I heard someone on the other side of my front door today, trying the door knob (locked), testing, trying to get in, then pushing on the doorbell that is held on with glue and not wired up to ring anything that I put up under a sign that says "PRESS FOR MEAT DEPT - WAIT HERE FOR MEAT" that was lifted from a supermarket that I am no longer welcome in.

When I hear the door rattling just a little, I know that someone is out there pushing that doorbell, and they don't know it is just reconnaissance device that tells me that I don't know them and they don't know me. As is my custom, I don't respond much to these unannounced visitations.

Sometimes I wait a minute and if I can sense that there is still a presence on the other side of the door I will grunt out some cro-magnic sound and see what they have to say to that, but today was not a social day so I just kept working.

But (as always) after a while I get curious and start to wonder just what I might have missed out on, what fine ship has sailed without me. So I opened the door to see if perhaps someone has left me a package, or maybe something to eat, or as has happened on more than one occasion a mysterious object that I never learn the origins of.

One time I heard someone start to turn the knob, and they turned it till they felt it was locked and stopped and they didn't let go. I waited almost a minute and when I opened the door I found a sheriff come to serve a subpoena to my neighbor. He had closed the door at the bottom of my windowless and lightless stairway on his way in and was standing in the dark using his flashlight to read a long definition of schizophrenia that I used to have posted on my door under the drawing of a diseased brain. He still had his hand on the door knob when I opened it.

But today when I opened the door there was a woman standing in the hall holding in her hand a tiny receipt that she was staring at intently not seeming to notice that the door had opened or I was standing in front of her.

Finally, I asked, "can I help you?" and after a while she looked up and in an aggravated tone said,

"This is the meat bell, right?".

"Yes," I said, "this is the meat bell."

"I rang the meat bell and nobody answered. This is the meat bell, right? I rang it and nobody answered."

"Yes," I said. "This is the meat bell, but they moved away a long time ago and they don't answer the meat bell anymore."

"Oh," she said and returned her stare to the receipt, not moving or speaking for a very long time, before turning and walking back down the stairs.