I was on the phone with a dear friend the other day. It was a wide ranging conversation that eventually drifted into memories that have colored our pasts, including some that have continued to keep me in the heat of the moment years later.
You see, I have this thing about keeping the first floor windows shut, even when it is absolutely boiling in my home. You just never know who might stop by, and in this respect, lightning has not only struck once, but twice.
Let’s start at the beginning. Until my middle years I enjoyed having all the windows open in my house. During the summer here in Washington State it is essential, largely because we don’t have air conditioning like homes in the south. There are simply too few days that are boiling hot to make the numbers pencil out to install AC.
It was during one such hot day that I received a visitor. Well, not me exactly. Rather, it was the woman I was dating. We were hanging around together when we heard a knocking on the door. As no one answered it, the knocking continued on down the side of the house, right to the room we were occupying.
For some unknown reason, I had erred on the side of caution when I came over. While my friend looked on aghast, I closed all the windows and the drapes. I could claim that it was an effort to gain some privacy, but from whom or what I could not say if I had been pressed for an answer.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long to get that answer. My friend’s ex-boyfriend had decided to pay an unexpected visit a couple days after he had been booted from her house. He had a history of having quite a temper and he certainly didn’t care much for me, as we had met on several occasions and didn’t exactly hit it off. I guess I couldn’t blame him, for I had a serious crush on his girlfriend, a crush even she was unaware of.
My friend sprang into action after the knocking continued down the side of the house, from the back door, along the living room windows to the window we were now seated next to. She went to the back door and met her now ex-boyfriend, making some vague excuses why he couldn’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t be invited to come in.
He left after a few tense moments, during which I thanked my lucky stars for having the presence of mind to close the drapes and the windows, even if we were sweltering.
Fast forward several years to my new relationship with Parker’s mom. We had just started dating and she was living in a rental about a half mile from my apartment on California Avenue in West Seattle. It was a cute little one bedroom.
Shortly after she moved in, I stayed the night. It was our first night in her new digs and we wanted to make it memorable. Eventually we headed for bed and as she changed into her birthday suit, I closed the window and pulled the drapes.
It was another sweltering Seattle day. It must have been 90 in the room. She asked why I closed the window and I made some lame excuse about being on the ground floor and how it would be easy for someone to climb through the window and kill us in our sleep. A little doom and gloom scenario can work wonders at times.
We fought the heat as we drifted off to sleep. We were awakened at two in the morning with a familiar sound, at least familiar to me. Knock, knock, knock. Rap, rap, rap. Someone was walking down the length of the apartment building looking for someone.
Thankfully, the window was closed, for it was now being rapped on solidly by a very drunk individual who was calling out “Sharon! Sharon!!!” very loudly. It was my new girlfriend’s ex-husband.
Somehow he had found out where she lived, probably spotting her car on the side street she was parked on. He decided that he wanted to pay a booty call after the bars had closed.
This was definitely a case of deja vu, at least for me. For the second time in my life an ex-whatever had gone on a knocking spree on one of the hottest days of the year, looking for love in all the wrong places.
Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice? In this case, Sharon was quick on her feet. While I retreated to the living room, she opened the window and began to chastise her ex-husband for waking her up. “No, you’re not coming in!” “Yes, you’re going away now. Good night!”
She shut the window once again and Tony slipped away into the night, hopefully ending up at the nearest Denny’s to treat his drunkfest with a heavy dose of pancakes and syrup to soak up the booze.
We continued to toss and turn all night, burning up in the heat and humidity of that horrible summer’s eve in West Seattle.
After Tony left, she understood the wisdom of keeping the window closed and the drapes drawn. While Tony never darkened our doorstep again, I have a feeling that this important lesson has since become lore in her new domicile in Virginia, in a home where air conditioning requires all windows to be closed.
Me? I still lock all the ground floor windows at night. It’s just the way I roll. While I don’t expect any visits from boyfriends or husbands past, I just don’t want to take even the slightest chance that someone, somewhere, will have a bit too much to drink and decide that it was time to visit Robb in the dark of night, knocking themselves out trying to rouse me or a significant other from bed, all in the hopes of having a little chit chat, trying to reconcile a relationship that has long since sailed off into the sunset.
In the Emerald City, with windows locked tight and no exes in sight,
– Robb