Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 5/4/12: I cut my road trip by a couple of days when my landlady wrote to say there'd been burglaries in the neighborhood.

Jacob Lawrence, "Cafe Comedian," 1957 — Jacob Lawrence, *Cafe Comedian* (1957)

May 4, 2012:

I cut my road trip by a couple of days when my landlady wrote to say there'd been burglaries in the neighborhood. She's worried for my irreplaceable vintage guitars and microphones.

Sure enough, open the front door and I'm shocked. It's like the place has been rifled, or an earthquake has trashed it. Books and guitars strewn randomly on couches and chairs and floors, clothes and CDs in haphazard piles, drawers open as if they've been rummaged, dishes with half-eaten sandwiches on top of and underneath desks and coffee tables.

So I sigh, and say to myself, "Thank goodness! Just as I left it."