Firemen: A Love Story
If you have never experienced the New York City Fire Department arriving at your doorstep, you are (a) fortunate, (b) missing out on a unique experience of living in this city, and (c) not so fortunate after all.
I have had the pleasure of their arrival on two separate occasions in the last year. The first was no more than six months into living here. The second was just a few weeks ago. The bathroom ceiling was leaking brown water and the walls were raining. As in, I put my ear to the wall and heard rain. I didn’t know that you can call the fire department for such problems (we called the super), but someone knew and called them. They arrived in what I would call their pared down ensemble, which includes an axe, but not a coat. And now l know who to call about a leak.
Back to last September. My friend, Deborah made her annual stateside visit from the UK. We were wrapping up several days of soul friend bliss and on this last night planned to dress up and whisk ourselves down to Bemelmans Bar at the Carlisle to see a pianist/composer I met at a bus stop, as one does. It was to be a very classy old New York night. It would turn out to be a very New York night, but not classy at all.
Already running late, we hurried to get ready and Patrick decided to make a pizza. Deborah didn’t know he had turned on the oven and declared with English authority—“the oven is smoking.” Smoke had indeed begun pouring out of the oven, which, when I opened it looked like the inside of a brick oven, sans pizza. This was a fire. I threw some water on it in the hopes that every cartoon I had ever seen would prove useful. Not so. I was later told flour is the appropriate response. The smoke was now billowing into the 450 square feet of our apartment and Patrick ran down to where the super lives on the second floor. (While we have a special affection for our super, I will never understand why he was deemed more important than a swift 911, but that’s water into the oven.) He did not answer and Patrick made the appropriate call. I have never wanted someone to arrive more than I did in those four minutes. Barefooted and at the begging of my friend I left the apartment to the smoke. Deborah tried to alarm the neighbors but they would not be alarmed. One woman stuck her head out completely unfazed and said, “Oh that happens all the time.” Another neighbor from the floor above us came down with a bit more concern. I was freaking. Out. Clearly I hadn’t done my duty of deciding which items go with in the event of such an occasion because I grabbed nothing. NOTHING. My imagination leaped through the possibilities of what had now caught fire: the couch, my books, the wooden cutting board, surely the tea towels.
They arrived before my mind leapt to further conclusions. Chariots of red and white and lights and the sweet sirens of rescue. There was not one, but three NYFD trucks all come for us, each with no less than five firefighters. You feel strangely special at this moment. Narcissistically pleased with the turnout. Like when you’re eight years old and all your friends show up for your ice skating birthday party in the dead of winter. Only these friends have brought the best presents, are extremely punctual, and the actual life of the party, making sure the other guests and all your presents don’t disintegrate.
“Third floor, apartment 11,” I hear myself or Patrick squeak out in the presence of this brute force. They have axes. They are huge. They are in no real hurry, strolling confidently into our lives. I feel completely at the mercy of these otherworldly beings. I ask Patrick later about the squeak and he discloses his awe. “I felt like a child” he says, “a helpless twerp.” The New York accents are thick as cheesecake and not out of this world but completely one with it and everything I’ve ever thought about New York firemen. One of them hears Deborah’s otherworldly dialect and racks his brain for a flirtatious subject, landing on the football match she definitely didn’t watch. But she’s smitten, as we all are. They’re here to save us.
When I was in high school my brother built a too-big fire in our fireplace one winter night. My dad was not home. The sparks from the fire shot out and caught the actual chimney on fire, which we spotted through the skylights. The firemen came and then commenced months of remodeling, a new fireplace, and the end of indoor bonfires. I don’t remember the firemen in quite the same way. They arrived in a timely manner, of course, but suburban Maryland is not Manhattan and I don’t remember being close enough to touch them or any exchange of humor. I can’t envision their smiles or their axes; that’s just not a perk of suburban living I guess. You get what you pay for.
A silicone muffin tray caught fire. We unplugged your oven. The smoke will go away. Just like that—fears dispelled. That’s what the firemen accomplished in less than five minutes. Calamity was right there and then it wasn’t. What a ride.
When I was a kid we used to spend one weekend every fall at a retreat center with our church. It was the highlight of my autumn. Campfires, zip lines, and staying up later than my parents usually allowed. There was something about the cafeteria and the ritual of meals and announcements that still makes me nostalgic. There were giant seesaws—huge slabs of wood affixed onto a thick steel pipe. As you swung down to the earth from your place in the sky, a tire met your butt, the old wood acting as the only buffer. But going up was a risk too. If you went up with too much force in your legs off the ground and if your friend was heavier than you, you left the seat at the top and came back down so hard you could feel it in your teeth. The trick was in estimating how much your partner weighed so as to gage how badly it was going to hurt at the top as well as the bottom. I can still feel it, bracing myself.
Living in New York City is quite like this a lot of the time. A constant state of trauma/relief on the seesaw of panic and comedy. A could be disaster that typically ends up being a good story, and if you’re lucky, a great laugh. You’re up and then you come crashing down. You’re going home after a great day and then you’re on the wrong train headed to Queens.
The first week we moved into our apartment was magic. Everything was shiny—nothing was shiny. I had some work for an off-broadway producer I met through a friend. I hustled around, catching the bus to the west side, trying to get the apartment in order, and making dinner at 9 o’clock. It was brilliant. The next week was terrible. New York, New York. Two sides of the same coin—two cities. In one city you go to the Carlisle to watch the composer play the piano. In the other you have an oven fire, the firemen come and you eat at a restaurant called Vietnaam (yes, two a’s).
There was a layer of soot on everything after the firemen left. I finally understood the phrase, “when the dust settles” because it had settled on the couch and the chair and the dishes on our open shelving. On the floor and on Deborah’s opened suitcase and even on the coat hanging in the partially opened closet. We spent an hour cleaning up the mess: water and soot, which is ten times worse than dust. Amazingly, as one of our firemen had told us, the smell of smoke was not to be found. They had opened our windows in ways I didn’t even know they could be opened—from the top down. They had left their mark. The only way they were going to get through our unusually long and narrow hallway was by leaving giant black marks on the white wall. I forgave them.
We had long missed our friend at Bemelmans. Dirty and tired, I hated that this was Deborah’s last night in the city, spent cleaning up soot off her things and ours. We got dressed and walked to the Vietnamese restaurant a few blocks away. We had drinks and we talked about how much we loved the firemen and how much worse it could have been and we laughed. We laughed. This was a story we could already laugh about.
New York firemen, like the jungle they emerge from, are extraordinary to me. They come when called and leave when the job is done and they don’t ask you for anything in return. Thank you never seems adequate. I’m reminded of the good that resides here, in close proximity to the bad. In spite of it. I realize the seesaw isn’t just in this city, but in the push and pulls of life everywhere, just as prompt and jovial firemen are everywhere; I just happen to find them here. I try to put the fires out as they come, finding help when I need it. I try to brace myself but also feel the rush of going up. I hope I don’t have to call the firemen again, but I love when they come. Now when I hear the sirens, which is often, I wonder who the lucky girl is. But then I remember that I didn’t have an oven for a week and we could have burned down the whole building.