by Jane Woods
Roy DeSoto pulled his Porsche into the driveway. The garage door was opened
and he saw that JoAnne’s station wagon was gone. The house looked empty
as no lights were on. Tuesday morning, Roy thought with a smile. That was
the time that JoAnne volunteered at the kids’ school. He’d have
the house to himself. Last night had been a killer. Three separate runs had
gotten them up. The day had been pretty busy too with weather related problems.
It had been overcast and rainy. Today looked like a repeat weather-wise.
That was fine with him. It was good sleeping weather and sleep was what he
had in mind. He could get in a good four or five hours before anyone was
due home.
He parked the car in the garage. He remembered to leave the door open for
JoAnne. It had been sticking and was hard to open. He’d have to take
a look at that sometime. It probably just needed greasing.
He yawned as he walked inside. He didn’t even stop in the kitchen as
he usually did. He checked to make sure that the dog was outside. He didn’t
need a wet, smelly 65 pound dog jumping on him while he was trying to sleep.
He glanced out the sliding glass door to the back yard. The dog was huddled
under the picnic table looking pathetic. Roy had built him a perfectly good
dog house but the fool wouldn’t use it. Chris and his friends had since
taken it over as secret meeting place but the dog had never gone near it.
That was his problem, Roy decided.
He went on up the stairs to the bedroom. The shades were down and it was
even darker in here. Roy kicked off his shoes and collapsed onto the bed.
He planned to sleep for at least four hours and he dropped right off with
no trouble.
It was nowhere near four hours later that he was awakened by a high pitched
squeal. He jumped to his feet the instant he awoke. Old fireman habits died
hard. His first thought was that it was the smoke detector. He went out into
the hallway to check but that was not the source of the noise. He had always
teased JoAnne that she had a timer fetish. She had timers for everything.
She claimed it was the only way that she stayed organized. He decided it
was one of her timers going off. He’d never get any sleep unless he
shut it off so he began to search for it. He went back into their room to
be sure it was not the alarm clock. He checked the kids’ rooms also
but he didn’t remember either of them having alarm clocks. Chris had
a watch that beeped on the hour. Birthday gift from Uncle Johnny, for the
express purpose of driving his father insane. Roy was sure of it. He
couldn’t find the watch and the sound did not appear to be coming from
Chris’ room.
It seemed that the thing should have shut itself off by this time but it
was still shrilling away. Must be downstairs, he yawned and headed for the
steps. The stairs were carpeted with avocado green shag carpeting. It was
throughout the whole house. It was ugly but in good condition. They
couldn’t really afford to replace it anyway.
It wasn’t so much what it looked like that had caused Roy to hate the
rugs. It was the treacherous way that sharp things, like Barbie Doll shoes,
hid themselves in the long shag waiting for some unsuspecting guy to come
along in his bare feet. Roy had momentarily let his guard down as he was
intent on finding the source of the annoying noise. On the third step a plastic,
pink high heel bit savagely into the ball of his left foot. It was so sharp
that it caused him to pull his foot back up immediately. This broke the rhythm
with which he was running down the stairs and threw him completely off balance.
He lost his footing and began to fall down the stairs. Even through the carpet
he felt every riser he fell against. The poles on the banister missed no
opportunity to hit him as he banged his way down the stairs. This looked
so easy when stunt guys did it in the movies. He landed unceremoniously in
a heap in front of the front door which had been what he hit to stop
himself.
“Ouch,” he gasped, as he mentally took inventory of all the bumps
and bruises he had just acquired. He checked for broken bones and serious
lacerations but other than rugburn he could find no serious injury. Even
the rugburn wasn’t serious but it was very obvious since it covered
the entire left side of his face. He wondered if he could sue Mattel over
this but then he couldn’t imagine getting up in court and explaining
how he had been decked by a tiny doll shoe. A pink doll shoe. The backlash
from Chet alone was enough to make him decide that discretion was the better
part of valor, in this matter.
So visions of a large settlement sadly left him and he became even more aware
of the annoying sound that had awakened him in the first place. It sounded
like it was coming from the kitchen. Carefully he pulled himself to his feet.
