Across The Way

From my angle here in the darkness I see it all. Shades drawn, lights off, I’m allowed to observe you freely going about your nights. From up here there are no street lights to reflect and obscure, only your lighted tanks, like fishbowls, allowing me to see inside your lives. Me and you live in the same city and with that notion comes a certain idea, that of a wild life, one that needs the excitement of 100,000 other citizens cramming into subway cars and streets, living shoulder to shoulder and lining up for groceries. But if you pull out far enough you start to see the routines in everything, the cage we put up around ourselves to compartmentalize and ward off the drudgery piece by piece.

Take Janice, up on the eighth floor. Gone most of the day, but by 5:30 she’s having that first after work cigarette out on the balcony. Between the cigarette breaks it’s always the same: Judge Judy, a quick smoke, followed by a microwaved frozen dinner. The post dinner cigarette leads into back-to-back Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. At the end of the game show hour it’s a quick bathroom break. I can’t really see into her apartment that far, but I can’t figure anywhere else she’d disappear to for a few minutes at a time, always wiping her hands on her sweatpants. Her kitchen counter is never for a lack of cigarettes as there appears to be an infinite pack living there, replaced every other day and never moved to a pocket or purse. This next one is the pre-bedtime cigarette, Janice’s face is always aglow with the light of her phone as she sits in stillness on her balcony. The phone just inches in front of her face tends to outlast the cherry that burns down to her fingers. Never long after, about fifteen minutes, her bedroom light goes on as she approaches the window drapes, tiptoeing to get a hold of them before throwing them closed. The Janice Show ends for the night, right on time at 8:30.

Our routines help define who we are but can become so well worn they become hard to take off. Like a favorite pair of shoes so broken in that even a new pair can’t compare. But I ask, do we form the routines or do the routines form us? Take Ernest, a middle-aged man who lives below Janice on the seventh floor. At exactly 6:30AM each morning he opens his bedroom blinds, except on weekends when he allows himself an extra hour to sleep in. Fifteen minutes later he’s standing in his boxer shorts, pot belly hanging out, putting on coffee. Seconds after he heads into the shower, always returning five minutes before 7AM with a towel wrapped around his waist. By 7AM he’s dressed in a suit and tie, or a crew shirt and jeans if it’s Friday. Then it’s into the kitchen where he pours his coffee into a super sized stainless steel travel mug that holds every last ounce from the pot. By 7:05 he’s out for the next nine hours.

I’ve been keeping notebooks full of their routines and patterns for what feels like an eternity. I have an entire shelf of Ernest, and another of Janice, plus a few more tenants. Every few weeks I’ll compare their routines now from where they were a week, a month, six months or a year ago. Would you be shocked if I told you there was almost no variation? Outside of a week-long flu for Ernest where he didn’t leave his sofa, or the several days when Janice trudged out of the apartment with a suitcase, their days are completely predictable down to the minute.

I do this because I need entertainment. None of that network TV garbage or straight to streaming crap. TV and cable are dead compared to what I have in mind. I need interactivity and influence on my entertainment. And knowing the rituals of people like Janice and Ernest afford me certain opportunities to provide my own viewing experience.

Walking across the street to their building is the easy part. Most people will even hold the door open for me if I’m wearing the proper attire, typically a yellow and orange vest while carrying some semi-large boxes that have been properly addressed. I always smile because it builds trust. “They requested I leave it on their doorstep” is usually enough for the man at the desk, underpaid as he is, to allow me into the elevator and up to the necessary floors.

The hard part about picking a lock is not getting caught in the act. Picks require just the right amount of pressure and finesse; certain angles must be obtained that look unnatural to any casual person walking out of their apartment. The pins snap into place and I’m into Janice’s apartment first. For a moment I hover in the hallway just outside her kitchen. Looking out into my own apartment all I can see is a glassy blank reflection. If I stare long enough I’ll see my own face, relaxed and enjoying this future moment in the making.

In Janice’s apartment the act is simple: I take the entire pack of cigarettes on the counter and toss them into the box. From her freezer I remove the last of the frozen meals for the week, throwing them next to the cigarettes. Sliding open her patio door I grab the ashtray, full of this week’s butts and put it and its contents into a plastic bag. I seal up the box with a roll of tape hanging from my belt loop. Janice won’t return for hours but I still need to get over to Ernest’s.

On the seventh floor Ernest’s apartment proves a bit more difficult to get into. A mother, pulling a stroller out of the apartment opposite Ernest’s, yells at her four year old boy to “put down the Nintendo and come on!” She tugs at the boy’s hand, scolding him in front of the elevator. I kill time scrolling my phone with my head down as if I was looking for some important delivery instruction while they loaded in. Finally, quiet as I walk down the hall to Ernest’s unit.

