...the doorbell goes off. well, it's a buzzer, actually. and it's situated next to the light for the "backyard" area, and therefore directly under my window.
jump off my sofa/bed; lights, get a shirt on, fumble for keys. make it to the door, but none of the keys seem to work in the deadbolt. geez. upstairs again, get my car keys (which for sure has the front door key too), fumble that into the deadbolt and get out.
all the while, the buzzer stays on.
in this haze, i'm wondering what the hell this could be all about. heck, green car of unit "d" isn't even in, and i've parked on the street so that i don't have to be woken to let the green car park next to their unit.
make it to the gate...
...there's someone there, and he's managed to open the pedestrian gate. he grabs (rather unsteadily), a styro cup of take-out coffee from the ground and then does a double-take as he sees me standing there looking at him.
then he makes a sign with his free hand, index and middle finger up, but crossed one behind the other? as he makes his unsteady way past me, there's a whiff of a smell i associate with someone having drunk quite a bit of alcoholic beverages...
he goes to the door of unit "b," gets keys from somewhere on his person, and lets himself in.
...what the heck was the doorbell all about, then?
anyway, just to be sure, go into the street to check on the car.
get back into the apartment, have difficulty going to sleep.
...
fast forward to today. from makati, headed first to pilar to get a change of pants (there was a hole in a, shall we say, strategic, location on the pair i'd had on -- needed to exchange it for one that was less, um, hole-y). :-)
get into apartment, and pump motor goes on. eh? knock on doors, no sign of occupancy. got changed, and began to check the cr's out, to see if there's anything amiss with the plumbing. downstairs cr, check. upstairs, check. master bedroom cr -- the faucet in the sink is running; a minor stream, but more than a trickle. hmm. wonder how long it's been left this way. likely whole weekend. oh well.
leave apartment, locking up, just in time to see a strangely familiar figure leave unit "b". hmm.
by the time i get the car out to mercury, he's midway down the street and a tricycle has just ignored his hail.
stop the car and wait. as he passes, i ask if he's on his way out and he needs a lift.
thinking back, this must have been so strange; but we get past the oddness of it when i ask if he's from our street, and he mistakes me for the guy from unit "d", but i say i'm from unit "c" and off we go.
turns out that the 3:30am buzzer was his brother, louie (and he was plastered). this guy's name is rex, and they're all siblings in unit "b," which is really his sister's, but their mother doesn't want her all alone out here, hence the brotherly companionship.
rex does apologize for the early saturday rousing, and we're at the pilar exit to alabang zapote, and off he goes to wherever he works (which is in pasig, didn't ask specifically where).
and thus begins another day at work.
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