2001-07-16 - 11:29 p.m.

The Smell of Smoke

A lot of today was spent recovering from the excesses of last night. I seemed to be very slow on the uptake, and my brain seemed to be operating on 50% efficiency. Well, still I was able to get work done, and I'd accomplished a lot the previous day too.

A little after three in the afternoon I went in the bedroom to lie down for a little nap. Lily, who was home from work today, decided to join me. We'd only laid down for a couple of minutes when we heard the sound of fire engines.

Around here you quickly learn to ignore the sound of sirens. There is a firehouse at one end of the street and there is a housing project at the other, and emergency vehicles are constantly tearing past my house at all hours.

While we were lying on the bed, I heard the loud noise of engines running. Again, not an uncommon noise considering the people living across the street.

I got up and went into the living room and looked out the window. Hey, the fire engines were parked right under my window! I looked up and saw smoke pouring out of the windows of the house across the street. In fact the smoke was pouring out of the window of the apartment of the people who wrote me the bad check a few weeks ago.

Down in the comic store, the Manager had a street level view of the proceedings, and he became aware of the situation earlier.

The store was empty and he was sitting behind the register. He saw the husband and wife who lived across the street leaving their apartment at a trot, heading straight for the store. Then the man of the house had a change of heart, made a right-angle turn and headed for the house across the street. He was undoubtedly looking for a place to call 911, and he probably realized it might be sticky to try to bum a phone call off someone he'd screwed.

After they called 911 they frantically paced on the sidewalk in front of the store, swearing at each other. "Where are the fucking firemen? What's fucking taking them so long? All our fucking stuff is burning up!"

In fact, the fire engines showed up very quickly - it couldn't have been more than three or four minutes.

Anyway, from my window I saw the smoke pouring out of the second story windows of the house across the street. I called to Lily and she came out of the bedroom to watch too. The smoke started billowing out thicker and thicker, but it was Lily who noticed that already fire hoses were leading in the front door. A fireman on the sidewalk with a long stick was breaking the windows on the second floor. Why was he doing that? Something to do with wind currents or oxygen, I'd imagine. Very quickly all the windows were broken and all the frames knocked out. I could dimly see firemen rushing around inside.

Very quickly the smoke started to thin. They got the fire under control very quickly, but it took a good twenty minutes before wisps of smoke stopped coming out of the windows or the roof.

Dirty water was running down the side of the house, from out of the kitchen window and out from under the eaves of the roof. It was pretty obvious that the apartment was a terrible mess on the inside, even if the fire didn't get very far. And it also seemed that the first floor apartment also had smoke and water damage.

Even though the fire seemed to be out, the fire trucks stayed around for another hour or so. It always pays to be careful and make sure the fire is out. There was also a fire chief of some sort in a tie and shirtsleeves investigating how the fire stared.

The presence of all these emergency vehicles essentially closed both streets that run next to my house. Down in the store, the Manager got a bird's-eye view of the stupid people who kept trying to run the blockade of fire trucks. People actually got angry when the fireman blocked their way. Okay tell you what - when your house catches fire we'll just let it burn so we won't block the road, okay? Sheesh.

After the fire engines left, the people who lived in the apartment that burned sat around with the other people across the street, the ones whose phone they used to call 911. They looked rather glum.

Being burned out of your house isn't something I'd wish on anyone, but I don't like these people. They are a bunch of noisy jerks who ripped me off. It's actually ironic timing, but just before I noticed that their house was on fire I was working on getting a warrant sworn out on them (or rather the wife's sister) for the bad check.

For impromptu street theater, nothing beats a fire. What I find kind of disturbing is the fact that in the last two years there have been two fires close enough that I had a perfect view from my own front window. Fires are supposed to be on the TV or in the newspaper or something like that. This is a little too close for comfort.

While talking with Lily later it occurred to me that I didn't have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. I think getting one is going to be at the top of my "to do" list for tomorrow.