breaking the mood

"How can you live with such a tiny purse?" a co-worker, asked as she held up my new little pink purse, which, for the record, is larger than what I was previously using.
As she held it my cell phone began to ring. I cringed. I’d left it on loud, and we have almost a dozen outside visitors in the office today. Not the professional atmosphere that we try to fake when we have guests.
I grabbed the purse, and pressed the silent button on the phone.

It’s 9:30 a.m., who'd be calling my cell?
I didn't recognize the number; had telemarketers finally found me?
"Hello?" I whispered.
"Hello, this is officer so-and-so," said the voice from the unknown line.

Officer? What had happened? Had my car been stolen? Had I done something wrong? I may have technically run a red light on the way to work, no, that couldn't be it …
"Your apartment manager contacted me," he continued. My apartment manager? What’s going on? Then slowly it dawned on me.
I called my apartment manager this morning to let her know that there was a substantial amount of broken glass from beer bottles in our parking lot (substantial as in the parking lot was covered in glass).
At 2 a.m. I woke to the loud crash of breaking glass. I jumped out of bed and peeked through my blinds. The cars in the parking lot looked unharmed. I didn't see any signs of tampering. My car was fine.

Since I was wide awake, I went to the balcony off of the living room for a better view. Again, I didn't see any one in the parking lot, but I did see a large group of people on the balcony of the complex next to mine.
I’ve watched the boys that live in that apartment. In that fancy "we have garages and pay lots in rent" complex, I usually only see people leaving or returning in their cars. But these boys are about the only ones who I’ve really ever seen in their apartment. They keep the balcony shades fully open and are often on the balcony. Some one's always there.

All that to say, I wasn't surprised by the mass of people. One of the guys must have thrown down a bottle, I assume, and went back to bed.

According to officer so-and-so, the rear car window of the couple that lives above me was shattered. Yikes. I told him what I knew. In my mind I saw the clear trajectory of a dark beer bottle flying from the balcony across the parking lot and heard the loud shattering of glass.

Funny that the trouble came from the swank apartment complex and not mine. There’s that perception that the nicer the complex is, the safer it is. Bullshit. You only pay more money.