wanted to say.
Let's just say this was better than the place I saw earlier in the afternoon - the one on the 8th floor of an elevator-less building. After all, I'm going back tomorrow when he finally vanquishes the lock. Or uses a key.
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4 comments:
:) :) :)
so i'm not sure if you're possibly referring to yourself in the first sentence..
Your task was made harder since you lacked the proper equipment. Next time make sure you have ski masks, gloves and a crow bar. Also don't turn on the lights, use a flashlight or candle.
your dad is a wise man. shoes with boots work also as a poor man's substitute for a crow bar...
ryan, i think someone is possibly reading my whole entire china blog thinking it is you. someone just posted a comment on my shanghai post saying "oh my ryan, so glad you visited suzhou and hangzhou." and something about how you make him/her miss china so much...
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