-Things that cannot be explained-

Hat (location) Umbrella (location) Watch (location)

Water in the Bathroom Mark on my hand Disturbing Dreams

And now I mean to explain them. Anyone who wants to construct a story that incorporates all of these (no partial credit will be given) may do so. Here's my first shot, though I'll recuse myself from the contest:

We sat in an old Jewish Deli run by Italian-Catholic émigrés who'd found a Kosher bargain, or so the story goes. The hipster underground hangout next door is under renovation, so this is a better than average day for the seventy-something spry hostess running coffees - Spanish and Turkish - to industrial spool tables topped off with bottles sprouting melting candles.
Seriously.
I'm trying to read. Trying, but still keeping an eye on the vermicelli-haired senior citizen with a pipe who invited himself to my spool to talk football, which I know nothing about. I'm trying not to look at the pipe or his paunch, which sports a rorschach of mustard.

"Packers, Packers, Packers, Packers, Packers, Packers." He says. "Packers, Packers. D.H. Lawrence."
The book twitches in my hands like a live mouse. "What did you say?"
Now he's being coy. "D.H. Lawrence."
"I thought I heard something I understood. But maybe you could give me the context."
Soapbox: "D.H. Lawrence said the only thing he felt qualified to speak about was men and women."
"I've heard that quote before, I've used that quote before, but..."
"Take that couple over there, for example." He shoves a porkpie thumb at young man with un-ironically 80's hair (worse than mine) who lightly brushes the knee of the younger man next to him. 90's hair, nicer clothes. Petulant mouth. The latter leans against the wall, challenges the full room in this hipster Diaspora. His tentative boyfriend must know how tenuous his hold is, but he faces the table in denial.

I feel sorry for the poor sod, and I said so as I absentmindedly rubbed my left hand. For some reason it stung at that moment, but not enough for me to investigate. Unfaithful sees us looking and beams this way. I shake my head and start groping for my hat. It must have slipped under the table.
Paunches (he has pouches under his eyes, too) chortles. He chortles again, but not before he leans in for a wind stealing gaff: "No worse than you ogling the little miss with the skintight leather."
Shudder. "Gotta go." I peer under the table at nothing. Could it have been left in the car? That's so unlikely.

Out on the street, the cobblestones resound with a harder rain than the drizzle touching down before. The umbrella that usually juts out a few inches from the satchel is gone, as well. With growing alarm, I wondered if there was enough time to go back in and search before the last bus. I snap my arm out in that one-handed way we all do to reveal a watch obscured by a sleeve. But there's no watch there.

No. No. This is America, there aren't pickpockets here. People want your things; they knock you down and take them. My imagination, admittedly out of control, figured I'd run back inside only to find a burned out hulk that hasn't been occupied since "that terrible cook went crazy in the 40's." I was almost disappointed when it was still warm and occupied to the gills.

Dejected, wet and late for the bus, I came home. No percussion tonight from below, and for once I miss it; it would make these three inexplicable losses more palatable if everything else seemed to be in order. Were it not for the note from my landlord on the door, I'd never know to expect a thin sheen of water on my bathroom floor. So nice, to possibly owe my life to my landlord. A thin white line runs from my knuckle to the edge of my forefinger, which I now suspect to be a part of the watch clipping my skin as Paunches (for who else could it be?) removed it with surprisingly deft porkpie fingers.

I lay down that night in a cold, impotent fury, and dreamed of lost kisses and overdue assignments.
And worse.