Kamran was already mad at me. The night before, I had been exhausted from walking around Brooklyn with a visiting friend all day, and his good mood was really pinching my nerves, so I’d laughed when he’d stubbed his toe on my suitcase, which was still sitting in the middle of his floor since coming back from Ohio, and I’d said, “THAT should bring your mood down a little!” It was a joke, but he hadn’t liked it. But I’d thought it was funny and refused to apologize.

There was also the problem of the fly that had inexplicably shown up in his apartment days before and was insisting on landing on our heads while we ate. (And everyone knows flies poop every time they land.) A fly swatter was in order.

So we walked up the street the six blocks to the hardware store, which wouldn’t have been a problem had my feet not still been burning from all of the walking I’d done that weekend. So in addition to being mad at me, Kamran was also having to walk ve-e-e-e-ery slowly so I could keep up with him. Except that he was impatient to get to the hardware store (and then the grocery store and the Middle Eastern place where he wanted to get dinner), so he kept walking ahead of me and then stopping and waiting, which was making me anxious, which was making me try to walk faster, which was making my feet hurt more.

We got to the hardware store, and he hastily asked the guy at the counter where the fly swatters were without saying thank you, and then he hastily asked a second employee for the same directions without saying thank you, and then he grabbed a fly swatter and handed it to me to bring to the counter, all of which is very unlike him. So now I was in a bad mood, too.

And it was then that Kamran realized he’d forgotten his wallet. And I never bring my wallet to the grocery store, because he never lets me pay, anyway, so we had the guy hold our precious fly swatter at the cash register while we went back to Kamran’s.

And it was then that Kamran realized he’d forgotten his keys. And I thought it was soooooo ironic, because I’m always pushing him out the door whenever we go anywhere, and he’s always complaining that I don’t give him time to get his wallet and keys, but I’d specifically hung back that night in order to not add insult to injury in light of the whole stubbed-toe situation.

So we walked/hobbled back to his building in the cold and asked the doorman for the spare key. It didn’t work. We went back downstairs and asked if there was another one. There wasn’t. We wiggled and jiggled the crap out of that thing. We tried popping the lock with the keyring. We tried being rough with it and then gentle with it. It didn’t work.

In my infinite wisdom, I asked the doorman if there’s any specific locksmith the building uses, and he took it upon himself to call one for us. I didn’t ask him about the cost, because of course he was going to call the cheapest and best locksmith for us, right? We sat in the lobby in silence for ten minutes until the guy showed up, and he replaced the lock in five minutes.

For $360.

Payable in cash.

Immediately.

He’d walk to the ATM with us.

And then we had to walk/hobble back to the hardware store and grocery store after that still. And then Kamran asked me to finally take my suitcase back to my apartment, but it had lost a wheel when my cabbie yanked it from his trunk and got it caught on something, so it was lopsided and scraped the floor wherever I moved it, and I knew it was going to be the biggest pain to get back to Brooklyn, so I cried for two hours.

So it was basically the worst night in KamKat history. But we came out of it not being mad at each other somehow, so there’s that.