No adventures now. I believe I'm in a band, and that is so good that I don't quite believe it. But you'd better believe it, dear reader, if you do indeed exist.
No adventures. Just the spin of the overhead fan above me and the long dark night against which I may just lay my head to sleep.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
The Case of the Door Knocking
In the wake of a few burglaries, a couple of attempted car-repossessions, a single jumped neighbor (left for broke and broke and broken in the courtyard), after too many mystery crime novels dropped in the bedroom, their broken spines and bloated pages just left for dead, after all that crime, vivid and fictitious and actual, my nerves were shot. And so it came to be that I called the police at 10:46 one Friday night.
I was reading that great study of peace and quiet and self control--and loyalty and shared limbs and seeping passions and shared bodies and shared selves--Othello. I was reading Othello and making frantic notes on index cards and scratched up slips of paper when I started to hear a steady rattling at the cellar door. A tap-tap-rapping at my chamber door.
This did not disturb me too much. There I was, hysterical in that pre-exam frenzy of reading and exclaiming and BREAKTHROUGH AFTER BREAKTHROUGH. My highlighters were running out and my tongue went neon in the wake of licking and licking them to get some life back on those pages. And then I heard, again, those sounds, that deep-voiced whisper, the rattling and re-rattling in the hallway by the door.
This went on for some time before I, thinking--oh god, it could be burglars, it could be murderers, or multi-backed beasts or men standing with bones growing sharply between them, and oh, are those the sounds of Desdemona's spine, cracking, is that the strangling, and no, not Aleppo already, not once, not the dog, the man, the dog--thinking and scrawling, finally took a break from all that thinking to dial 911 on my telephone.
911 took quite a while to pick up. Once they did, 911 sounded tired and bored, 911 said, "What is the nature of your emergency?" 911 was surprisingly suspicious, especially considering how many burglaries in this very building 911 had failed to solve. These are cases, I almost cried! They need solving! Eventually, after much deliberation, 911 determined that I had called the wrong 911, that what I really needed was the U City police.
Do not trust 911. It is not the quintessence that you have always supposed it would be. Alchemy in general is not to be trusted. U City 911 does not even have digital tracking in St. Louis.
After some redialing, I secured the U City 911 hotline. 911 still sounded bored and slightly annoyed at this disturbance. After a long explanation and several reminders that this was that same building where all those crimes had transpired so recently, 911 agreed to send someone over.
And so it went. I turned back to Othello, fighting the urge to turn immediately to Nabokov's short story, I thought--stay on topic, on topic, Nabokov definitely will not be on the exam.
Three minutes passed, I was scrawling out some note-cards on Iago's trespassing, and then the buzzer went ablaze with noise. I buzzed in the officer, expecting a few knocks to end the rap-rap-rapping on my neighbor's doors.
But then came so much stomping! Clodding! Clanking! Stamping! Having expected much much less than this, I tiptoed to the door and slowly, slowly, turned the handle, pulled it creakily open, and went out to peer down at the staircase below.
There they were! The whole force! Guns cocked and ready! Arranged to perform a complex maneuver! There were men at every door, a woman, even! I crept back inside my apartment, locked the door. But then the pounding came. POLICE! Throwing on a flimsy bathroom, I opened the door.
"Ma'am, I've got to get through here to the back, do you have a back door?"
"Yes," I said, suspiciously, since I seemed to be stating the obvious to someone who should know such things.
"All right," she replied, throaty and authoritative. And then, into the walkie talkie, "All right, I'm moving through. Secure the back entrance."
I looked at the heaps of clothes, books, and scattered papers spilled across my apartment. The police woman entered my apartment, and together we took the treacherous path to the back door, carefully stepping onto those small parts of the floor still visible.
She demanded the key to the back alley. I gave it to her. She ran out. She ran down the stairs. Behind the building much more activity was taking place. There were police in all corners, guns up and ready.
I went out onto the balcony and leaned over the railing. "Have you found any burglars?" I called out to one of the police men, in my little voice, my high-pitched, my Minnie Mouse voice. He didn't look up.
"Should we cancel this?" He said into his walkie-talkie.