He knew full well that in a few hours time, the dull aches from the fall
would feel even worse. Sometimes medical knowledge was not such a great thing.
He limped into the kitchen. There were three egg timers lined up on the counter.
He checked each one. None was the culprit. Finally he turned around to the
stove. Aha! That was it. After much fumbling he managed to get the noise
to stop. He wasn’t all together sure that he had not merely reset the
thing. It might go off again later on. Hopefully, JoAnne would be home by
then.
But the timer on the stove meant only one thing. JoAnne had been baking.
It was nowhere near either of the kids’ birthdays. There was no reminder
on the Fridge about an upcoming meeting that either of the kids were to attend
that would mean that JoAnne was baking refreshments for. He’d learned
long ago that it was worth a guy’s life to eat something that had been
earmarked for a Scout meeting or a PTA bake sale.
He was suddenly hungry. He opened the fridge and there on the top shelf was
an Orange Supreme cake with white frosting. And it had been cut so that meant
it was fair game. Orange sounded like a nice healthy thing to have for breakfast.
He pulled the cake out and put it on the counter. He went over and flipped
on the coffee maker and he got himself dishes and silverware. A little snack
before going back to bed wouldn’t hurt a thing.
By the time he remembered to move everything to the table and not “eat
at the counter like a barbarian” as JoAnne always harped at him, the
coffee was ready. He went over and got the glass coffee pot. As he was walking
back to the table an odd thing happened. He wasn’t sure how. Maybe he
had hit the pot against the coffee maker as he removed it. Somehow the glass
pot exploded in his hand. He jumped back as hot coffee and pieces of glass
flew around the room. He had been unable to jump out of the way quite fast
enough. He had avoided the glass and a direct hit with the hot coffee but
his favorite pair of tan jeans were now splattered with coffee spray. He
knew that coffee stained but that was the least of his problems. He was barefoot
and there was a sea of coffee and broken glass between him and his shoes.
They both looked even more lethal than the Barbie Doll shoe had been.
He was trapped. He couldn’t even get to his cake. He wondered if this
was Friday the Thirteenth. No, if it was Friday, JoAnne would have been home
and none of this would have ever happened. Things like this never happened
to JoAnne. They never usually happened to him either. This was the kind of
thing that usually happened to Johnny, only it was funny when it happened
to him.
He suddenly remembered that he hadn’t bothered to take his keys out
of his pocket before collapsing on the bed. He patted his pocket. They were
still there. He backed up to the door to the garage. He opened it and walked
out into the garage. He walked very carefully, unsure what could be lying
in wait to attack his bare feet out there.
He made his way through the garage and back out to the front door. He felt
as if he had triumphed over disaster as he let himself in. He stopped feeling
smug immediately when a hidden leggo block impaled itself in the bottom of
his other foot. How in the world was he going to limp on both feet?
Cautiously he made his way up the stairs. Gingerly he sat down on the bed
and grabbed his shoes. JoAnne would kill him if he didn’t clean up that
mess. He decided that he’d better try and get into JoAnne’s good
graces so he dropped his shoes and went and changed into some old work clothes
and shoes. He was even clever enough to put his dirty clothes in the hamper
not on the floor. He was feeling pretty proud of himself when he got the
brilliant idea to actually do a load of laundry. He grabbed the basket from
the shelf and dumped all the clothes from the hamper into it. JoAnne was
going to be so thrilled!
He grabbed the basket with a groan. Was it that heavy or was it his war wounds
kicking in? He went back into the kitchen and left the basket on the counter
. First things first, he had to clean up this mess or he’d be tracking
coffee everywhere he went. Besides he wanted to get the glass up before the
kids came home. And before JoAnne came home and killed him, he admitted.
The first thing he did was pick up the glass. It had not shattered into a
million tiny pieces, just ten or fifteen fairly large ones. He picked it
all up and deposited it in the garbage can. He managed to do this without
so much as a scratch. Maybe his luck was changing. Next he got a mop and
bucket out of the supply cabinet in the garage. He also grabbed a white bottle
marked all purpose cleaner. He’d have this place cleaned up in no time.
