Neighbors

A small story:
"I saw the new neighbors," I announced as I walked in from the street, deftly swerving around the cats curling around my ankles declaring I either make dinner or be dinner.

Consort looked up from a screen. "What are they like?"

"I didn't say I met them. I said I saw them.” Then, after a second, I added, "to be absolutely accurate, I can tell you they are both women and they know how to wave."

"You never talk to people," Consort observed, a touch sadly because my weirdness means he gets fewer dinner parties than he'd like. We have had more than I'd like.

I agreed that yes, Twitter, a long-term partner and two hangry cats fulfill my needs for social interaction but thought some clarification might be in order. "We didn't talk because I was in the trunk."

Having explained this thoroughly, I left the room. For some reason, he followed me.

"What?"

"I was. In. The. Trunk." I left that room.

Again, he followed. "You mean," he said, in a tone I call Please Let This Answer Be the One It Is, “You were getting something out of the trunk."

"No," I said, patiently. "I was in the trunk, getting into the car."

I went to take a shower. Fifteen minutes later, he was standing outside the bathroom door. I jumped.

"You startled me," I said, rewrapping my hair.

"Why were you in the trunk?" he said without preamble.

"To get into the car," I said.

I wish he'd stop rubbing the bridge of his nose like that. "Your car...has doors," he said.

"Several," I agreed.

"And yet," he said, "You chose to enter through the tr–"

"Wouldn't say I chose, exactly," I said. "I mean, I didn't make the lock thing happen."

We stood in the hallway, in the silence. He broke.

"What lock thing?"

"That thing I told you it's been doing," I said, then added, "I definitely told you about it."

"You most certainly did not," he said. "Because I am the one who deals with car stuff and you climbing through the trunk would have pushed this problem to the top of that list."

Fair. 

I thought about this a moment, then said, "Now that you mention it, I think I told myself."

"How would that even w–"

He consciously decided nothing useful existed in that answer. Again with the bridge-rubbing.

"What," he finally said. "Is happening with the locks?"

"I need raisins," I said.

He followed me to the kitchen; I poured some raisins into my hand, then my mouth. I chewed and swallowed and then picked up a cat and chatted with it.

"What," he repeated, "is going on with the locks?"

"Ugh, FINE," I said. "Sometimes the automatic button thing locks me in. Or out.”

"When that happens," I continued, "I realized I can override the trunk lock gizmo, so I crawl in, climb over to the front seat and drive away. Problem solved," I said, eyeing the raisins again. In my defense, it’s not really a trunk so much as the back of an SUV.

"THE PROBLEM IS NOT SOL–" 

He breathed. In. Out.

"Have you checked the child safety setting in the…?"

"Yes."

"Does it happen any particular time or place?"

"Not as far as I have been able to ascertain."

"How long has this been going on?" he asked. I ate some more raisins.

"I remember crawling past a wet beach towel in the trunk at one point so. I dunno...months?"

Bridge again.

"We have to take it in," Consort said firmly. I shook my head vigorously, leading to a brief interlude while I rewrapped my hair and had a few more raisins.

"No," I said, "Because it's just Troy and his mother's poodle."

Carefully, he poured a little wine into a juice glass. Then, after a long sip, "What?"

"You remember how his mother's poodle would stand in from of the TV when Troy was watching Saturday morning cartoons and Troy would yell for his mother to move her but by the time she got in the den, the poodle would have moved, making Troy look petty and insane," I said.

"And by Troy," he said, without inflection, "You mean your friend's ex-husband we haven't see in fifteen years."

"Yes," I said warmly, "It's a good story. It explains car-repair. Cars won't do that thing if Mom is in the room and by Mom I mean the repair guy."

"Of course." 

"So," he finally said, "Your plan was 'Tell yourself and only yourself about a problem, intermittently crawl through the ass-end of your car and then..."

"…Wait for it to fix itself or wear out and I get another car" I said proudly, because this was a flawless plan.

He's not going to have a nasal bridge if he keeps doing that. Silently, he turned towards where I keep my keys and grabbed them.

"It's not going to do it, you know," I said.

"Either it does it and I figure out what it is," he said, striding out. "Or I get in the car and keep driving and start a new life in Oregon."

"MORE RAISINS FOR ME, THEN!"

I went back in the bathroom to dry my hair and remembered that: a) the hair-dryer was doing that smoking thing and b) I had told the cats this fact.