Scare #1

Our first few days in Rome were a haze of jetlag-induced discord. Upon checking into our first apartment, we were greeted with the unwelcome portent of things to come. We opened all the windows on our first floor (American second) apartment, all of which overlooked the alley-like street below. While we settled the bill in the living room with Clemente, Clare busied herself with snuggling under the bed’s feather comforter until she was nothing but a wrinkle in the expanse of white. While we haggled and joked with the porter, we suddenly noticed that it had become preternaturally quiet in the bedroom. Tom rushed in looking for her, and noticed the bed rumpled, unmade, and empty. The curtains ruffled slightly in the breeze and I caught sight of her chubby legs near the windowsill. Tom lunged in and grabbed her as she serenely leaned out the window, observing the street life and sidewalk restaurant below. Her ladder, a large Tupperware box under the windowsill, which had gone unnoticed, was hastily dispatched to the hall closet. Luckily all the shutters had latches on them that could be hooked partially open, just enough to keep the light and air and child, in. It was an Eric Clapton-esque moment that we hoped would never repeat.
That night was slept like the dead, snoozing well into the afternoon of the next day. Clare was tightly wedged between us in bed, a position she never liked in normal circumstances, and one that I was glad she adopted, if only for the moment.