For generations, we have buried keys in the garden or flower pots or under statuary or left them with a neighbor. Fear of being locked out of our house runs in my family.
In the old days, you could always shimmy up a gutter or a vine. In middle-class apartments, someone always answered the interphone and buzzed you inside the main entrance. If you lived in more fashionable apartments, you could rely on a concierge.
The concierge has become obsolete or replaced by a system of gates and doors requiring security keys and codes. Hiding a key in the garden is also a thing of the past. These neatly manicured lawns behind walls and gates preclude burying a key (and those security keys with indentations cost les yeux de la tête to duplicate).
It was not my choice to live in a gated community. But from January through April 2009, this was the only place I could find in the South of France. For someone like me who fears getting locked out, this apartment was the stuff of nightmares. The main gate for pedestrians had an access code (1-2-3-4#) and another for the external set of glass doors to my building (4-3-2-1#). In this gated residence in which most units were still unoccupied, I assumed there would be a 24-hour guard or at least a concierge. Au contraire. No one to call on the interphone. No backup mechanical system in case of electrical failure or if the battery in my remote died. I had a lot to worry about.
Electrical failures did occur--at the main entrance gate (both the pedestrian gate and car entrance), the two apartment main entrance doors (which did fail), and my own apartment door.
In January, my cat Lacey and I moved into our apartment. We were the only living creatures in our 15-unit building. Each time I left, I carried my keys and cell phone. The key to my apartment entrance also opened my apartment and the elevator to the garage. I left a spare set of keys with my daughter, who lived a mere 15-minutes away on foot. And I often left the balcony door open just in case I could climb in.
For a couple months, I did well. I left the apartment and returned without getting locked out but still felt overwhelmed by a slight feeling of trepidation. When the syndic, or governing body, of the units hired a guardian, I felt giddy, “Enfin sauvée.” I had been saved. But Monsieur Christian, homme à tout faire, only worked in the day (excluding Sundays) and returned to his house near Grasse at 7 p.m.
Even with the best of planning, the day came when I got locked out. It was one of those days. . . . The syndic, a collection of men and women with notepads, visited the residential park and issued decrees such as this one:
Nous vous rappelons que he stationnement des véhicules est intérdit sur l’allée de circulation. Residents (meaning me) could no longer park above ground but had to park in the underground parking lot.
But the parking lot had been flooded for two months. So on this day, I grabbed a set of keys, rushed to the basement with a large bag of garbage then went through another set of doors to check the water level in the garage. The doors closed behind me.
When I turned to go back inside, I realized I had taken the wrong set of keys. The elevator door would not open, and my cell phone had no reception. I escaped through the underground parking lot where construction was still under way. And oh miracle, the guardian was still there. He opened the main entrance to the apartment with his master key but apologized for not having a key to my apartment. Fortunately, I had left both the balcony and apartment doors cracked. But I might consider burying a key in the garden of the model apartment. Just in case. . .
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