An Unexpected Visitor

Someone was knocking at the door. She was completely startled by the sound. She had lived here for only 3 weeks and with the exception of the cable guy who got her Internet and television up and running, she wasn't anticipating any visitors. She didn't know a soul in this new city she now called home, and that was the way she wanted it.

Her moving here was not entirely impulsive. She knew that running away from one's past wasn't solved by a change in geographic location, but it definitely helped. There was no constant reminder of happier times lurking on every corner. The furniture was the same, but the apartment felt different because he had never been in these rooms. What she needed was a fresh start. And she hoped that the loneliness that seemed to seep out of her every pore, would dissipate sooner rather than later.

She was still in the process of unpacking and the fact that her head had been deep inside the current box she was emptying, made the knocking sound slightly muffled. She was starting to think she had imagined it when it came again. A soft knock. It sounded like knuckles lightly rolling over the wooden door. Not overly insistent, but certainly persistent, because moments after the second knock, a third knock sounded. She wanted to ignore it and continue unpacking. She was afraid that if she stopped what she was doing, she would lose her momentum. After all, it had taken her this long to put everything in its place and she wanted to finish already. She knew she would feel much better once she was able to turn this place into the sanctuary she hoped it would be.

Who knocks on doors unannounced anymore anyway? She didn't want to deal with some neighborhood kid selling candy or magazine subscriptions or any other solicitor. If this had been the 1950's, she probably wouldn't have given it a second thought. If this had been a different time and place, and someone knocked on the door, she would have opened it. She would have opened the door, because if this had been the 1950's, she probably would have been married with a couple of kids tucked cozily in their beds, while her husband watched Dragnet or The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on television. The person knocking on the door would have been a neighbor dropping off a fresh baked pie or returning a cup of borrowed sugar.

But now, a flood of scenarios came cascading into her mind, and none of them were very pleasant. Door-to-door solicitors were not very common in this day of modern technology. And being a young woman, alone, and not feeling completely comfortable and confident in her new environment, she didn't want to take any chances. The 21^st century had made her paranoid. The heartbreak she was recovering from had made her sad. She simply didn't want to open the door to a stranger.

But then that rolling-knuckled knock came again. In a strange way, she thought it sounded non-threatening. "That's ridiculous," she thought. "How does a knock sound friendly? A knock is a knock." She supposed it wouldn't hurt to look through the peephole to see who was out there. She was sitting in the middle of her living room, barefoot, half ensconced in a box of books. She rose to her feet and lightly treaded toward the door. The peephole was very high and she needed to stand on her tiptoes to peer through it.

She strained to see through the small hole in the door. The dim lighting outside made it difficult for her to make out the shadowy figure. At first she thought that whoever had been at her door had given up and gone away. But now she realized that the person was looking down at the ground, so what she was seeing was the top of a head.

As he raised his head and directed his gaze toward the door, she felt a familiar flutter in the pit of her stomach. She turned away from the peephole and looked around at her new home. It was a lovely but not-yet-lived-in apartment. She had not yet taken the time to make her house a home. Now she wished she had.

She raised herself up onto her tiptoes again to make sure she wasn't hallucinating. His face was unmistakable. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She wanted to immediately clean up the newspapers that were strewn across the floor. In a matter of seconds, a million different thoughts ran through her head as to what she should do. But in the end, she knew exactly what she would do.

She opened the door.