A white flashing light blinked on and off and a blare followed by silence, then a blare again. I tried to ignore it. I wanted it to go away. It didn’t. I sniffed at the air, no smoke, I got up, my wife got up, she was freaked out, I wanted the noise not to mean danger. She as well wanted the same thing. I find it funny that she owns a 12 foot ladder. We keep it in the home office turned extremely big closet; she grabbed it and opened it beneath the alarm.
I went to my laptop and typed in fire department, I wasn’t sure if I should call. What do you do when the alarm goes off? One would think the good guys would know immediately of our danger. I didn’t. Never had this happen before. I watched my wife climb the ladder while I sat and listened for the sirens.
There were no sirens, but Olivia managed to silence the alarm by pressing on a button, but the flashing light remained and we could hear more alarms going off below and above us.
She released the button and our alarm returned to full blast. After a few more experiments we were pretty confident we were in a situation of unknown consequences.
I call the fire department number near Metrotech. It kind of made sense to me, sleep addled as I was, that the fire department would be down there. That’s where the 911 offices are.
Someone got stabbed many times and died near Metrotech. I have jogged through it when running to the city over the Manhattan Bridge, but when I called Item C on Google maps all I got a inaudible voicemail where the only things I could actually hear was “fire department” and “leave a message.”
That didn’t make any sense.
It probably said something like, “this is not the fire department , if you want Steve leave a message.”
But who knows, I didn’t call it back.
I called 911 instead.
911 in the city.
I called 911 and it connected immediately. There was silence on the other end, I looked at my phone and saw time was ticking by, meaning I was connected so I replaced the phone to my ear and immediately heard a cackle of laughter some place deep in what I pictured as a huge room, which was covered by the loud demand, “State the nature of your emergency.”
“Shit.” I might have said. Followed by, “umm the fire alarm is going off in my apartment, err building and I am not---”
She interrupts me, ‘What’s your address?”
I tell her.
“What cross streets is your building between?”
I tell her something, but one of the streets is wrong, I thought I was right at the time, I found out earlier today I was wrong. I fired off the answer. The street I gave her is somewhere near here, whatever. I don’t think anyone died due to my mistake. If they did I’ll apologize to them later, if I am completely wrong about death.
“What’s your name, and number?”
I give it to her.
“Hold the line.”
A moment later after a squelch it almost seems like the 911 lady is talking to herself, “Fire dispatch, alarm in progress, reporter on the line, go ahead reporter.” I wasn’t sure what was happening so I stayed quiet.
The lady’s voice asked me, “is there an alarm?” I swear she sounded the exact same as the first lady but more, I don’t know, sympathetic.
“Yes.”
She repeated my address and asked, “Is this correct?”
Please wait outside we have trucks en route.
I told Olivia we needed to go outside. She grabbed her wallet and I grabbed mine and pulled on a pair of workout pants, slipping my phone into a pocket. I thought about grabbing my laptop, but negated that decision thankful for renters insurance and Google documents.
Outside the air was nice. There was a breeze. I hadn’t noticed in my apartment how stuffy it was, how hard to breathe it was getting. Being outside under the night sky felt like I was being released from a huge bear hug.
My chest hurt, but that may have been from the longish run I did just the day before. It took no time for the trucks to pull up. We marveled at how fast they arrived, “probably couldn’t wait for a call.”
Silence.
“Bored as shit with no more chili to eat.”
Silence.
“Fire fighters eat chili, by the way, like all the time.”
Silence.
The tallest man I have stood next to walked up and asked, “What’s going on?”
And I realized on the street I couldn’t hear the alarm. I hoped it was still going off. That would have sucked to have three trucks of angry firefighters accusing me of pulling a prank.
“The alarm is going off,” I said.
“Either of you have a key?”
You don’t need a key I thought, just lift the front half the building up and walk on through.
“Sure we do,” Olivia says.
We follow him to the door and I drop my key into a hand twice as big as mine. He doesn’t move to use it.
Olivia leans forward around him unlocking the door as he peers in.
I take the key from his hand which hasn’t moved since I give it to him and he moves through the door, and I swear to Christ he had to duck.
We walked up to the apartment with him and he said, “Ok that’s the Carbon Monoxide alarm.” He repeated the information into his walkie-talkie. “Prop this door and go outside.”
Olivia did what he asked and I watched and then we moved back down to the street. In New York you never meet your neighbors, unless you are all avoiding death and a bunch of firemen are going door to door demanding everyone leave. This was happening on the way to the street.
Numbers like 100 and this floor is at 150 were being said into walkie-talkies. It sounded bad.
They were taking it serious and all I could think of was I didn’t look at my hair before leaving the apartment.
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