One thing he had learned in the Fire Department was how to mop.
He went back into the kitchen and leaned the mop up against the counter.
He opened up the cleaner and poured it into the bucket until there was about
½ an inch covering the bottom of the bucket. Then he set the bucket
under the faucet and turned the water on. He glanced around the room. He’d
make quick work of this. His eyes fell on the cake. He decided that he’d
go ahead and eat a piece, for energy.
Before he could lift his fork to his mouth something caught his eye. It was
motion in the sink. Mountains of white suds were erupting from the bucket.
They flowed over the side of the sink and onto the floor. He threw his fork
down and jumped up. Somehow his knee knocked into the leg of the table jarring
it so much that everything that was on the table took a nosedive onto the
floor. His slice of cake, the glass of milk he had poured in lieu of coffee,
the entire cakepan all joined the mess on the floor.
He couldn’t worry about that at the moment. A torrent of white bubbles
was overtaking the entire kitchen. He ran to the sink, skidding on the wet
floor and smashing both knees into the door pulls on the cabinet underneath
the sink. Most of the colorful language he’d learned in the service
sprang to mind and out of his mouth before he managed to get the faucet turned
off.
“What the hell is this stuff?” he demanded, picking up the
bottle of cleaner. It was then that he noticed the words “highly
concentrated -- use only a capful per bucket of water.” JoAnne and her
costcutting.
He sadly picked up the cake, none of which was salvageable and tossed it
out. He was glad that the first plate and glass he had grabbed from the cabinet
had both been made of plastic. He put them and the cakepan on the counter.
He’d wash them later. He’d have to attack the floor first. The
coffee looked like it was starting to harden. He went back to the supply
cabinet in search of something that he knew how to use. He found a bottle
of Mr Clean. “Come on, Mr Clean, us guys have to stick
together.”
It took over an hour and a lot of scrubbing to get the kitchen back into
the condition that JoAnne had left it. Now he was really getting sore but
he didn’t dare stop and sit down for fear he’d never be able to
get back up. He washed the plate, glass and cake pan even though he’d
never even gotten a taste of the cake.
He spotted the laundry basket on the counter. He walked out into the garage
and dumped it all into the washing machine. It seemed like a big load so
he sprinkled in a little extra powdered detergent. He turned the machine
on and wondered what to do next. He was now wide awake so going back to bed
was out of the question.
He was thinking about going back into the kitchen and making an early lunch
but he
was not quite sure that he dared to go back in there. It had taken so long
to clean it up he wanted it to stay that way.
Suddenly the decision was made for him. The same kind of suds demon that
had erupted from the bucket in the sink had now possessed the washing machine.
The force of the suds pushed the door on the top of the machine to open part
way and the mess poured down the front of the machine and onto the garage
floor.
He ran over to the washer. He had no idea how to stop it. He’d never
stopped it before. It stopped itself when the wash was finished. He started
pushing and pulling at every knob and dial he could lay his hands on. Finally
the thing stopped with a loud clunk. He noticed the word CONCENTRATE on the
laundry powder box also.
He opened the washer. Tons of suds still bubbled up at him. He began pulling
them out and pushing them onto the floor. The garage floor was his
territory. He could make it as messy as he wanted. Besides there was a handy
drain in the middle of it unlike the kitchen floor. He spotted the garden
hose hanging on the wall. This would be a snap. He hitched the hose up to
the faucet in the laundry sink and sprayed the washer till most of the nasty
white mess was on the concrete floor. He chased it to the drain and washed
it down.
He went back and turned the hose off. He looked into the washer. This might
not be so easy, after all. The clothes were in one huge, sudsy knot. He
didn’t dare turn the washer back on for fear of another eruption. How
could he get the soap out of the clothes? He looked at the laundry sink.
That would take forever. He needed something faster. He had a brilliant idea.
He pulled the cold wet lump of clothing out of the washer and stuffed it
back into the basket. He unscrewed the hose from the sink and rolled it up.
