Fire Alarm

One of the church people went tapping by in the hallway, bathed in the strobe light, with a cell phone pressed to her ear. She was saying, urgently, “But what I want to know is, do you dispense a fire truck automatically? Do you dispense a fire truck when the alarm goes off, whether we call you or not?” Kate caught her by the arm. “Dispatch,” she said. “The word you want is dispatch.” The lady hung up the phone and said, “The 911 operator is telling us to get out of the building. We all need to get out of the building right now.” Over their heads the light flashed and the alarm blared, presenting a compelling case for evacuation.

Outside, the leaves were swirling around the parking lot. The grey sky threatened rain and an odor of gasoline floated in from somewhere. People stood in clumps, pastel skirts matching pastel bolero jackets. Dark grey suits matched grey and navy striped ties and matched black shoes with tassels. Comb-overs flopped gaily the wrong way, jutting themselves into the breeze, being slapped at by the old men. In the distance, sirens began to scream. “That’s them coming,” said Kate to Bubber meanly, “Because you pulled the fire alarm.” Bubber looked cold and pinched in his blue oxford shirt and his discreetly combed hair. He looked distracted and unconcerned. He vaguely held to her hand, but it was because of a parking lot rule, not because he was alarmed. Everyone had reduced to their clumps, and Kate, not being part of any clump, was clumped with the impossible Bubber, whose glowing orange hair and pallid face made him practically a beacon for trouble, a flame to lure the firemen in, where there was no other fire, no smoke, not even a warm oven.

People told each other that the fire trucks were coming. It seemed an impossibly long distance between the fire station on Granby and the church on Colonial. Judging by the rate of the sirens’ approach, the fire trucks were being pulled by mules. Patient mules. Every time someone caught Kate’s eye, the person smiled warmly. Kate felt like stuffing Bubber in a bag and jumping into her car. “Goodbye, church!” she would say, “I’ll just take my bag of Bubber and be on my way!” But Bubber would glow from inside the bag. He would radiate a fiery energy all over the place. The fire trucks would follow her home, to the source, to the point of alarm. Might as well stay here.