The Saga of the Lights Guy

One day, Ithaca and Megan were sitting in Ithaca’s room looking out their favorite window, when a strange middle-aged man with a briefcase wandered in. “Previet,” said Ithaca and Megan, utterly confused.

The man wandered about the room, mumbling to himself in Russian. He measured nothing and took no notes. Then he left and went next door.

The man left, so Ithaca asked her neighbors what the man was doing. After a quick game of charades, Ithaca surmised that the man was going to install lights above the desks in the room. He would come back in twenty minutes, so Ithaca should not leave. 

Ithaca waited, but twenty minutes later the other Americans arrived. Ithaca locked the room and left. The lights man was never seen again.

Ithaca went to bed early that night. She was tired.

At 11:30, Ithaca was roused from slumber by a knock upon her door. Her neighbors were there, and all began talking animatedly in Russian. Ithaca wiped the slumber from her eyes, and learned that the neighbors were missing some money from their room. Had Ithaca let the lights guy back in? No.

The “dejurnaya” (Russian dorm overseer, like an AD) came, and from what Ithaca could gather there was never a lights guy, just an old dude with a briefcase conning some unsuspecting college students. Luckily, Ithaca was missing nothing. 

In Soviet Russia, you (or at least the girls next door to you) get conned.