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After another nasal congested day, I came home from work hoping to dear sweet baby Jeebus that my fridge door stayed close for the entire 8 hours that I’d been away. Sometimes it likes to surprise me and peek open a crack just enough to warm up all my “Keep refrigerated” food to a balmy 22^o C.

Oh thank God, it’s still closed.

I wonder if other people have these problems. This morning, I woke up at 5AM, sat down in the chair behind my front door, and stared out the peephole. Some people might wake up before the crack of dawn and go jogging; or maybe take their dog for walk; or even do some yoga. Not me, I had more important things on hand: I was on a stakeout.

The last few weeks my newspaper, when it actually comes, is typically flung down the hallway to almost but not quite, land at my doorstep. I imagined my newspaper boy to be handicapped. He, either missing one or both of his legs, clearly couldn’t walk the 10 paces from the elevator to my apartment door. I should be so lucky that he might throw it in the general direction of my apartment.

Normally, the entertainment section is strewn decoratively along the stucco painted walls, finding itself resting along the baseboards. The financial section, rattled by it’s abrupt awakening, sullenly sits upside down with its corners sadly curled beneath the full weight of its section. The rest of the newspaper’s pages are busy flapping in the air from the current coming out of the crack under the door that leads to the stairwell.

My apartment is right beside the door that leads to the stairwell.

Normally, that’s what I’m greeted with when I wake up and open my front door in the morning. But recently, when I wake up and open my door, all that is there is a lonely, bare carpet and a chilling wind. Where are my artfully strewn newspapers? Artful, indeed. Much as one would toss a bucket of paint on a canvas, and call it art, the newspaper boy tosses my newspaper high up in the air only to land in a palette of random black and white pages.

Okay, I suppose it might be an honest mistake. Maybe my neighbour, accidentally picked up my copy of the Province thinking it was his own. I remember this one time, I walked up to the 9th floor and took Room 907’s newspaper by mistake thinking that it was mine. It’s not entirely unthinkable that I couldn’t let this one time pass.

But then it happened again the next day. And the next. Could my neighbours be stealing it? Is this a apartment-wide conspiracy? I wouldn’t dare accuse my neighbours outright! For one thing, I’d have to learn how to say, “Stop stealing my newspaper, you freak!” in Korean. Nearly all of my neighbours are Korean, except for the old man that seems to have lived his entire life in a tanning bed. His orange skin could only have become that wrinkled from either a direct result of ultra violet rays, or endless summer days on Wreck Beach.

Five days passed, and still I had no paper. I called the Province repeatedly, using my angry voice, but they still wouldn’t take me seriously. It’s difficult to sound angry when you’re on a cell phone and you keep losing reception. Between the static and the “I’m totally pissed that– what? I can’t hear you, hold on. Okay, how ’bout now? Yeah, so I’m totally pissed!”

I finally made a request to them, “Can’t you possibly mark or label my newspaper with my name, put it in a vacuumed sealed bag, wrap it in opaque paper and then hang it on my door?” The answer from these call centers is never comforting, so I decided to take matters in my own hands. I’d catch them in the act.

So there it was, that I’d wake up just around the time that my paraplegic newspaper boy would be coming around with my newspaper. 5:30 rolled by, and still no newspaper. Eventually, at about twenty to six in the morning, a middle-aged, paunchy, dark-skinned man came out of the elevator. Imagine my surprise when I realized he wasn’t a paraplegic boy at all, but just a fat and lazy old man. With a flagrant underhand toss, he threw a newspaper directly at my door. Through the peephole’s fish-eye, I watched the paper sail high into the air, coming closer and closer, only to fall 2 feet short of my door. The bait is laid, I thought. Now, just wait for the mouse to take the cheese.

My eyes drooped heavily, as I am generally accustomed to waking up 5 hours after sunrise, not before, and I decided to blink. Blink. Blink blink. Suddenly, my eyes opened to the sound of a door slamming. Oh no! I fell asleep! I deftly wiped the spittle of saliva from my chin, and looked around to make sure no one saw me drooling. Oh right, I’m at home. I peered out through the peephole and saw the neighbour locking his door! I yanked open my door, to confront him, but he had no paper, and I had no pants.

He afforded a brief side-long glance in my direction, and I squinted my eyes at him (mostly because I didn’t have my glasses on). I made a show of looking for my newspaper, and slowly backed into my room, closing my door. With no evidence, it would make no sense to accuse him now. The next day, the paper was back in its usual chaotic self, and it was never a more welcomed sight.