I think someone else is sleeping in my building.
A few months ago I started to notice a van parked in front of the building at odd hours. I’d only see it in the evenings, and it was always parked in front of the same business. (For the sake of anonymity, I’ll call it a watch repair shop. Trust me when I say it’s just as benign.) This gray van began to show up every night. I’d pretend to go home after work and it’d be there, vacant, predictable. Meanwhile, the watch repair shop would always be open well past dark, its door wide open to accommodate wandering eyes.
It’s as plain as the nose on your face.
The expression was always big in my family. My uncle might use it to describe a seemingly obvious attempt at converting a 3rd down. My mom might mutter it under her breath as my dad asked (for the third night in a row) where the ice cream scoop was. I thought about the phrase a lot as a boy, wondering about the absurdity of the words. You can’t even see your nose, I’d think to myself, going cross-eyed trying to writhe the thing into perspective. But it’s right there… I just didn’t get it. I literally embodied the meaning of the phrase.
As an adult, it has morphed into a matter of fascination. Hiding the obvious in plain view. Testing the boundaries of perception. Almost every scenario therein is mesmerizing. If something is done with confidence, it is almost universally accepted.
I started to notice the man in the watch repair shop during business hours. He was never working, just pacing around. Sometimes talking to the shop owner, an older Spanish man in baggy clothes, or pacing around outside, smoking a cigarette. The man fit the profile of a workplace dweller better than I did. A 40-something year old Eastern European man with a round belly, strutting confidently in his basketball shorts, plugs of body hair sprouting through and around his wife-beater.
Five minutes after I saw him and I’d already constructed a back story for the guy. Laid off from his job at the warehouse, Dominic broke the lease for his apartment in Little Armenia and took to sleeping on his mother’s pullout couch in Sun Valley living room. After failing to follow through on agreed-upon chores like fixing the faulty shower head or tending to the aging molding on the garage window, and following one too many nights spending his severance at the corner pub, Dominic’s mom had kicked him out. With no place to go, Dominic turned to his only friend, Sergio, for help. For a small fee, Sergio would let him sleep in the cot in the back. But only if he promised to keep the place secure. After all, the watch repair shop was most definitely a money-laundering front for Sergio’s crack-dealing enterprise.
Clearly I’m prone to a little prejudgment myself.
Putting that aside, I began over the coming weeks to simply observe. And what I’ve found is a consistent “Dominic” presence on the premises. His van is present until about 6:30 in the morning (evidence of a morning shift!) and he can often be seen seated in the dark, chatting on his phone in front of the watch repair shop window. This is well after Sergio leaves. I know this because Sergio’s CRV is absent come 9pm.
Dominic appears to have no shame. And no one is the wiser.
Except for me. I admire the guy, or at least my version of what he is. As plain as day and right under our noses.
So for now it seems as if I’m not the only inhabitant in the building. It’s a budding little community, a nocturnal sanctuary for domestic misfits. Maybe one day we’ll run into each other and I’ll put the question to him. Ask for the truth behind his story. Until then, I’ll admire his feat from afar. Without having to go cross-eyed doing it.
-TOH
