I was positive I had left it like this:
Being a single girl in a very urban milieu, I consistently check that the doors are locked before I leave the apartment or go to bed at night.
Now, the first thing that popped into my head was:
Oh God, if there's an intruden in this apartment, that would be SO annoying. I have stuff to get done and I'm tired.
A more appropriate response would probably have been to knock on my neighbour's door, explain the situation, and just have them leave their door open while I checked the apartment. I did, however, check all the hiding places in the apartment. Mostly because I figured that if this potential intruder was going to disrupt my evening, I'd rather it be sooner than later. My apartment is not huge, but there are five large closets, any of which could easily hide one or more adult-sized individuals. As expected, I found nothing out of the ordinary. Even my laptop, which was lying in plain sight in the livingroom, looked untouched. I still had this unsettling feeling of someone's been here. But, I figured maybe I was just being a spaz. Maybe I did forget the door just this once and the wind was so strong it blew open the bolt that keeps it shut and turned the key? Suuuure... Anyhow, I wasn't going to let it bother me more than that. I was reassured that I was the only person in my apartment, and locked all the doors.
While sitting in my livingroom later that night, I heard a bing. The kind of bing that might be caused by a doorbell. My doorbell had never worked since I moved in. In fact, I had been waiting to hear back from the maintenance guy as to when it would be fixed for weeks. But, I hadn't heard this particular bing before. I poked my head out the door just in case, and noticed my friend was standing at the bottom of the stairwell waiting for me to let her in. And that is how I figured out that the mystery intruder was the maintenance guy who said he would call before dropping by.
