Did Someone Really Try to Break into Our Bedroom

It's never good when the doorbell rings at 3 a.m. But there it is. Sarah, my girlfriend, sleeps through it. Our bedroom is on the ground floor and faces the street, and we sleep with our heads adjacent to one of the front windows, so the late-night caller is standing only 12 inches away, separated from us by a flimsy curtain, a screen and a few cast-iron security bars. Fuck, I think groggily. He was probably listening to my snoring before he rang the bell.

"Yo," the man says softly.

Double fuck. Sarah opens her eyes and I immediately signal her to hush. She nods and we both listen in silence. He's scratching at the far window now.

"What do we do?" whispers Sarah.

"Sshhh," I say. I'm hoping that if we keep quiet, he'll leave and we can go back to sleep.

He returns to the window behind our heads. There is sound like a screwdriver or a knife scuffing the metal window frame, and then our screen is being lifted. A hand reaches inside.

"Hey!" I say, pulling aside the curtain. Our visitor is young, black and dressed in fashionably baggy clothes.

"Yo," he says again, quickly withdrawing his hand.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Is Mike here?"

"Mike who?"

"Mike Johnson."

"He don't live here," I say, intentionally mangling my syntax to make myself sound?what??tougher? More street?

"Oh, he upstairs?" the young man says.

"I don't know. You got the wrong place," I say.

He turns and leaves, as if suddenly remembering he has an appointment somewhere else. I'm all set to forget about it and go back to sleep, but Sarah's wide awake?and terrified.

"I want to call the cops," she says.

Oh shit. My hippie parents taught me to blindly trust everybody, including guys who reach into your bedroom window at 3 in the morning. And the last thing I wanna do is involve the pigs.

"The cops won't do anything," I say. "Besides, he was probably just some guy who had the wrong apartment. Let's go back to sleep."

"I'm not sleeping tonight," Sarah says. "I'm really scared. He was trying to break into our bedroom. What if he comes back?"

"He's not coming back," I say. "Besides, if he were gonna rob our apartment, why would he ring the doorbell first?"

"He was probably just seeing if anyone was home!" Sarah says.

"No, no. They never do that at night," I say sensibly. "They ring the doorbell during the day when people are at work. The whole point of robbing a place at night is that you do it while people are sleeping, and you don't wake them up."

"But how do you know?" Sarah says. "I think we should call the cops."

"The cops will just come in here and ask a bunch of questions and keep us awake all night," I say.

"But I'm already awake!" Sarah says.

For whatever reason, my sympathies are with our visitor. Poor guy. Tired. Drunk. Looking for his friend's crib so he can rest his weary bones. Also, I don't want to be the white guy in the mostly black neighborhood who runs to the cops at the slightest provocation. But Sarah won't let it rest. Her tendency to overreact is clashing with my tendency to do the opposite.

"Calling the cops won't accomplish anything," I say. "The guy's already long gone."

"But I think I'll feel better if we call," Sarah says. "I've never had anything like this happen before, and I'm really scared."

It's true. She just moved to Brooklyn from suburban Connecticut. I'm from Miami and have had my house robbed a half-dozen times. Besides, I'm really sleepy.

"Come on. We'll get up and watch tv or something until you calm down, then we'll go back to bed," I say.

"I don't feel safe here anymore."

"We can sleep in the living room," I suggest.

"No. I'm not sleeping at all tonight."

"Fine," I say grouchily. "If you wanna call the cops, you go ahead and do it."

"You're making me feel like I'm being a baby?but I'm really scared. We have to do something."

"There's nothing we can do," I say. "The cops would be useless in this situation. I don't even think the guy actually committed a crime."

"But his hand was in our window!"

Finally, I call 911, if only to calm down my girlfriend. A woman answers and mumbles something I don't quite understand.

"Um, this isn't an immediate emergency," I blather, "but some guy just rang our doorbell and then opened our screen window."

"What borough is your emergency in," the woman repeats, laughing.

"Oh, um, Brooklyn."

I give her the story and she says someone will be there soon. Fifteen minutes later, someone is. By this time it's been almost an hour since the "incident." The perp could be on a flight to Cleveland by now.

"I'll talk to them," I say to Sarah.

"No, I want to," she says, pushing past me out the front door.

Two cops, one white, one Hispanic. Sarah and I tag-team to get the story out. Our delivery is a little rushed and out of sequence, but we state all the pertinent details. Except one. "Oh, he did ring our doorbell first," I casually remark at the very end, hoping to maybe exonerate my sensitive friend who lost his way.

"He rang your doorbell?" says the white cop. "He was probably just seeing if anyone was home."

The Hispanic cop nods in agreement.

"See, I told you so!" Sarah says. "I watch Law & Order!"

The cops laugh, and assure us that the bars on our windows are strong, and that our apartment is "pretty well fortified." We go inside and try to sleep, our heads still inches from the open window. After a couple hours' tossing and turning, we manage to drift off. Sarah rises at 6:30 and goes to work as usual.

I wake up at 10, make some coffee and think, Holy shit! He could've slit my fucking throat!

If it happens again, that hand is mine.