Pie Interruptus

How I Met My Neighbors

Last night I was in the middle of making two dozen or so hand-held chicken pot pies for consumption over the next weeks (I'm not sure why, but winter always makes me want to make pie...any pie, really; just pie), when I heard a knock at my door. Which was odd, because I never hear anything from my neighbors. The last time I received a knock on my door, I opened it to a pair of Baptists from Indiana who wanted me to come to their church. So I asked who it was, and the response was, "It's your neighbor, Dan. My apartment's on fire. Which, naturally, made me open to door. Smoke billowed in from the hallway, and I stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. After a second, I grabbed my coat and ran to knock on doors to get people out of their apartments, before the fire department called up the stairwell and ordered both Dan and I to leave.

As I walked outside, barefoot, into the cold air, I glanced up at the window of Dan's apartment. Fire belched out in big swirls. Fire engine lights flashed everywhere. The small crowd of interested neighbors that always appears at these sorts of events had already begun to gather on the sidewalk. Some out of sheer curiosity, some to see if there's anything they can do to help, some to be nosy and poo-poo the poor soul who accidentally started the fire.

I stood outside in my socks and winter coat for an hour, watching the fire department work, chopping away at my neighbor's windows, raining glass and water down to the street, until there was nothing left but the shell of an apartment. A square space where an apartment once lived, it's eyes hollow and black and unframed. When they were ready to let us back in, I made sure Dan and his wife had somewhere to go, and then went back in to see what had become of my apartment. Everything was fine, but it reeked of smoke. So I opened up all of my windows and placed fans in them, called my friends Bonnie and Darcy, and went back to making pies, while my neighbors evacuated their houses and their pets.

A while later, Bonnie and Darcy showed up and sat with my while I made pie in my winter coat, and we drank moscata and lit scented candles and nag champa and just generally enjoyed the best of a bad situation. Every so often, someone would knock at the door--first the curious friends of a downstairs neighbor who wanted to make sure he was okay (everyone got out okay, as far as I know) and then my upstairs neighbor, who was away during all of this and came home to her apartment wide open and her dog locked in her bedroom. I explained everything to her, lent her a fan, and then spent the night at Bonnie and Darcy's house, just in case the carbon monoxide levels were dangerous.

Today, the apartment next to mine is all boarded up, making it look even more like a ruined shell. My front hallway is cold and dark and smells of the most horrible, acrid, chemical mixture of smoke and fire-killers that I could ever imagine. The hall outside my door is dingy, grey, as though it won't even let light brighten it. Black, mildew-like tendrils run up and down the walls where the smoke and water infiltrated the paint, the wood, the carpet, the air. Everything has a current of smoke and burning running through it now. Even my apartment, which was relatively untouched, reeks of smoke still. But it's getting better and it will be better.

People are generally good natured, I've decided from this. Most people, anyway.
And I'm okay and so is everything I own. And I'm thankful that I can sit here and write this over a cup of hot cocoa and everything's really pretty cool.