Groaning and griping, since it's 1am, I grab my boots and jackets and set out a plan, "Alright, I'm going upstairs to find out what the hell our neighbor is doing. Try to set out towels. I'll be back." So I tromp up the stairs and start knocking insistently. Before too long, I feel really bad, cause it's late, or early however you spin it, and the neighbors might not deserve to hear my ruckus. Each knock echoes across the dimly lit hallway, and I can well imagine people scowling in their beds at my knocking and occasional pleas of, "You're flooding our apartment...!" I can hear movement and a TV behind the door, but no one answers me, and I give up. I hear a fire alarm start in a nearby apartment. I walk back downstairs and the roomie is meeting me halfway looking agitated. "What?" I ask. I wish I hadn't. He showed me that two new leaks had started, and that fire alarm going off was ours. With mounting irritation, I scrounged up the emergency numbers and call in for maintenance. A sleepy voice answers after a minute, "Hullo?" I hope it's just the fact that I've just woken him up, but he sounds a little like that one retarded cousin everyone has. "Uhm, it's raining in my apartment, and the fire alarm won't go off, we think it's shorted out." There's silence and a distinctly autistic voice says, "Really?"
"Yes, it's dripping out of our smoke detector, and door jamb, and several other places." He tells me he'll be a few minutes, and hangs up. I reenter the apartment, and start checking around the area for more leaks. I find a huge puddle and retrieve a bowl. It soon becomes apparent that bowls alone aren't doing much good, since the splashing is getting everywhere. I retrieve towels and then we hunker down to wait. It's awkward. Me and the roomie try not to make too much eye contact, and the blaring fire alarm just went on and on. I was also having inner ear trouble, so each klaxon shriek of the ungodly machine was like a parrot thunking nails into my head with it's beak while shrieking a song in which every note is wrong.
We twiddled our thumbs waiting for the maintenance guy and I share my fear with the roomie that he's a bit slow. My suspicions are confirmed when he arrives after 20 minutes. We let him in and he checks that water is indeed pouring from the door jamb of the bathroom door, from the smoke detector in the bathroom, and on the other side of the door in my bedroom. "I'm gonna go find out what's happening. I'm really new. I've only been here a month, and everyone is on vacation." This unwelcome news sinks in as he leaves. Updates came sporadically. After some thumps upstairs the water seemed to slack off in the hallway. We were heartened until we heard a spout in the living room. Alarmed, we set up a huge bowl under our hanging light fixture. If you've never seen a small waterfall coming from a working light hanging precariously close to two computer desks, count yourself lucky. The alarm shrieking came in threes and in a lull waiting to find out what would happen and dispirited, I suddenly started laughing. The roomie looked over curiously. "You know that story Charlie tells, the one he made up, how in high school I missed the bus and walked through the rain, bursting through the door with a crash of lightening to yell, 'I. Hate. Penises!'" He gave me a sad half smile and nodded. "Well, I keep assigning single syllable words to the fire alarm to make me hate it less. Sounds like it's yelling, 'I. Hate. Dicks.'"
"Not funny?" He shook his head and we fell back into silence. It probably would have been funnier if I hadn't been leaving him because I like girls. The maintenance worker came back and at this point it's been about an hour of this shrieking, with a monsoon taking place in the living room. "That's really loud. Lemme see if I can stop it. Just gotta get my ladder." He left. He was gone for about 15 minutes, the walk upstairs being about a minute. He returned and pulled off the shrieking pile of useless wires that I would have happily incinerated. He fussed with it for a few minutes, looking increasingly confused. He poked at it with his screwdriver, making almost obscene little, "Uh!" sounds as he did so. We stared at him with both hope and dismay. He looked over, "Do you have a flashlight?" A frantic search ensued and it was established that we did, but with no batteries. "Okay, I'll go get mine." Dispirited we watched hm leave. He returned almost twenty minutes later. At this point, the devil machine was screaming, "Hate. Your. Life!" He had his flashlight but I realized immediately he had forgotten his screw driver.
When he mentioned it, rather than let him leave we assured him we had one. Pressing our screwdriver into his hands we hurried him up the step stool. As we watched him fiddle a torrent of water gushed forth from the fluorescent light in the kitchen. It was the steadiest stream yet, and I jumped past him to place our biggest bowl and towel under it. As I was placing the towel the emergency sprinkler near the hanging light fixture sprang a leak just as big. I meeped in panic and hastened to move my work bag, and laptop. While touring through the bowls and pots I noticed water was dripping down from the light switch in my bedroom. Discouraged I set a towel under it, knowing there wasn't much to be done about that one.
At the two hour in hell mark, the man finally manages to disable the fire alarm. Me and the roomie both sag with relief. Finally able to effectively communicate we thank him profusely, and I'm getting over my prejudice because I'm so goddamn grateful that the klaxon has stopped. "Are the leaks getting better?" We gesture around. "They're moving, most of the bathroom has stopped, but the living room is now housing two small waterfalls." He nods worriedly, "We finally found the guy upstairs." The way he said it made my ears perk up. "What was wrong with him? Was he stoned?" He scowls at the thought of our upstairs neighbor, but shakes his head, "I can't really say. But he had left his bathtub running, and couldn't turn it off." He repeated that everyone of importance was on vacation, but that they'd come and reinstall the smoke detector the next day, and check the water damage.
Because of his reticence I am convinced the neighbor was either injecting himself with black tar heroine, or was practicing auto-erotic asphyxiation, and passed out.
The next day we discovered this in the bathroom, and I needn't illustrate cause this is the real godamn wall, and that's horrid. The water got under the paint, leaving this behind.
But that wasn't the end of it. The monsoon would have one last revenge. I was at home two days after the rainstorm, and had just collected all the towels from the last reluctant drips. I went in the kitchen to make myself a desperation sandwich (this is a sandwich made of two ends of the loaf, because there's no bread left in the house). As I was putting on the finishing touches, the light went out for a moment and then I had water dumped on me, and sprayed across the kitchen. I leaped a foot in the air trying to understand what had happened. When I finally looked up, I saw the case of the florescent light had come unhinged, dumping the last of the water that couldn't escape through the cracks onto the floor. I put out one last small bowl, and couldn't enjoy my desperation sandwich, because I was convinced water had gotten on it, and the water turned most of the towels brown and left gunky soap suds in the bowls. If I ever see the man upstairs coming or going I'm just gonna punch him in the face.
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