Locked Out!
It was a fine blanket in its time, a warm woolen tartan of red and green. After years on a bed, it served as a picnic blanket. When truly faded and threadbare, the blanket became the cushion in the trunk of my car, used to protect propane tanks, bags of groceries, ice and frozen chickens. Later, it served to wrap and carry firewood. So why was it now around my shoulders and over my head, protecting me from the cold rain as I shivered my way back and forth in a dark Santa Barbara alley, viewed with suspicion by a bearded and bleary-eyed man taking shelter in a stairway beneath a blanket that was newer and less shredded than mine?
Between us, my wife and I were able to find one almost-new rain jacket and one tired tartan blanket. The jacket is mine, but chivalry demanded that I offer it to her. She was wise enough to accept, and thankfully, I was wise enough to remove the blanket from the car before my errors compounded.
Fifteen minutes earlier, we had arrived after sunset at our rental house in Santa Barbara after a seven-hour drive from Northern California. We were tired and ready for dinner. But first, I insisted that we unload the car. With some difficulty, we found the hidden lockbox containing the key to the front door of our “tower”—actually, it initially seemed more like a deranged architect’s five-floor fantasy, with one room on each floor. The salient facts in this story are that the garage is on the ground level, with a door that opens into the tiny vestibule off the front door.
When we arrived, we climbed all the stairs carrying bedroom stuff to the second floor, kitchen stuff to the third floor, and living room stuff to the fourth floor. The fifth floor opened onto a tiled balcony in blue-and-white, featuring a cupola containing a bell the size of the cracked Philadelphia Freedom Bell (complete with a sound to match); soaked outdoor tables and chairs; a small refrigerator and a wet grill; and a 360-degree view of the mist. In the days that followed, we would come to love the fifth floor, but, on that first night, we quickly closed the door and descended to the third-floor kitchen.
“Where’s the flowered cloth bag containing my—” asked my wife, but I failed to listen to the end of the sentence, having just deposited the bag in one of the rooms above or below us. We looked but couldn’t find the bag anywhere, so we descended together to the garage to look for it and see what else we’d left in the car. I took the last of the boxes from the back seat and closed the car door gently with my hip.
“Nothing in the car,” she said, “except your raincoat and that tattered old blanket.” My wife took out the coat and held it under her arm as she dropped the blanket on the garage floor. “We really should get rid of this thing,” she said.
“Let’s see if the laundry can do something with it first,” I suggested. “I’m not ready to toss it.”
“Your blanket.” She shrugged and reached out a delicate hand to open the door leading into the downstairs vestibule. “The flowered cloth bag must be upstairs,” she said graciously. “I was wrong, and you were right. Oh, open the door, would you?”
“My hands are full,” I said, patiently stating the obvious. “Do you think you could unlock it, please?”
“Sure,” she said, putting her hand in the left front pocket of my trousers.
“What,” I asked politely, “are you doing?”
“Getting the key. Isn’t that where you usually keep your keys?”
I felt the beginning of hair rising on the nape of my neck. “You had the key. Didn’t you bring it down?”
She checked her pockets. Shook her head. I lowered the boxes. Checked my pockets. No keys. Tried the door. Solid hardwood, locked down tight as Alcatraz. Went outside through the garage to the front door. Locked tight as the Bastille. Stood in the rain and rang the doorbell, which clanged on the fifth floor like the Freedom Bell. But, there was no one home. I went back into the garage.
“Why don’t you call the rental agent?” There was a slight tremor in my voice.
“Great idea. I don’t know their number offhand, but we can Google it.” She patted her pockets. “Where’s your phone?”
“On the third floor,” I answered. “Or the second. Or maybe the fourth.”
“Wait a minute. We don’t have keys? Or phones?” She took my hand in desperation. “Tell me you have your wallet. Please?”
Checked my pockets. Again, no keys. No phone. No wallet. No identification.
“I’m cold,” she said. “Let’s get in the car.”
I tried the car door. It was locked. All the car doors were locked.
“Put on my jacket,” I said graciously, but she had already zipped it up.
I looked around the garage and found another small combination lockbox, which refused to open using the combination that had given us access to the front door key.
“You keep trying to open it,” she said, taking charge. “I’m going to get help.”
“Where?” I asked. “We’re down a dark alley in a downpour. Santa Barbara closes when it rains. It’s Sunday night. There’s no one to help us.”
“Don’t be hysterical,” she said tearfully. “It’s Saturday night. The bars are open.”
“You can’t go into a bar on your own with no money or identification in a rain jacket that makes you look like a shrew in a hippo’s bathrobe.”
“Stay here and think up some more compliments as you try and outwit that lockbox. I’m going bar hopping.”
And she left, headed quickly down the alley towards the light. I tried a few more combinations and then gave up. Not wanting to soil or scratch myself with the old scraggly tartan blanket, I held it out at arm’s length like a dead rodent as I went to check out the alley. My wife had disappeared into one of the bars on the street, so I went back to the garage to stay warm.
Of course, the garage door had slammed shut and the bolt shot home. I wondered whether this would qualify in the Guinness Book of Records as the most locked doors encountered in a single evening.
I was chilled to the bone and getting wetter by the minute. The scratchy, soiled old rag at the end of my arm began to exert quite a strong appeal. With resignation, I draped it across my shoulders and over my head. That was when I noticed the bearded, bleary-eyed fellow in the doorway opposite, wearing quite a nice blanket. I managed a reassuring smile and was about to say something inane, like “life sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?” when the man moved over to one side of the stair and patted the empty space beside him. It was an invitation from a fellow traveler willing to share what little shelter he had. I thanked him and sat down. I looked in my pocket for a cigarette. Offering him one seemed an appropriate gesture in the moment. But I don’t smoke. Instead, he offered me one, which I declined.
“Life sucks sometimes,” he said. “Doesn’t it?”
When he said it, it didn’t sound inane at all.
Thirty minutes later, my beloved wife returned triumphant. Thank goodness she has an honest face and looks so cute in my fashionable rain slicker. We are the grateful recipients of assistance by the bartenders in a great little tapas restaurant and bar, Mosto Crudo on Haley Street, where they generously loaned her their cell phone. Twenty minutes after my wife returned, the on-duty rental agent appeared and unlocked the door for us. He implied, without actually saying so, that in all his years of renting this particular property, no one had ever been dumb/negligent/careless enough to lock themselves out sans keys, wallets, ID and phone. Made us both feel much better.
After opening all the doors and making sure I had all my technology and my Important Stuff in my pockets, I went back down to the alley and looked across at the stairway. I wanted to thank my bearded companion for his kindness in whatever way might have pleased him. To my regret, he was gone. I plan on passing it forward for a long time to come.
Since that evening, we have fallen in love with the five-floor, one-of-a -kind, intricately constructed tower, which is a cross between a Spanish-style museum, Jungle Jim and a Dr. Seuss house. Perhaps, it wasn’t designed by a deranged architect, after all, but by a very creative one under the influence of a client high on life.
My scraggly old tartan blanket cleaned up nicely at the nearby laundry, which turns out to be owned by the same people who rent us this unique home. The blanket, now restored to its former glory, has been retired to the foot of our bed.