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| Resist the urge, Steve. Resist the urge. Photo by Fran Gambín. |
Sarah and I were lying in bed at about midnight last night. We could hear the bass notes of a nearby party.
"I'm giving them half an hour, then I'm calling the police," Sarah said.
"It's OK. It's not too bad," I said.
Sarah gave me a dirty look. She had a rough day and didn't feel well.
She looked inclined to violence, so I said: "That's just what I was telling myself. I was just trying to CONVINCE myself that it's not a problem."
Then I'm assuming the partygoers got too hot and opened the windows, because a tide of OPA GANGAM STYLE crashed over us.
"Look out the window and see which house it is," she said.
I did, and every window outside looked dark. If I strained at the blinds of one house, I could see a strobe light.
"It's that house again," I said. "Let's burn it down."
"No," Sarah said. "That's not real."
House fires, not real? At my job at a great metropolitan newspaper, I listen to the police scanner for hours. Just last night fire crews responded to a house in Hyrum after someone said they saw flames. Last Monday I laid out a story for the News-Examiner in Montpelier about a fire that burned a family's house half to the ground. There was a great picture of the mother holding an oxygen mask over their pet turtle's head. Fires are real. And I really wanted to burn their house down, but my own wife kept denying the very reality of arson as a solution. I needled her, trying to find out what her specific objection to my plan was.
"I could go next door and fill a can up with gas and use that to get it going."
"Stop that. That's not real."
A few minutes later, I tried a reconciliatory approach.
"I guess I keep forgetting how close that house is to the other side of our apartment building. I bet a house fire right there would burn us up, too," I said. "But then again, our house is very wet."
Sarah laughed. We were at the tail end of a warm spell, and melted snow pooled up in our parking lot and over the sidewalk, coming right up to the foundation. The sagging rain gutters dripped more steadily right in front of our door. The lake wasn't new, but because we don't have a basement, we haven't complained to the landlord yet. But about a year ago, going to an early morning class, I opened the door to find a family of ducks.
"How many diapers do we have in the trash?" I asked. "We could set a bucket of dirty diapers on fire and leave it on their doorstep." This motion also died in committee.
"They have 14 more minutes. Then I'm calling the cops."
"You know what we should do? Here's what we should do. I'll take some speakers over there, plug them in and play Shaina Feinberg's cha-cha album. That would get them."
"I don't know what that is."
I should note that Sarah hates 95 percent of things I try to introduce, and she's never loved anything new after 11 p.m.
"It's the diametric opposite of whatever music they're playing. It's impossible to party to." I played it for her on our tablet.
"Turn that off. That's the worst thing I've ever heard."
For the record, Shaina, I like the album.
Sarah was afraid the noise would wake Charlotte. I said if it did, I'd take Charlotte, crying, over there and none of them would get lucky. Nothing kills the mood faster than a crying baby.
"No, you won't," Sarah said. "Why do you keep saying these things that aren't even real?"
"I dunno. I'm tired of calling the cops on these guys. The cops probably think I'm a whiner. I guess I want to do something that really makes them question their grip on reality. Where could we get 20 -- no, 50 cats? I want to break into the animal shelter, steal 50 cats, put them in a van and back them right up to their door. I'd let them go, and suddenly their house would just be full of cats."
No use. Sarah told me to call the cops, and when I refused, she stalked off downstairs with her phone. A couple of minutes after the call, the party stopped. Sarah made me look out the window again. I told her the cops were there, all right, with choppers and national guard tanks. She gave me another dirty look.
Sarah couldn't sleep for another half hour afterward, she was so mad. We watched Keeping Up Appearances on the tablet, and I couldn't help feeling a little like Hyacinth, the human killjoy. We broke up their party, but hey, they were asking for it at 12:30. And while by the light of day I realize arson isn't the answer, I still want to do something incredible. I want to host the loudest outdoor dance party in our parking lot. I'll do it every day for a week before finals and invite all my non-student friends. Then, at the end of the semester when they're partying again, I'll sneak over and caulk all their doors shut.
But Sarah's right -- I won't do any of that. None of it's real. What's real is the seasonal swing from party town in the spring and fall to ghost town over Christmas and summer. Even though those kids will someday turn 25 and realize that all parties are horrible and binges are killing them, they'll move out and we'll be stuck with another batch of 18-year-olds. They'll be younger every year, and every year my wife will remind me that we need to get out of here.
Maybe when I'm 45, and Charlotte is out of the house, and I'm having a real midlife crisis -- maybe then I can burn their house down.
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