Gone
Last Wednesday, on the evening before the Australia Day public holiday, I was sitting in the living room watching a DVD with a friend. Midway through the movie, The Flatmate dropped in. He's been housesitting for his sister and brother-in-law, so I've only seen him sporadically over the last three weeks. Still, I've had my hands full as I've had a friend of my parents staying in the spare room for a few days.
I say hi, and he says hi. Mindful that my houseguest's car is in The Flatmate's space in the garage while he's housesitting, I ask The Flatmate when he'll be moving back in, so I can tell my houseguest when to park his car somewhere else.
"I'm not moving back in," he says.
"Er, what?"
"I'm not moving back in," he repeats, with exactly the same air of genial blankness with which he makes all his statements.
I wait for something futher, but nothing comes. "Where are you going?" I ask.
"I'm moving into my sister's place."
"And, er, when's that?"
"Oh, tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!?"
"Yeah." There follows a long, and at least on my part stunned pause. "Oh, I brought over that DVD you wanted."
And off he trots. The next day I half-expect him to pop up at any moment to collect his stuff, but he doesn't make an appearance, and I begin to wonder if I've just misunderstood him. Maybe he meant that he was just staying at his sister's place longer than he'd expected, and the idea hadn't quite made it out into coherent communication. He has a brain that makes molassas look like the Jet D'Eau, after all.
But when I got home from work on Friday, his room had been cleaned out and his food was gone from the pantry. It appears he'd waited until he could be sure I wouldn't be at home.
Does that sound paranoid? Well, here's the kicker. He still had his keys and his garage door remote. I was going to go over last night and collect them, but I ran out of time, and I decided I'd just get around to it eventually. Then this morning I came out of my bedroom to discover them sitting on the hall table.
The thing is, they hadn't been on the hall table when I'd gone into my room five minutes earlier. I listened and I heard a car start up out on the street, then pull away.
The houseguest was in the spare room reading, and I'd been in my bedroom with the door shut getting dressed for work. Neither of us had heard a thing. The Flatmate must have let himself in, very quietly, and left the remote and the keys, then stolen out again. He must have known that someone was home, because both cars and the scooter were fully visible in the garage, and he didn't bother to lock the front door or the front gate on his way out.
I still don't know what's going on. Did I do something awful? Did I merely do something annoying? Did his sister offer him a cheaper deal? Did he want to be closer to work? Is he just deeply, deeply enamoured with his brother-in-law's widescreen plasma TV?
I received 36 hours' notice and no explanation, and it doesn't look like I'm going to be any wiser any time soon.
I say hi, and he says hi. Mindful that my houseguest's car is in The Flatmate's space in the garage while he's housesitting, I ask The Flatmate when he'll be moving back in, so I can tell my houseguest when to park his car somewhere else.
"I'm not moving back in," he says.
"Er, what?"
"I'm not moving back in," he repeats, with exactly the same air of genial blankness with which he makes all his statements.
I wait for something futher, but nothing comes. "Where are you going?" I ask.
"I'm moving into my sister's place."
"And, er, when's that?"
"Oh, tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!?"
"Yeah." There follows a long, and at least on my part stunned pause. "Oh, I brought over that DVD you wanted."
And off he trots. The next day I half-expect him to pop up at any moment to collect his stuff, but he doesn't make an appearance, and I begin to wonder if I've just misunderstood him. Maybe he meant that he was just staying at his sister's place longer than he'd expected, and the idea hadn't quite made it out into coherent communication. He has a brain that makes molassas look like the Jet D'Eau, after all.
But when I got home from work on Friday, his room had been cleaned out and his food was gone from the pantry. It appears he'd waited until he could be sure I wouldn't be at home.
Does that sound paranoid? Well, here's the kicker. He still had his keys and his garage door remote. I was going to go over last night and collect them, but I ran out of time, and I decided I'd just get around to it eventually. Then this morning I came out of my bedroom to discover them sitting on the hall table.
The thing is, they hadn't been on the hall table when I'd gone into my room five minutes earlier. I listened and I heard a car start up out on the street, then pull away.
The houseguest was in the spare room reading, and I'd been in my bedroom with the door shut getting dressed for work. Neither of us had heard a thing. The Flatmate must have let himself in, very quietly, and left the remote and the keys, then stolen out again. He must have known that someone was home, because both cars and the scooter were fully visible in the garage, and he didn't bother to lock the front door or the front gate on his way out.
I still don't know what's going on. Did I do something awful? Did I merely do something annoying? Did his sister offer him a cheaper deal? Did he want to be closer to work? Is he just deeply, deeply enamoured with his brother-in-law's widescreen plasma TV?
I received 36 hours' notice and no explanation, and it doesn't look like I'm going to be any wiser any time soon.
posted by Blandwagon at 7:01 PM
3 Comments:
How very odd. Hopefully you'll find out what happened, eventually.
It sounds like he was irritated that his unrequited latent homosexual feelings would never be returned by yourself.
I see this kind of thing all the time at the psychiatry office.
He was a gutless loser, who couldn't face up to taking responsibility for his actions or holding a face-to-face conversation with you about them.
I was in a share house once where we had a housemate whose participation in the household dwindled dramatically after the first month. Eventually she was so rarely seen that we had to leave a note on her door to say that we were giving her a month's notice.
Out of her room at 7.30am, 3 seconds walk to bathroom, 10 minutes in bathroom, 5 seconds to the front door, home at 11.30pm, 5 seconds walk between front door and bathroom, 10 minutes in bathroom, 3 seconds walk to bedroom, repeat 7 days per week. No kitchen, no lounge, no laundry, nothing.
One day she left us a note arguing that she should pay less than one-fifth of the $30 gas bill because she wasn't using the stove at all. We tried to find her to talk about it, but in the end we left her a note asking her to go away.
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