Locked Out

Once I shut the door I knew I was fucked. I was on the outside, and the only copy of the apartment key was inside. The key was on a special plastic handle so i hadn’t put it on my key chain. I went to the reception and asked if they had an extra key and the super even checked his office in the basement. No dice. I had to call a locksmith. You call a locksmith and then they page a roaming technician to come by to give a quote. It’s like a stupid dispatcher-roving technician drug dealing like system.

As I was waiting, the super came up to console me. I told him I couldn’t believe I made such a dumb mistake. I was on my way to pick up lunch and absent mindedly left the key on the dining table. I asked him how much he thought lock replacement cost... he said he didn’t know but he knew a woman who was fleeced $1700 in another building. Great.

I got a crazy idea. Since I had unlocked the patio door to provide some air while I was woodcutting, I knew it was open. I also knew the building has a series of terracing balconies. I asked the super if he had a ladder. He did. At that moment the locksmith arrived. A lanky Israeli in jeans with a gauze bandage on his hand. At the door I asked him how much... he said “how much you want to pay”. I say 100. Like a fucker he says “usually I drill a lock out that’s 115 and then I charge another 245 to install a new lock. The lock can’t be picked it’s automatic.” 15 minutes earlier I had tried in vain sliding a plastic card to open it. The Israeli made a hard sell. He calls his boss talks in Hebrew and says “250 in cash and I’ll do it for you now.”

Just then, the super came down the hallway, I told the Israeli I wanted to try scaling the ladder before dropping $250. He probably never saw a cheaper guy in his life. Climbing down from 16th floor balconies to avoid locksmith fees? We went to the apartment above. Fancy apartment with authentic Marilyn Monroe Warhol silkscreen paintings on the wall and we were weaving a 10 foot ladder over the kitchen island and fancy furniture.

Going to the balcony edge we dangled the ladder down but it was too short by about 3 feet. Shit. I was resigned to paying 250. The super told me the floor below the apartment may have a shorter floor to floor height. Riding the elevator between the 16th and 14th floors the super says, “at least it’s an interesting day!” For staff, it was exciting to figure out how to break into apartments. So we set up the ladder on the lower balcony but again it was about 3 feet too short. At this point, in times of potential financial loss I got an idea. There were a couple flimsy wicker tables and a metal plate. I said, why don’t we stack the wickers, put a protective sheet metal plate on top to prop the ladder up without having the ladder punch through the wicker. We rotate the wicker stack 45 degrees to fit the ladder on the diagonal and voila.

While we held the wicker baskets together so the whole rickety arrangement wouldn’t topple, the super safely climbed up the ladder over the guard rail and opened the door. I forgot to tell him to dodge the Japanese knives and my woodcut at the threshold. A day earlier I had gauged my big toe bloody on a knife. I had been carving a board of poplar to form an elm canopy silhouette for the past 2 weeks. Luckily the super opened the front door unscathed. He didn’t say anything but he must’ve wondered what arboreal transformations I had been working on.