A Knock at the Door

It’s 4:00 on Friday afternoon. I’m in my bedroom getting ready to go to a wedding at 5:00 when my doorbell rings. Half-make-upped, I open the door. It’s a man I’ve never seen before, maybe early 40s, wearing a black sports coat over a white polo shirt, black pants, and black dress shoes.

“I am so sorry to bother you,” he says with a chagrin smile by way of introduction, “I was wondering if you’ve got AAA*. I’ve locked my keys in my car.”

“Sure, I’ve got AAA,” I tell him. “I’ll call them for you.”

“I’m Melissa’s boyfriend, Melissa from upstairs,” he calls after me as I start to shut the door so I can go get my purse. “I’ve seen you around.” The only people I know who live upstairs are guys flutters through my head, but then I think Maybe he’s talking about the people I don’t know who live on the other side of the building.

As I hold my AAA card in one hand and my phone in the other, I ask him to write down the information about his car.

“Where is your car?” I asked him.

“It’s at the UPS store on Atlantic Avenue,” he tells me. “I feel like such an idiot. I'm really sorry to bother you, but I appreciate your help.”

Atlantic Avenue? That’s like four miles from here! I think. Did he really walk here from there? Wasn’t there someone else he could have called before getting to my apartment complex?

“That’s far,” is my only comment. He scribbles down “2014 Honda Accord” on the piece of paper I offer him.

“Don’t you have to be with me when AAA comes?” he asks, a little nervously.

“The last time I used it the person with the card had to be there.”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” I tell him. “If they know where your car is, that’s all that matters.” I start to dial the phone. We’re still standing outside in front of my apartment door, the door itself shut tight behind me. The phone starts to ring.

“If you need roadside assistance, please press one,” says the automatic recording. I press one.

“Thank you for calling Triple A, this is so-and-so, are you in a safe location?” intones the customer service associate.

“Yes, I am. I was calling about – ”

The man immediately interrupts me. “Uh, thanks a lot for calling,” he says, “But I guess I’ll just go see if I can find the maintenance man.”

“ – never mind,” I tell the woman on the phone. “Everything is OK. Thank you!” I hang up and look at the man. But he’s disappeared down the stairs.

           

I go back inside, lock my door, and call the front office.

“Hi, this is Jaimie,” I greet the woman on the phone. “Do you know if there’s a

Melissa who lives in my building?”

“Melissa? Not off the top of my head,” she says. “Why?”

I tell her about the man who just came to my house.  She asks for a few more details, and then says, “Yeah, he shouldn’t be here. I’ll send someone out right now to find out what’s going on.”

A few minutes later I get another knock at my door. It’s the maintenance man. He wants to know what the guy who came to my house looks like and what he’s wearing. I tell him, and he runs off.

            Meanwhile, I finish getting ready for the wedding, step outside, and lock my door tight behind me. On my way out of the parking lot, I see the woman from the front office locking the office door behind her. I don’t see either the maintenance guy or the AAA guy.

As of Sunday night, I still don’t know what that scam was all about, but I do know that it left me feeling suspicious and on guard. I’ve had weirdoes come to my door before, but that was in Japan. I don’t like to think that they’ve followed me here.

*for friends in foreign countries who don’t know, Triple A is a road-side service company that helps you when your car has a flat tire or runs out of gas or something. Or if you lock your keys out of your car. 

Permanence and Temporality, the Two that Plague Me

It’s like this. I bought a car in 2012. I’ll pay it off next year. But for it to be a financially wise decision and not an economic sinkhole, I should keep it for ten or twelve years until it breaks down irreparably. Then it will show itself to be a wise investment. (Other financially wise moves involve putting more money into my IRA, paying off my student loan debt in double increments, and getting a roommate to lower living expenses: all much easier said than done.) But all of these financially wise decisions seem to hinge on one thing: me staying in the United States. And that thought, frankly, terrifies me.

It’s not that I’m planning on moving out of the country in the next few months. But I’d like to have the option, the ability, if the desire ever arose. It was doable – albeit difficult – to say goodbye, pack my things away and move to Japan back in 2010. Could I do it again? Argentina, Chile, Mexico, England, Canada, the UAE . . . is life long enough to live everywhere I want to? 

But things are good here in Raleigh, so very, very good. I’ve got my feet on Carolina soil again. I can support myself and pay for my beautiful, colorful apartment that holds all of my worldly possessions. I can visit the majority of my relatives at the drop of a hat. And I’ve got an amazing set of friends stretching all across the state who have proven themselves a loyal, supportive, understanding bunch. Why would I want to be anywhere else? 

At the same time, I remember a conversation I had with my sister a few days after returning from Japan in 2012. “What if you moved to Raleigh and stayed there for the rest of your life?” she asked me. “What if you settled down there and never left?” Without even letting her finish her question, I shook my head vehemently: “Never, never, never! I could never stay in the same place for too long!” I wonder if it was really Raleigh itself that scared me, or the thought of staying in one place permanently. I think it's the latter. 

Perhaps other people in my generation are going through the same thing. We are quite content in the present, but afraid to commit ourselves to any one thing. We switch jobs every few years, we move across the country, we escape into graduate school. No longer is a house with a 30-year mortgage and a lifetime career at the same organization a blessing. No, permanence seems to petrify us. So we race around looking for the next best thing, thinking frantically, "Is this it? What else is there?"

Maybe it's just a matter of semantics. Shall we call it stability or inertia? Am I caught, trapped, stuck, wedged irreparably into an existence I can’t get out of, or rather am I stable, safe, secure, established? It's the same thing, just seen through different lights. 

Last weekend I went to my hometown (Littleton, NC) and enjoyed the time in the country, drinking a morning cup of coffee on the wide front porch, watching the sun go down over the lake, seeing the stars come out with no streetlights to dim their glow. But would I go back to it . . . forever?  

I feel sometimes that I want mutually exclusive things. I want this:

And this:

This:

And this:

This:

And this:

What do they say, don't worry about the future; enjoy the present? All we have is now?