Two Unlocked Doors

For as many weasels in the world, most of them online, there seem to me to still be a greater number of trusting souls intending to do good when they get around to it. For some reason I’ve been thinking about the two houses I went to in Portland, Oregon, one sunny February afternoon. That month in Portland, the roses are out and spring has long come. (Although it does rain on them quite a bit for all this glory). I was in my middle years in Bible College where we mostly prayed and read the Bible. When I ran out of the money there were quite a few individuals in the city who had called the college for temporary employees to go do this or that for them. I was on the domestic rota. This particular Thursday afternoon, the assignment I had drawn told me to take a bus across the city to a fancy neighborhood, let myself in, tidy up, start dinner and wait for the kids to come home from school. Eventually the homeowner would appear and pay me.  Portland isn’t a small town so I rode quite a while, still sleepy from getting up fivish to clean the toilets in the dining hall.

I got off at the address, a swanky new house in an upscale complex. Sure enough, the front door was unlocked. Inside was all high-end stero, tv, kitchen appliances, plus carpeting, lovely furniture – but it was VERY tidy. I looked down at the address again. Oh no! I was supposed to be  at this house number, all right, but in EAST Portland, not west. So there I stood, in the middle of the sunken living room, wondering what would happen if the owner walked in and saw me.  I ran quickly for the front door and quietly let myself out, hoping the neighbours hadn’t yet called the police, wondering if the little piece of paper would be enough to exonerate me, hoping that nothing had gone missing in the meantime by someone more nefarious than I was. A bus happened to be coming headed in the right direction and I clamoured on and rode the same interminable distance easterly, got off, and there was a very nice neighbourhood – and, what were the odds? -  a similar unlocked house also loaded with everything anyone on gods green earth could want – except it was messy. Someone had left their boots in the hall, their coat thrown over a chair, a cereal bowl on the coffee table, a coffee cup (nice china) beside the lamp. The kid’s bedrooms were a fright but nicely decorated under the clothes and toys strewn around.
I put on my apron and since I was late, steamrolled right through the three bedroom setup, putting on the dinner and setting the timer as I picked up, folded, replaced, vacuuming with one hand while I dusted with the other. Promptly at 3:15 two perfectly blaise kids came in the back door, threw down their school stuff, leaving a little trail of belongings behind them as they grabbed their cookies and milk and gravitated to the tv. It seemed to be completely normal for them to come home to a stranger picking up behind them.
I wondered it there was just such a stranger doing the same thing at the other house I’d been to earlier? Was this the generally approved system in these high-end homes? The family obviously did no picking up for themselves. I went one more week and there was the identical chaos, spread out all over an otherwise nice home, the same clothes lying on the floor, the same school stuff in the kitchen. The family were delighted with what I did and wanted me to keep coming permanently but some scheduling made it impossible and I never went back after that.
But I often wondered what would’ve happened if someone had questioned what I was doing there, so obviously out of place with the luxury living. Or when any of these people learned the hard way about locking your doors? Or even used the scenario as a setup for something or other. A body left lying around and someone needed to be the fall guy? It was the mid sixties and Portland, at least in the posh places, remained a trusting little enclave well into the seventies, I think. But at the time, the instructions and the invisible owners seemed as surreal as a Dali painting.

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