Saturday 3 May: Answering the doorbell; or, I’m sorry, you don’t live here

My doorbell rang last night. It’s rung a few times before, and I have never answered it. Usually, I’m sitting around in boxers reading or writing, and I don’t feel like getting dressed. Anyway, it’s most likely just someone leaning against it by mistake, or a young couple necking in the doorway. Once, it rang and then a woman yelled up to my window asking for the name of the realtor I rent from. All other times, it’s rung once and then stopped.

This time, though, someone was insistent. The bell kept ringing every thirty seconds or so. I finally got dressed and went down the three flights of steps from my first floor apartment (you figure it out), and answered the outside door. There stood a young couple who tried to speak to me in terrible Italian. I asked them if they spoke English, and they said a little, and that they were from Buenos Aires. We switched to Spanish, since mine was better than their English. I made sure that I didn’t use any of the words that I learned while working in the prison; Roberta assures me that they are not meant for polite company.

Anyway, this young pair stood in the doorway and told me that they were moving into my apartment. Now, I am pretty organized about this sort of thing, and I am absolutely certain that I would have remembered inviting an Argentine couple to live with me in Italy, so I was sure that they were wrong. No, they said, and they pulled out a contract with my address on it. They were very young, very courteous, and very confused. They did not seem to think it at all unusual that they would just move into my one-room pad with me. They were apparently used to different standards of privacy than I am. Well, the contract was in English, which they knew only marginally, and reading it I saw that they were supposed to be on the fifth floor. If I’m on the first, and I have to go up three flights, I wondered to myself if that meant that they had to go up fifteen?

I explained the situation to them, and they seemed quite relieved. Then they asked me for the key. I explained to them that I was not the realtor or the super, and that I didn’t have it. They would have camped out in the entrance hall, which is literally three by five feet, but I saw a phone number in tiny print on their contract. This is why I am glad that I have international roaming. I pulled out my cell, dialed the number, and handed them the phone. In less than a minute they were able to arrange a meeting with their realtor to give them a key. Grateful beyond words, they offered to take me out on the town with them. Now, partying in Trastevere with a couple of Argentines sounded like fun, but I had to get to bed because I had an early date in the morning. I was finally, at long last, going to do the laundry again.