Security

A week went by before I saw Léa again, during those seven days my life continued as usual, with its sleepless nights, its long walks around the city, and the rare occasion when I did what had actually been my reason to move to Paris, photography. If there is an advantage in not having to work to survive, is that you can work on whatever you like even if you are not very good at it. It is not like I was terrible at photography, I could get some good shots now and then, but I definitely was not good enough as to do it professionally. I had enrolled in some courses, thinking that the intrinsic beauty of Paris would help me, but I was mistaken. 

That day I returned home from one of such attempts to get good pictures, I was fairly confident that I would have something good as it had snowed the previous night and the whole city was under several inches of snow. Part of me wanted to maintain the delusion, another part wanted to check the pictures out just to be done with the disappointment. However, my life, and in particular Léa had other plans. My apartment door was not only open, but there were some men changing it by one that looked at least bank-grade. 

“What is going on in here?” I asked as I had finished climbing the stairs. It was clear that it was not burglary as I had never heard of anyone trying to rob anyone else by changing their door for a better one. Léa looked through the open door when she heard me and invited me in. 

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m doing some changes to your apartment, to improve your security, I don’t understand how you can live like that,…” I was going to interrupt her, but she didn’t let me. “You can’t imagine how hard was it to get them to do it today. This country, I swear, there is some snow on the ground and no one works for a whole week.”

I saw that she had also added alarms and motion activated cameras. 

“Is all of this really necessary?” I asked, feeling that my privacy had been violated. 

“Yes, it is. I also have a first case for you.”