Good Luck and Bad; or, Rescue Me
I am as lucky as the four-leaf clover picked by little fingers and woven into a chain with other four-leaf clovers and worn on little wrists for an entire afternoon—finally, an aerial view of the world beyond my grassy forest—before being tossed in the yard with no ceremony or service for me and my clover family. I am as lucky as the grounds at the bottom of your coffee cup who are spared the mouth, the throat, the esophagus, and the digestive tract and are left on the counter to pray for salvation, for rebirth in the side yard compost pile, before being washed down the drain. I am as lucky as the lightning bug who gets captured in a glass jar for a few terrifying hours but is let go after the kids are in bed, a sweet reprieve that becomes a violent death when the bully down the block catches you and rubs you on his shirt so he can be like you, luminescent, for a few seconds.
Just fifteen minutes or an hour ago, I was craving yellow mustard and saltines. I am too broke to splurge on such delicacies but I decided to walk the half mile to the co-op anyway, to feel the season and show off the tattoos that I think make me look tough despite the fact that one is a portrait of an eight-year-old Ramona Quimby. As I was walking down Main Street, I found ten dollars on the sidewalk. What luck! Maybe I’ll even get an apple! When I was standing at the cash register with my hands full of treats, I reached in my pocket and found that my found money was gone. That’s what happens when you are equal parts lucky and unlucky: you find ten dollars and then you lose it minutes later. I put my purchases back on the shelves and sat in the grass outside, still hungry but with really tough tattoos.
Two weeks or two years ago, my bike was stolen, a bike that was not just two wheels and a seat and my way around town but was also a gift from the person who used to be my person, a person who called me pooky and who I called bam bam and who I thought I would grow ugly with. We don’t talk anymore and may not talk ever again, but I had this bike that she had given me and I loved it for that reason, not just because it was two wheels and a seat and my way around town. When I found this precious keepsake missing from a rack outside the gym, I cried not just because I would have to take the bus home but because it was her’s and then it was mine and then it was gone. And I didn’t get over it even though I had two other bikes at home, not that day or even that week. But ten days later I was walking from the taco truck to the bingo hall and there is was, leaning against a telephone poll, not even locked up. I rode it home and oiled the chain and kissed the seat and sighed with good luck.
Four days ago, I smoked a cigarette on my balcony and tossed it close to but not into the ashtray and went inside to watch Rescue Me, a television show about the New York City Fire Department, which is full of drunks and heroes. I sat on my couch and watched Dennis Leary fight fires and I stayed there for almost and entire episode, forty full minutes, and then received a nonsensical but charming text message from my favorite dirty bisexual. I got off my couch and took a beer from my fridge and walked to my balcony to compose a response in the clear air, but when I opened the door, I saw a fire climbing the wall beside my unused ashtray.
While I am not calm most of the time, I calmly splashed the wall with beer and calmly went inside and calmly picked up the broken plastic cup I keep beside my bed and calmly splashed water on the fire. I then decided that this was a story I should probably tell someone because there are very few things in my life I don’t want an audience for, so I called my favorite dirty bisexual and told her what was happening and said, Hey! Isn’t this crazy! Thank god and good luck that I need fresh air to compose the perfect witty and genuine yet not sentimental text message!
As I was telling her this I saw that the beer and the water had extinguished the flames but not the embers burning in the wall, so I said I’d call her back and walked inside and found the fire extinguisher, which was small and white and not scary like those big red ones. I read the directions blew it on the fire and kept blowing it on the fire and thought about how I would have to clean this powder off the balcony later.
When it was empty and everything was covered in white, the embers were still burning in the wall. I was less calm then and I called 911 and forgot my address and told the dispatcher that I didn’t want to tell him my name because I didn’t want to get in trouble and ran in a circle in my living room and thought about how my just-cleaned bedding would have to be washed again.
The wall was smoking when the firetrucks and police arrived. I ran across the street to wave them to my apartment and ran inside to show them the fire and noted that their boots were getting dirt on my floor and I’d have to clean that too. They told me to wake the neighbors and tell them to leave their homes because it is not a free-standing house but an apartment, one of eight units, but I didn’t need to wake the neighbors because they woke with the sirens.
I called back my favorite dirty bisexual and told her what was happening and said, wait, I have to talk to this cute lady cop, and I told the lady cop that I had been watching a television show about firefighters and how ironic is that? I may or may not have asked the lady cop what her sign is and told her I liked her uniform and asked if she would be my Facebook friend.
They were there a while, the police and the firefighters. They dragged the hose upstairs and across my newly-vacuumed carpet and asked me what started the fire, to which I replied, spontaneous combustion. This did not make them laugh or even smile. After the fire was out, I told the fire chief that I don’t smoke because it’s disgusting, and, besides, even if I did, it’s a non-smoking building and I always follow the rules. A few minutes after that conversation, I walked into my bedroom and the fire chief was looking at a lighter on my bedside table and I thought, shit, I’m going to have to tell him that the light isn’t for smoking cigarettes on my balcony, it’s for smoking weed in my bedroom.
And for the majority of the time I was waiting outside and avoiding my neighbor’s eyes, I was on the phone, talking to my favorite dirty bisexual first and later to Small Fry, telling them what was happening and not panicking at all because I’d seen Denis Leary battle real fires and this was nothing, and, really, it was kind of funny. And it was kind of funny, and would make for a good story tomorrow, and no one got hurt and the damage wasn’t that bad and the cat ran away but then it came back.
When the firefighters were leaving, they shook my hand and congratulated me for not panicking, for using the fire extinguisher, for calling 911. It seemed ridiculous to shake my hand after I’d started a fire and hadn’t noticed it for almost an entire episode of Rescue Me, and I said this, but, no, they said. If you hadn’t acted right then, the fire would have spread to the roof.
I tried to sleep but my sheets smelled like campfire and I kept thinking about my neighbors, about the guy next door who lives with his sister and who told me that he has a thousand dollars worth of miniature cars. And I thought about the neighbors on the other side, who have a wicker pentagram on their front door, like a Christmas wreath for witches, and the neighbor downstairs who thinks my name is Kyle even though I am a girl and I have the same name as her dog. I thought about the dog and I thought about the neighbors a few units down who got engaged last week and have this whole new part of their lives happening and I thought about all the people who would have lost their bikes and their keepsakes and maybe their homes because of me. Three more minutes and the fire would have slid across the roof and taken the hot wheels and the wedding invitations and maybe even the dog whose names is my name. With three more minutes and a little less luck, we would all be people who lost things in a fire. I wouldn’t be lightning bug freed from captivity or the coffee grounds given a second life in a pile of compost. I would be the one who let one lit cigarette, one thoughtless action, become not funny but final.
30
03 2010
by admin
posted in essays
4 Comments »4 Comments Add Yours ↓
The upper is the most recent comment
Colin #03.30.2010 07:382This is one my favorite things that you’ve written. This is tight. It is balanced. Clean. I really love it.
Good luck out west, and I hope to see you soon.
03.30.2010 08:053i look forward to reading every post you write. and you have a ramona quimby tattoo? i have a ramona quimby tattoo, on my shoulder. i think it makes me look tough, too. but i am pretty sure that actually, it doesn’t.
thanks for being such a stellar writer.
03.30.2010 16:554I love this post. The beginning is amazing. You are an awesome writer. Plus I identify with a lot of things you write about. Keep it up!
And I’m really glad you didn’t burn your apartment building down…I secretly fear someone in my building will do that one day.
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