break-in success

I awoke to a leg swinging across my torso. It was coming from - the window? Something was amiss.

"What the fuck?" I shouted. I elbowed Mike in the ribs. He didn't wake up. Great. Here I am, naked in bed, with some stranger climbing in the window over me. I instinctively pulled the sheet up over my breasts and sat up.

"Nicole?" the intruder asked. He pulled his leg back out of the window and replaced it with his head.

"Who the fuck are you?" I elbowed Mike again. He rolled over and noticed the latest addition to his room.

"Oh. Sorry. I'm Nicole's friend. Nicole got locked out. I was just going to let her in." The intruder swung his leg back up through the window frame. Clearly, this intruder was inebriated. Or just an idiot.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mike said.

"I'm going to go let Nicole in."

"Get the hell out of my window," Mike said.

"But what about Nicole?" he asked, as if he were the only one capable of walking down two flights of stairs to open the door.

"We'll let her in. Just get out of here."

The intruder slunk back onto the third-floor deck, over the railing and, I assume, back down to the ground. Or at least Mike didn't encounter him in the hallway or coming out of one of the downstairs neighbors' apartments.

Nicole apologized about the intruder. She had sent him home. Or tried to. He clearly wasn't very good at following instructions.

She thought we'd changed the locks. We thought she was some obnoxious kid ringing the doorbell repeatedly an hour earlier. Like those pesky car alarms, we cursed at the doorbell irritably, dismissed it as simply an annoyance, and went back to bed.

Moral of the story, kids: Don't assume every 3 a.m. doorbell will draw you out to a bag of flaming dog poo. It might bring an intruder through your window instead.