Ernest’s door opened just as easily as Janice’s given it was the same type of lock, likely issued by the building and rotated with each new tenant. A couple taps to set the pins in place, just the right amount of tension to keep them from resetting, and the door swung open. For Ernest’s place the process is simple: grab the towel from his bathroom and the fresh roasted coffee beans in the cabinet next to the fridge. I threw each into a box I had put on top of Janice’s.

Exiting the elevator the man at the desk was too busy scrolling to look up as I called out, “Have a good one.” He replied “you too” just as I was exiting the double doors. In order to keep these things from going south you always have to be polite. I walked around the block pausing only to take off the vest and fold it into a tiny square which fit in my jacket pocket. I checked the seal, contents and addresses on both boxes before dropping off each pre-paid box at the post office. After getting back into my own apartment the only thing left to do was wait for the entertainment to begin.

Janice and Ernest weren’t the first. In the early days my processes weren’t fully formed, the rules not fully cooked. This was back when I thought darkness was enough to hide behind. But I’ve come to realize it’s more than that. You need good tools: a lock pick set that won’t snap, graph-lined notebooks, gloves that won’t leave a trace and always a fail safe if someone doesn’t adhere to their own patterns. I feel sorry for Thomas on the sixth floor. How long ago was it? He’s lucky I didn’t bleed him further but I’m no killer. I remember watching him pack up his apartment, his left hand bandaged and still bleeding through, struggling with each box as he taped it shut, grimacing in pain as he stacked them in front of his kitchen and bedroom windows. That’s all in the past. My notes have improved along with my patience.

Janice started the evening festivities. She was home the earliest and was the first to notice that things weren’t quite right. When she reached for her cigarettes and found nothing it triggered a kind of urgency and desperation that caused her brows to furrow. The confused look on her face was priceless, like a complete and full memory flush. She sat for a while just staring outward before checking the balcony to find the ashtray completely missing as well. Full robberies are usually obvious, you miss that expensive watch or grandmother’s diamond ring. Subtle robberies are a question of sanity. Maybe this is the beginning of dementia, Janice. For the next hour I watched as Janice turned on lights, scoured cabinets and drawers, hallway closets and her bedroom. The icing on the cake came when she opened the freezer, defeated by the cigarettes, only to find nothing. Her breakdown came fast and furious. For a full hour and a half she retraced her steps in tears before throwing the curtains closed in the bedroom, and all before 8PM.

I watched and awaited Ernest’s morning routine just as the sun came up. His blinds flipped open just as they always did at 6:30AM. Fifteen minutes later he was in the cabinets, looking for precious coffee, then opening every single cabinet in a frantic search. After searching he stood, scratching his head like an ape whose presence had become hollowed out. Would the lack of a super-size mug of coffee really throw his day or could he move onto the shower? For another twenty minutes I watched as he took second and third looks in the cabinets, oven, and bedroom as if the coffee bag might materialize out of nothing. Maybe checking that cabinet with a flashlight will reveal what the naked eye couldn’t. Defeated, Ernest finally went into the bathroom only to return five minutes later, soaking wet and standing before his hallway closet to grab a new towel.

But the real surprise was about to begin for Janice and Ernest. If the post office had done their jobs the individually addressed packages would be sitting outside their doors just before they left for work. Janice, having gone to bed early, was the first to see the box stamped “open immediately!” With binoculars in hand I watched as the color drained from her face. Those cigarettes she loved so much had finally returned to her, along with the ashtray, and the now unfrozen dinners. From here the air in her apartment seemed electric. Ernest took it the hardest. First taking out his own towel and smelling it like it wasn’t his. Then the coffee. That must have put him over the edge because all he could think to do was put a fist through his own kitchen wall, which he then nursed with a bag of ice.

Logic eventually clicks into place. Mystical thinking won’t save us. A hard to find object is one physically removed or forgotten from memory, not dematerialized. Things simply don’t grow legs and scurry away. A pack of cigarettes can’t mail itself and neither can a bag of coffee and towel. People always try to deny it at first. ‘Oh, it’s just my sibling or friend pulling a prank,’ they’ll say; until they call that friend or family member and they wholeheartedly deny everything. Then the real logic begins to set in. The idea that someone else, some unknown stranger with knowledge, has been in their apartment and decided to take something crucial to their ongoing existence.

Most people move out. It’s easier to find a new apartment than it is to live with the overwhelming paranoia and vulnerability of remaining in a place so violated. A break-in is an event brought on by greed and a chance at high-end valuables. I don’t consider what I do a break-in at all. Quite the contrary: I’m doing these people a favor. Did Janice really need four cigarettes before bed? Ernest, his gallon of coffee each morning? I’ll admit the towel was more for my own amusement. The only payment I need for my services is entertainment. I rest easy at night knowing that both Janice and Ernest, somewhere off in new apartments, each think twice before lighting up or making that big pot of Joe in the morning.

It’s been weeks since Janice and Ernest provided such a good show. New tenants are moving in soon to those vacant spaces. I wonder what kind of people they’ll be. No matter, I have brand new notebooks ready to go and plenty of time.