The Horsemen of the Apocalypse

… have apparently focused on my apartment building. Last night at around 9 pm, an overwhelming sickly smell of gas filled the hallway. We had to cover our faces. My neighbors and I investigated. None of us were cooking. We couldn’t tell where it was coming from. But it was frightening – I had candles lit in my apartment and I raced around putting them out fearing that I would explode in a fiery mesh as I watched Prayer for the Dying. It finally got so bad and we couldn’t get anyone on the horn (landlord, super) that we called 911. We knocked on people’s doors, rousing them from their stupor, and told them the halls were filled with gas. And then we all basically fled into the night, waiting for the firemen to arrive. Thank goodness this time I was not wearing Hello Kitty pajamas and blue sparkley fake eyelashes. I also was not drenched in Sierra perfume. I put poor Hope into her case, and she resisted – turning herself into a desperate starfish as she approached the gaping door of her cage. The only other thing I grabbed was my manuscript – piles and piles of paper – all my edits, all my notes, EVERYTHING … my whole damn book – it’s all on hard copy because I am a Luddite and that is the way I work until the very last moment when I transfer everything to the computer. So I stood on the sidewalk, with Hope’s case beside me (she had subsided into the silence of despair and rage), clutching a MOUND of paper in my arms, chatting with my neighbors and basically chillin’. Until the fire trucks arrived and we were surrounded by the stomping macho glory of suited-up firemen, and I once again volunteered myself as a guide, never once letting go of my manuscript – as I took this hot dude brandishing an axe down into the basement so he could investigate, and showed him where the gas smell was the strongest. I flirted shamelessly, although I had on my glasses, sweat pants, no makeup, and not a drop of Sierra. I wish gas would fill up the hallway more often so I could commiserate with hot men wearing industrial outfits.

Turns out the neighbor 2 doors down from us (and he had not answered when we knocked on the door – he was out) must have been cooking and then left – without turning off the oven (gas stoves) – and when the firemen knocked down his door the smell was nauseating. That smell is just not right!!

Poor man returned home in the middle of this to find the street overrun with firetrucks, his entire building out on the sidewalk, holding cats, and manuscripts, and 10 firemen in his apartment. He was chagrined. We forgave him, yet we still let him know that we judged.

All was well, excitement over. Every time the fire department comes to our building I miss them when they are gone. I love how quickly they arrive, I love the banter, I love how huge they are, and I love how I get to hover in the stairwell as they tromp by one by one. I adore the whole ritual. Especially when there is no real danger, of course.

Then today, I come home and it’s been raining. I walk into the foyer and there is my super (my “super super” – my hot Latin super who I praised here) and she is totally freaking out because she saw a snake in her apartment. A freakin’ snake. What is this, Zimbabwe?? I don’t have a problem with snakes – I’m more of a bug-phobe – but I sure as hell don’t want to see one slithering down my hallway!

She sprayed it with bug spray until it crumpled and died but not before rearing up like the cobra confronting Rikki Tikki Tavi (“Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake’s eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of …”) and flicking its awful tongue at her. Horrifying.

I picked Hope up in my arms, and she was purring so loudly I knew she was aching for some Fancy Feast, and I just thank God that the second horseman of the apocalypse, the snake in the building, was not in MY abode, yet I also know that, if push comes to shove and something like that goes down, Hope would have it covered. She thirsts for blood at all times and it is truly comforting to have a creature like that around.

Tonight? A plague of locusts will swoop down my deadend street.