BREAK-IN

“One morning last week I accidentally locked myself out of the house before my therapy session with Beth, and, in no mood for hassles, I smashed in the back door with my shoulder, tearing the latch out of the doorframe and ripping off the six-foot strip of molding that held the chain lock.

“Friday night I’d laundered some money—well, a check, actually—in the pocket of a pair of jeans; it came out as lint all over the wash. When my bank statement arrived, I balanced my checkbook, only to find I was $20 overdrawn. Which meant I had to take a trip to Danville to get my employer, Adam’s dad, to write me a new check. My gas tank was empty, however, and I only had a dime in my wallet. Then a stroke of inspiration—I remembered that in a basket I had accumulated a mess of pennies. I stacked them in piles of ten, bound them with masking tape, and headed for Jiffy to buy a dollar of premium.

“When I got home many hours later, Meredith told me, breathless and bug-eyed, that she’d called out the police—that the apartment had been broken into. ‘I would have left you a note,’ I winced, ‘but I didn’t have time.’”