Locked Out In Moscow

This is a place you don't want to be: locked out in Moscow.

Not unless you have somewhere else to go. And last Friday, I really didn't.

And it's spring. Can you imagine what might have resulted if this had happened in January?

Okay, for the time being, no more about the weather in Moscow. It's spring, it's warm, you know that. I've spent my last three blog postings talking about it.

Lucky girl. I didn't even have a bench.

Well...I'm sharing a two-room flat with a young couple. The guy is an American, and his name is Dan Mitchell. He's not really a man, but more of a fat, whining, miserable old woman. Dan Mitchell. He's from Florida, and he is very, very fat. He eats too much, and he reads nothing but comic books. Why this big, fat, ignorant slob is teaching English is beyond me. How he found a girlfriend of any kind, much less Russian, is also beyond me. But he lives with his Russian girlfriend, and for the moment, I'm sleeping on their sofa. I think we're going to be moving to a larger place later, where I can have my own room. For the moment I'm sleeping on the sofa. It's okay. It's comfortable. It's actually more comfortable than the sofa at my sister's place back in California. It's just a sofa, not a spring-loaded hide-a-bed, so I'm not sleeping with metal bars against my back. It's okay. Really.

My problem with this apartment is not its small size, nor is it the fact that I'm sleeping in the sitting room and the three of us are sharing a kitchen the size of two broom closets back-to-back.

No. My problem is the front door.

That damned front door.

I really envy our next-door neighbor in this building. He just got a few front door, with new locks. Lucky stiff. Because the problem with the door on our apartment is the locks. They're old, they're grumpy and sometimes they won't open. When I arrived here last month, my new boss, Robert, brought me here himself and then ... I sat on my luggage in the stairwell for a good 25 minutes while he struggled to get the door open. My roommate had had a new key made, and the lock didn't like that key. Robert did finally get the door open, but it was a taste of things to come.

Which brings us to last Friday. my roommate had classes to teach and he also had to take Alissa to the airport -- she went to London for a few days. So he was gone for a long time -- all day and most of the night. And that's where I got into trouble.

Around midafternoon I went to the local produkti -- the Russian version of a convenience store -- to buy a couple of things. When I returned to the apartment, the lock on the door would not open. It would not respond to my key, in fact I couldn't even get the key all the way inserted. I tried and tried, shook the door, rattled the key...no dice. This key was not going in and this door was not going to open. Nyet.

Locked out. What to do? I had no idea when my roommate would return.

Well ... I decided to "go downtown," meaning down to Kuznetski Most, right around the corner from the Bolshoi Theater, where there are lots of cafes, shops, restaurants and such. I thought I would just kill some time until Dan returned. You know, sit in a cafe. It's been done.

There's a little place down there called Kamchatka. It's right across the street from цум, the big department store. I like this cafe because of its location and also because there's a toilet downstairs which they don't care if you use, even if you're not a customer. But I was a customer on Friday; I bought a glass of beer and sat down outside.

Presently a young Russian guy came along and seated himself at my table, all of the others being full. His name turned out to be "Slava," and he spoke pretty good English. We started chatting, drank some more beer, and a little later his wife Elena, who works over at цум, joined us. Elena speaks no English, but Slava didn't mind playing interpreter, and we all got along fine. In fact I have some new friends -- last Sunday we all got together and spent the afternoon in a park.

So I sat there with Slava and Elena for a while, then excused myself to come back to the apartment and either (a) Finally get that door open, or (b) wait for Dan to come back.

In truth neither eventuality was forthcoming. The door still would not open, and there was no sign of my roommate. I had a newspaper with me, a copy of the English-language Moscow Times. But I had neither my glasses, nor my cellphone, nor my watch. All were locked in the apartment. I can't read without my glasses, I can't call for help without a cellphone and I can't tell time without a watch.

In other words I was, as my older sister would say, "Eff'ed." (Carla won't say "fuck" unless she's mad at me, and I've warned her about it.)

Well...this is the kind of situation for which they created vodka. If you're going to have to sleep on the ground, or the stoop, using your shoes as a pillow, booze is your friend, and I don't want to hear any moralizing about it.

I went back to the produkti and bought a small bottle of Staraya Marka. I then proceeded to sit on the damned stoop and slowly consume most of it.

The next thing I knew it was 3:30 a.m. and here came my roommate (at last).

"I'm locked out," I said, boozily.

Dan got the door open. Yeah, his key works. Thank God for small favors.

I spent most of the next day sleeping. On the sofa, not the stoop.

But you know, for some reason....I just don't trust that door.