":LDIJS:SIJ" The walkie talkie spoke back.
The police woman ran back up my fire escape stairs. Panting, she returned the keys. "Hate those stairs," she managed, shaking her head. We made the dangerous and difficult trip back to the front door and she stepped out of it and I locked it shut behind her.
And with that, they were gone.
I was reading that great study of peace and quiet and self control--and loyalty and shared limbs and seeping passions and shared bodies and shared selves--Othello. I was reading Othello and making frantic notes on index cards and scratched up slips of paper when I started to hear a steady rattling at the cellar door. A tap-tap-rapping at my chamber door.
This did not disturb me too much. There I was, hysterical in that pre-exam frenzy of reading and exclaiming and BREAKTHROUGH AFTER BREAKTHROUGH. My highlighters were running out and my tongue went neon in the wake of licking and licking them to get some life back on those pages. And then I heard, again, those sounds, that deep-voiced whisper, the rattling and re-rattling in the hallway by the door.
This went on for some time before I, thinking--oh god, it could be burglars, it could be murderers, or multi-backed beasts or men standing with bones growing sharply between them, and oh, are those the sounds of Desdemona's spine, cracking, is that the strangling, and no, not Aleppo already, not once, not the dog, the man, the dog--thinking and scrawling, finally took a break from all that thinking to dial 911 on my telephone.
911 took quite a while to pick up. Once they did, 911 sounded tired and bored, 911 said, "What is the nature of your emergency?" 911 was surprisingly suspicious, especially considering how many burglaries in this very building 911 had failed to solve. These are cases, I almost cried! They need solving! Eventually, after much deliberation, 911 determined that I had called the wrong 911, that what I really needed was the U City police.
Do not trust 911. It is not the quintessence that you have always supposed it would be. Alchemy in general is not to be trusted. U City 911 does not even have digital tracking in St. Louis.
After some redialing, I secured the U City 911 hotline. 911 still sounded bored and slightly annoyed at this disturbance. After a long explanation and several reminders that this was that same building where all those crimes had transpired so recently, 911 agreed to send someone over.
And so it went. I turned back to Othello, fighting the urge to turn immediately to Nabokov's short story, I thought--stay on topic, on topic, Nabokov definitely will not be on the exam.
Three minutes passed, I was scrawling out some note-cards on Iago's trespassing, and then the buzzer went ablaze with noise. I buzzed in the officer, expecting a few knocks to end the rap-rap-rapping on my neighbor's doors.
But then came so much stomping! Clodding! Clanking! Stamping! Having expected much much less than this, I tiptoed to the door and slowly, slowly, turned the handle, pulled it creakily open, and went out to peer down at the staircase below.
There they were! The whole force! Guns cocked and ready! Arranged to perform a complex maneuver! There were men at every door, a woman, even! I crept back inside my apartment, locked the door. But then the pounding came. POLICE! Throwing on a flimsy bathroom, I opened the door.
"Ma'am, I've got to get through here to the back, do you have a back door?"
"Yes," I said, suspiciously, since I seemed to be stating the obvious to someone who should know such things.
"All right," she replied, throaty and authoritative. And then, into the walkie talkie, "All right, I'm moving through. Secure the back entrance."
I looked at the heaps of clothes, books, and scattered papers spilled across my apartment. The police woman entered my apartment, and together we took the treacherous path to the back door, carefully stepping onto those small parts of the floor still visible.
She demanded the key to the back alley. I gave it to her. She ran out. She ran down the stairs. Behind the building much more activity was taking place. There were police in all corners, guns up and ready.
I went out onto the balcony and leaned over the railing. "Have you found any burglars?" I called out to one of the police men, in my little voice, my high-pitched, my Minnie Mouse voice. He didn't look up.
"Should we cancel this?" He said into his walkie-talkie.
":LDIJS:SIJ" The walkie talkie spoke back.
The police woman ran back up my fire escape stairs. Panting, she returned the keys. "Hate those stairs," she managed, shaking her head. We made the dangerous and difficult trip back to the front door and she stepped out of it and I locked it shut behind her.
And with that, they were gone.
Monday, February 15, 2010
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