Tales from the Davis Ghetto

Last night April came over for dinner and brought Sparta. Getting April's consent to pose for a picture normally ranges in difficulty between getting Julia Roberts to do a nude scene and getting Julia Roberts to give you her kidney. I was thrilled, therefore, to be allowed a few shots of her with the puppy. Sparta was very well behaved and discreet, which is important since technically I could be evicted for having her over. She was clearly anxious about being away from her brother, though, as they've spent about 3 hours apart since they were born. Down the street at Alex's office Quintus waited by the door the whole time till we returned Sparta to him. They both relaxed then, though relaxing reminded Quintus that he needed to pee. Alex's feelings about his job are such that he only half cared.

The evening was marred somewhat by its finale, when we discovered that April's car window had been smashed and her laptop ganked. There were a few other victims in the parking lot outside Alex's office, including a gaggle of sorority girls. They were very cordial, and had even taken pictures of April's car before we arrived, just in case we might want them. While waiting for the police we chatted and I learned that they were from the sorority whose singing I've been known to bitch about. One of the girls ran down her list of missing items. "The weird thing is that they took my Michael Kors purse, but I had a Michael Kors jacket in the back seat and they didn't touch it," she told us, genuinely perplexed. "Well, I guess they're not gay," I offered. In retrospect that was very woolly thinking, as we had no evidence that the thieves were men.

The officer who answered the call was named York. I suppressed the urge to ask him what his rank was. He was clearly overworked, but listened carefully and took a lot of time searching for the missing items in the area in case anything had been discarded. He told us that car alarms can only detect repeated motion, so if a thieve makes just one clean grab nothing will happen. Apparently there have been a lot of these robberies recently around town. It's a pretty safe area, so folks aren't usually too tight with the security, myself included. Even junkies would pass over my computer anyway; given its age and condition it’s unworthy of theft.

The real trouble for April was that her work laptop had confidential information on it, which in her field is a really really big deal. York pointed out that these were not master criminals likely to be interested in investigational cancer drugs, but it's still going to be a big schlep for her. She reasoned that it could have been worse. If she had actually been there someone could have gotten hurt. In my opinion, it would have been the other guy. April's affect is extremely mild, but a few of us have witnessed what, borrowing from Friends, I call going Red April. I am deeply saddened to have missed the company dinner at which she told one of our then-coworkers that the reason the coworker was so obsessed with her weight was that the Thai ideal of beauty was a little girl. I was there, however, when she dressed down the mailman for doing something inappropriate with her samples. This was a 30-ish man over six feet tall, but after that he would only deliver to the other side of the office from her desk, and always peeked through the windows to check for her before he came in. Really the thieves are lucky they escaped with their testicles intact. Or ovaries--dammit!