The Locksmith

Saturday night. My husband returned from shul and tried to turn the key in the lock —the same key he had used earlier in the day. But the key would not turn. He knocked. I let him in. I tried my key. We tried the two extra keys we keep on hand.

“Broken,” I texted the manager of the building. “Sorry to bother you on a weekend night, but our keys won’t open the door.”

“Your problem,” the manager answered. “You’ve been living here for three years. (The building is less than four years old). “Not management’s problem. You’ll have to call a locksmith.”

We knew that a locksmith on weekends would be an expensive ordeal. The alternative would mean leaving the door unlocked until Monday.  And we had out of town plans for Sunday.

We called a locksmith.

It was a little difficult to understand him on the phone. He was driving. He gave his name which I did not catch and he had an accent which I could not place through the background noise. But he was prompt. At our door within an hour.

Young—maybe twenty something—although he looked eighteen. Honest, capable. An Israeli from Tel Aviv.

As he wrote out the bill, he told us he has been in the States for one year. His parents visited him recently. “They haven’t seen me since I arrived. I’m learning English.”

“Do you have family here?

“No family.”

“Friends?”

“Yes, friends.”

He declined our offer of cake but accepted a glass of water.

Why, I wondered had he wound up so far from home? Maybe his mother and father sent him here to escape the war. Maybe he is older than I imagined and has already paid his dues. Maybe he has siblings serving at this moment. Perhaps he needed a break from the constant fear and worry—his or more likely his parents’.

Whatever the reason, I felt compelled to tell him to drive safely on his way home. I would have taken his phone number to invite him to dinner sometime. But I thought better of it. He is locksmith. This is his job.

I saved the bill though with his name scrawled at the bottom.