The apartment building where I live always thinks it’s on fire. The alarms seem to go off at least once every couple months, sometimes more. And then all the residents have to evacuate yet again and stand around out front until a screaming fire truck arrives and an official confirms that the place is not, in fact, aflame.
Whereupon we tenants file back in, rather sheepishly for some reason—avoiding eye contact with the firefighters like it’s our fault the building is a hypochondriac and a drama queen.
Less frequently but still more often than you’d expect (and never in response to an actual emergency), the smoke alarm goes off in the bedroom I share with my husband, Frank. These periodic outbursts of unstoppable beeping, which occur maybe once a quarter, don’t affect the rest of the building—only Frank and me. Naturally, the problem tends to start before 6am on Sundays.
Maintenance workers have been over to fiddle with the alarm on several occasions, each time declaring the matter resolved with a confidence I no longer share.
Some properties just seem to be prone to questionable vibes, and there are moments when I think maybe our building is one of those places. In addition to the alarms-that-cry-wolf issue, there’s the matter of the high-end brothel that was based here until the feds hauled away the ringleader one autumn day in 2023.
As Frank always hastens to clarify, the sex workers weren’t here—just the madam, thank you very much. This was her home address, but the work of her, shall we say, direct reports happened elsewhere.
If the local TV newspeople had only asked me on the day of the arrest, I would have shared that I did indeed run into this neighbor in the elevator now and then. She was always clomping around in these dirty-looking tan Ugg boots and struggling to corral her three pugs. Uggs, pugs, and illegal hugs—that was her in a nutshell.
At any rate, she was never very friendly. You’d think that would be a drawback in a service industry such as hers. After pleading guilty to the crime of selling women like commodities (that’s what I mean by “illegal hugs”) with no regard for their safety and well-being, as the federal prosecutors put it, she was sentenced to 4 years in prison. The newspeople didn’t say what became of the pugs. Not to mention the dispensers of the illegal hugs.
Incidentally, having three dogs in one apartment violates the building’s rule stipulating that tenants are limited to one pet per unit. Course, we’re not supposed to run sex-trafficking enterprises from our apartments, either. I guess the madam isn’t what you’d call a rules follower.
I’m surprised our nitpicky management company didn’t at least catch the pet infraction. They certainly don’t miss any transgressions when I’m involved. I once got slapped with a late fine on top of a $100 charge for a key replacement, even though I never received a bill or any other kind of notification for the initial fee. How is that fair?
It was on your digital account, the woman who runs the leasing office told me.
But how was I supposed to know that, with no notification? The building constantly sends us emails about everything else—self-justifying non-apologies for the 4am fire drills, passive-aggressive reminders about parking garage etiquette despite my not owning a car—yet somebody couldn’t drop a line to let me know about a balance due before the late fee kicked in?
“I’m not trying to be argumentative,” the office woman said, argumentatively.
“I am!” I countered, while Frank, who was with me, got that panicky look that people pleasers get when they sense a flare-up of interpersonal conflict.
As a people displeaser, I know that look well. If he had been our smoke alarm, he would have been like, BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!
Indirect Objects 