FIRE AND FLOOD

A short time after I was finally settled into my NY apt. one of my dearest UK friends, S, came to visit for a few days. Our daughters went to school together and were good buddies, and so her daughter was happy to stay over at my daughter’s apt. The night of their arrival, however, I prepared a meal for the four of us; naturally, if you’ve just made a 7 hour plane trip with the supplementary travelling times and waiting times at either end, the last thing you want to do is hit the local hot spots.
The main course I decided to prepare was a fish pie with mashed potato topping. As we sat in my living room (which by the way, in London, used to be a drawing room) catching up on news and making our way through the hors d’oeuvres, the pie bubbled away in my brand new state-of-the art gas range (which in London used to be a plain old ‘cooker’ or possibly a ‘hob’---and when I last lived in NY used to be called a ‘stove’). These delightful bubbles of sauce eventually dripped onto the floor of the oven and, as cooking time passed, eventually sent a miniscule amount of smoke out the vents and into the room setting off all the fire alarms.
Now, look, I know New Yorkers are blasé but this sure beats all. Despite all 3 of my alarms going off with the most intense, shrill, high pitched screeches I have ever heard, absolutely no one came calling. The four of us dashed about trying to shut these things off but no amount of pushing the stop buttons on them did anything at all. Eventually I rang down to our concierge desk and asked the lady on duty to please get the Superintendent to tell us what to do. Shouting down the phone to make myself heard over the siren, I could just about hear her reply that the Super was off duty and couldn’t be disturbed! Eventually, S managed to get the batteries out of one of the alarms and I yanked another from the ceiling shutting the system down, giving me new décor in the form of ceiling mobiles.
The neighbours are great in this building; they balance just the right amount of friendliness with non-intrusion. One gentleman from down the hall, whom I met in the refuse room as I put out my garbage (in London, trash was collected from just outside the apt. door after 10pm, thereby not providing any occasion for meeting neighbours unless you both happened to open your front door at the precise same minute to put your black bag out for collection) came over and sorted the ceiling mobile fire alarms for me so that they no longer go off at will. My immediate neighbours, a delightful elderly couple who came over from Israel, are also friendly, and very quiet.
Since they are so quiet I was obviously greatly concerned when I heard T screaming and panicking. I dashed next door thinking something had happened to her husband only to see a veritable Niagara Falls of steaming water coming down from the apt. above them and flooding the entire place. Trying not to think about the possibility that the upstairs apt. might be a double and thereby be above my newly refurbished, newly painted, newly furnished, new new new apt., I made every effort to help them get their belongings out and get the Super in to help. I’ll just say that this Super has now left the employ of our building and we have a new, hard-working saint in his stead.
Which was excellent news for me because this incident made me really nervous. Although my own apt. remained unscathed, I remained on the look-out for any drips. So you can no doubt understand why, when a few weeks later with 7 people expected for dinner and various dishes I had been working on all day spread along the counter of my kitchen, I totally panicked when I opened a cabinet and found a puddle of water which by then was dripping onto the countertop. Mopping up and going bezerk, I rang down to the concierge and had the new Super come dashing up to see where the leak might be coming from.
It was a bottle of water that had opened up.