Honestly, we’re not sure. We think it might be a stray cigarette ash, although it seems rather improbable.
Cloud Maiden and I were in the living room; she was working on resumes, I was reading Blindness - a typical Tuesday afternoon. I went outside to have a cigarette (we’ve been smoking outside to keep the house from smelling like the inside of an ashtray) and after I finished, dropped the butt in the plastic litter jug we’ve been using for this purpose (there’s still some unused litter at the bottom). Then I went back inside. About 15 minutes later someone is urgently ringing our doorbell. Cloud Maiden glances out the window.
“I think it’s a homeless person,” says she doubtfully.
“I bet you it’s for the guys downstairs,” I crossly replied, getting off the sofa. (Their doorbell is broken.)
I take my sweet time getting downstairs, to be greeted by an empty step. “There’s no one here!” I shout up to Cloud Maiden. Then I notice that the other door is open, and our downstairs neighbors’ cat is looking at us with a friendly, questioning look on our face. I knock on the doorframe, but no one answers. Kitty decides she wants to come upstairs to our place. “Um, no, kitty,” Cloud Maiden tells her, scooping her up in her arms.
We hear a faint shouting from our apartment, along with someone knocking on our backdoor. “What the fuck?” says Cloud Maiden eloquently, heading back inside with the neighbor’s cat meowing in her arms. I am still trying to ascertain if anyone downstairs is home when I hear a ruckus coming from our place. “What is it?” I yell, running back upstairs.
“Our fucking porch is on fire!” Cloud Maiden screams back.
Only one of our neighbors is home, and he’s already armed with a mixing bowl filled with water. At first I wasn’t very concerned - all I could see was smoke wafting up from one of the corners - but after the first few seconds we realized that there were flames going on from inside the wood, which refused to go out after a few good dousings. Our porch is structurally unsound and dry as tinder, so that’s when we really began to freak out. A passerby in the alley had seen the smoke and he’d been the one ringing our doorbell.
After about 15 minutes of running back and forth from the kitchen with pots full of water, and finally obtaining a garden hose from someone living across the back alley from us, we managed to put the stupid thing completely out.
“How the hell did that start?” Our downstairs neighbor gasped, as we all took a moment to catch our breaths.
I was sheepish. “Maybe I wasn’t careful about ashing my cigarette.”
“Unless you put out your cigarette inside that column, I don’t see how this could have happened,” he countered.
“So… what do we do now?” Cloud Maiden asked.
We called the landlord, who nonchalantly said that he’d stop by in the morning. Then, because we were all nervous that the fire wasn’t truly out, we called 911 and told them that we had put out a fire but wasn’t sure if we should still be worried or not. They said they would send out someone to investigate.
“I know this is really inappropriate right now … but I need a cigarette,” said our neighbor fervently.
The firemen came before we’d finished smoking and were hugely amused that we were standing over the charred remains of a corner of our porch with a fire hazard in each of our mouths. They made very sure that the fire was dead, admonished us to be extra careful about our cigarette ashes, and went on their way. Cloud Maiden gave the neighbor back their cat, which she had thrown into her bathroom for safety’s sake, and we all went back inside to recover our nerves.
So I suppose the fire was my fault, although we’ll never really know. (I guess the wood was so dry that it wouldn’t have taken much for it to catch afire.) Thank God the passerby warned us when he did. Any later and the entire porch would have been up in flames.
Now, excuse me while I curl up under my blanket and wait for my legs to stop shaking.
), and I am sick and tired of being a good girl. But I still have a bit more to get done to finish this job today, and I promised the office I’d get it done (so they could get the client off their backs). 