So…I guess you’d call it a slow start to the day, being that I woke up at 8pm. It is, on the other hand, Saturday, and yesterday I thought ahead and set all the blogs to autopost for today, so nothing actually occurred that required my being up and awake until well after I actually was. This is just the way I like it on weekends.

And then I like to have a cup of coffee or two and brush my hair and then I like to look like an efficient, informed hero-type of woman in front of a great many good-looking uniformed officers, at least one of whom does an appreciative double-take, even though I was wearing my baggy plaid pj pants.

And so it came to pass…

It was a quarter to midnight and all through the house the alarm bell was going, but no fires to douse. As per usual, it has been raining a great deal and, also as per usual, this set the fire alarm off.

Vancouver is a very different kind of town.

Normally (this is normal, in Vancouver) what happens is, the rain leaks in because our building is covered with stucco and punctured with many holes through which the rain gains entry. Because it is stucco, it cannot easily get out again, so it seeps down through the walls to the lower levels, which is why my living room wall has holes eaten through it from which emerge bugs of the sort that were thought extinct since the Pre-Cambrian era, and why mushrooms occasionally break the surface of my carpet. The Co-op claims they will do something about that someday.

In any case, after a substantial or prolonged rainstorm, something on which one may certainly count in Vancouver in the depths of winter, the vast pool of water stored within the building invariably finds its way to the smoke detector in the South hallway on the second floor, from which it gushes in a joyous, gravity-powered fountain. Naturally, this causes the detector some considerable agitation, to which it responds in the only way it knows how: by setting off the fire alarm.

So it is not unusual to have a fire alarm go off in the middle of the night (even if it doesn’t rain in the daytime, you may be sure it will rain at night in this city) in response to a good wetting.

That, however, is not what happened this time.

That would have been normal.

Noooooo, this time I hear a large bang coming from the parking garage below my apartment, a second later comes the the alarm, I look up from the computer, decide this t-shirt won’t do and I should change into my cute polarfleece hoodie, which I do, slip on some socks that match, get into my sandals, and then make my leisurely way out to the lobby, which is crammed with my neighbors, only a small percentage of whom have English fluent enough to be used under the influence of sirens. One of them who does informs me that a section of the ceiling on the second floor has fallen in, along with the smoke detector. This does not surprise me, for I have seen that ceiling and, under the new coat of stucco it looks like the panties of a gigantic woman whose period has caught her by surprise.

Alas, this dramatic story is not true.

As I usually do, I patrol the hallways of all four floors, looking for any sign of actual fire. I’m confident enough that there IS none to take the elevator, that’s how confident. And there is none, not so much as some incense, Chinese New Year notwithstanding. Maybe that’s why we have all these false alarms? The Buddha is not appeased?

The only thing that’s actually out of place is the smoke detector at the south end of the main floor hallway, which has exploded.

“Ghosts,” says one of the Chinese neighbors, inscrutably. And then they all laugh. Maybe they know something I don’t?

In any case, I get to tell the firemen what’s what, what it usually is, where it is located, and what about the parking garage. They seem to have no notes or collective memory about our smoke detector/rain alarm issue, so I fill them in thereon. One bystander, who’s apparently lent them her keys so they can get in and out of the complex, asks if the Captain has them and it appears that he does not. And, at this point a remarkably good-looking and relatively youthful member of the force enters the building, probably just because standing out in the rain is unpleasant, even if you’ve got the suit and the cool hat.

“Do you have this lady’s keys?” asks the Captain.

“No,” he replies. “I think Joey has them,” and as he turns, presumably to go get Joey, he does an appreciative double-take in my direction and I give thanks to the goddess Feria for my newly-red hair and suddenly wish I had put on the good jeans. The tight ones.

I’d have given him my keys.

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