I'm terrified that when they return and see their computer broken and their toothpaste moved, they'll think we've been snooping. I haven't been snooping. I just wanted to buy theater tickets. That's all.

It occurs to me that I might as well snoop if I am going to be accused of snooping. But I am not that type of person. When I open the dresser drawer, I am just looking for printer paper. Honest.
Remember, this is a fabulous place. Situated 20-some stories above New York's trendy TriBeCa neighborhood, the space gleams with two virtues I've seen only in architecture magazines: style and nonclutter.

Where, I wonder, are the stacks of papers? The magazines? The shoes?

If there was a dust mite, I couldn't find it. Not that I looked. Really.

On a living-room wall, a plasma TV hangs just so. It is framed by tall, sleek speakers. There is no stereo because music is kept in a computer and transmitted wirelessly.

Against an adjacent wall is a white leather sofa. On the shiny hardwood floor, there's a thick, white faux bear rug on which a person can rest his weary feet while sitting back and admiring the view.

And what a view. The window is the size of Nebraska, and it provides a panorama of the wide, blue Hudson River (okay, the wide, gray Hudson, but still …) and the serrated skyline of Manhattan.

Like I said, fabulous.

In a place this fabulous, you don't, apparently, have a pile of printer paper on the desk. Which is why I was going through their drawers.

But I wore pretend blinders, looking solely for paper and seeing nothing else.

And so it went throughout the weekend, one nerve-racking mishap after another.

The window blinds, for example. They had them down with the slats open. We put them up. When we tried to put them down again, they became lopsided. We tugged and pushed, but they wouldn't straighten.