Things that go spark in the night
If there’s one thing I hate more than squeaky hinges, it’s not getting enough sleep. You want to talk about what a delirious and slightly grumpy Gretel I am while typing this, then come on down to my place of work…but please, bring coffee. In spite of my sour mood I have to admit that, after this morning’s incident, I am very thankful for my home, my life, and the fact that my upstairs neighbors truly deserve their own reality show. Here’s the story.
After a weekend of long tech rehearsals and work, I got home last night around 10-ish, and was so tired, I felt (and probably looked) like a zombie. I was finally able to pass out around midnight, falling asleep to Headline News like a middle-aged, housewife.
Some time around 1:30am, I awake to the sounds of people running their mouths and making quite a few banging sounds in the basement of our building. I sit straight up in bed and say, “Really?” and even contemplate going downstairs and telling my landlord and his buddies to keep it the hell down and ask why in the hell he feels the need to be in the building at such a ridiculous hour in the first place. As I am considering this, my television turns off.
Initially, I think the abrupt end in my Showbiz news was due to the fact that I had set the sleep timer on the tv 2 hours before. Then I realize there were no lights on in the house. I hear my roommate milling about and get really pissed because, whatever the hell they are doing in the basement has shut down all our power. I am not pleased with my landlord at all.
I walk out of my bedroom to commiserate with David and just as my mouth is forming the sentence, “What the hell?,” I notice red flashing lights out the front, living room window. Through the blinds, I can see a fire truck, a fire SUV, a police car and men…everywhere. Our front gate is open, and I can hear David outside saying, “I live downstairs. Should I be concerned?”
“Everything’s fine. If you needed to evacuate, we’d let you know.”
David comes back inside. Finally, my “What the hell?!” explodes from me as if my mouth were a loaded cannon.
“I don’t know, dude. I asked them what was going on and they looked at me as if I was crazy.”
“Well, we have no lights. They can’t leave us with no power, right?”
Wrong. We watch as all the firemen load up into their respective emergency vehicles and prepare to leave. David asks,
“Think there’s a meth lab upstairs?”
“Well…they were in the basement. So…no.”
“But the police just went upstairs.”
“Well, where is our landlord? Should I call him?”
“I think he’d want to know about this.”
I grab my cell phone out of my room and proceed outside into the cold. I can still hear the cops upstairs but I have no idea what’s going on. Was someone murdered? Did we almost die? Can I get ready for work in five hours? Why am I hungry right now? So many questions.
Octaviano answers just as my neighbor is coming downstairs. Here’s how that convo went:
Octaviano: Hello?
Me: Octaviano, it’s Casey.
Octaviano: Hello, Tracy.
Neighbor: Hey.
Me: Hey.
Octaviano: Hello, Tracy.
Me: What’s going on?
Neighbor: My mom was standing in the kitchen…
Octaviano: I am aware of the situation…
Neighbor: …she saw this huge flash and all these wires in the hallway were sparking. We were about to have an electrical fire, so we called the fire department.
Me: Okay.
Octaviano: Hello, Tracy. Okay? I’ll be there 2 minutes.
Me: Yeah. Okay. So, wait, Octaviano knows?
Neighbor: Yeah, we called him.
Me: He’s on his way over.
Neighbor: Good. He wanted the fire department to wait before they broke down the door, because his tools are in the basement. But none of us have a key and they said if he wasn’t here right away, they had to break it down or the whole building would have caught fire.
By this time, David and 2 more neighbors had come outside.
Kathy (the mom): I heard this loud pop and saw a flash out the back window! I’m glad I was up!
Her son w/ a J name I can’t recall: She said “What was that?!” And I said, “What? I slammed the toilet seat!” And she was like, “No! Out back.” So we go out in the hallway and the wires are just smoking and sparking.
Other son: What sucks is, every time I’m here, On-Demand never works. Tonight, it was working and then ALL the power shuts off! What the hell?
The jokes start flying about our landlord—Why was he so worried about his tools? What else is in the basement? Why the hell would a fire fighter give a damn about his screwdrivers? Why does he send over buddies to fix problems instead of hiring professionals? Does he pay these people in beer? Etc.
David suggests we put the battery back into our smoke detector in the kitchen.
“We took it out, because it was so sensitive. It would go off any time we cooked anything.”
“Our detector upstairs did that too.”
“You think he’s trying to kill all of us?”
“What if he took out insurance policies on all of us?”
Impossible, because I’ve been writing checks to the man for over a year and he still cannot grasp the fact that my name is not Tracy.
Octaviano shows up and spends some 20 minutes chatting with the police officers who are there to file the report before telling us what in the hell is going on. When he comes over, he goes inside to take a look at the damage (and make sure his tools are there) before deciding he needs a flashlight.
“I’m going to go in there and flip on the lines to see which one was causing the problem. I need someone to stand in the back stairwell and make sure, you know, if you hear any sparkles, let me know, and we’ll shut that off. Okay?”
I turn to upstairs mom, Kathy.
“What? Does he know what he’s doing?”
“No. I mean, what if it doesn’t spark right away? He says it will. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. This is not safe.”
Her sons follow Octaviano into the upstairs area. David and I go inside and immediately start planning a way to get our neighbors on television so we can tune in every week. We listen to their chatter coming through the back door and wait for Octaviano to turn on our power and take his leave. As we’re saying goodnight to our neighbors one of the sons says,
“As crazy as all that was, it was a shame no one else in the house got to see Octaviano’s giblets.”
All of us just stare at him. Kathy says, “What are you talking about?”
“While I was holding the flashlight for him, I looked up and there was a huge hole in his shorts. I saw everything!”
“I was wondering why you were laughing while you were standing there! I thought he’d told a joke or something.”
“Nope. Saw his giblets.”
And that, my friends, is how you spend a late Monday/early Tuesday in Chicago. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my home and the fact that my neighbors are highly entertaining night owls.
2 years ago • 0 notes