He slung it over his shoulder and picked up the laundry basket. His sore
back protested at its weight. Wet clothes were even heavier than dirty ones.
He valiantly ignored the pain and marched out onto the lawn. He began pulling
the solid lump of clothes apart and spreading things out on the grass. Once
everything was laid out, he screwed the hose into the outside faucet and
began hosing the rest of the suds away. The sudsy water ran down the driveway
and out into the storm drain at the curb. Luckily the rain had finally stopped
so his mess had the storm drain all to itself. He had just begun to believe
he’d get away with it when the all too familiar squeak of the brakes
on the station wagon told him that JoAnne was home.
“ROY! What in the world are you doing?!” she demanded.
“Practicing for a new drill on hosing down victims,” he said quickly.
It was the first thing he could come up with while watching his entire life
flash before his eyes. Although, he could almost hear the little cartoon
angel on one shoulder saying “Roy DeSoto! You’re lying to your
wife!” Luckily the little cartoon devil said, “It’s better
than having her kill ya, Pal.” The voice of the cartoon devil sounded
remarkably like Chet’s.
“On the laundry?!” JoAnne was still in shock.
“Well, I didn’t have any victims handy,” he laughed weakly.
“Besides, this is the dirty load. I got it out of the hamper!”
He was proud of remembering to put that in. He might just live through the
day yet.
“That’s about three loads,” JoAnne commented. She picked the
basket and began picking up the drenched clothes.
He studied her. She wasn’t yelling but that was not necessarily a good
sign. When she was really mad she didn’t yell. She didn’t speak
at all. Her motions were quick and jerky. That could mean trouble. He decided
that confession was good for the soul (and possibly the life, in this case.)
So he told her the whole story including the nine runs he’d had during
the night. Women couldn’t kill you if they pitied you enough. At least
he hoped that was the case.
“The whole cake!!” she interrupted him.
“And I didn’t get so much as a crumb,” He hoped that pity
thing was still working. “And I’m starving.”
“Come on in, I’ll make us some lunch. The school was serving greasy
pizza so I passed on eating with Chris.”
He hoped she wasn’t just fattening him up for the kill but even if she
was it was better to die on a full stomach than an empty one. He had thought
he’d done a great job of cleaning up the kitchen but apparently JoAnne
didn’t see it that way. He was sure that she wanted to get him out of
there as fast as she could so she could do it right. He decided that he’d
better try and get in her good graces so after lunch he told her that he
was going to go out and fix the garage door. She’d been nagging him
to do that for weeks.
He went out to the garage. Since his tools were scattered everywhere and
she had also been nagging him to straighten out the garage he decided to
organize things first. Finally he set the step ladder up right under the
electronic unit that housed the controls for the automatic garage door opener.
He remembered to pull the plug that connected it to the power supply and
took off the housing. He squirted WD40 onto all the moving parts. Then he
plugged it back in and gave it a try. The door was hesitant but it did close
and then open again when he pushed the button. He applied a little more DW40
and tried it again. It operated smoothly this time. He’d fixed it. He
was about to put the housing back on when he remembered that he still had
the power on. Actually he was reminded by a rather nasty shock that made
him jump. He jerked away from the shock and managed to tip over the ladder.
Everything suddenly seemed to be moving in slow motion as he fell backwards
toward the concrete floor. He started grabbing at thin air trying to get
a hold of something to stop his fall. Then his desperate fingers closed around
something metal. It was the shelving unit he’d put in to hold all the
old paint and various other things that he didn’t want on the floor
for the dog to get into.
His fall stopped. For a minute. Then he and the shelving unit began to fall
in the other direction. Before he could even cry out, he and the metal unit
and all the paint cans hit the floor with a horrendous crash.
JoAnne bolted out the kitchen door. “My God, Roy! Are you
hurt?!”
“I certainly hope so,” Roy said sincerely as he looked at the mess
he and the paint had made. Blotches of various colors covered everything.
The walls, the floor, both cars, him. JoAnne was also staring in disbelief.
“It’s all water soluble,” he promised.
Roy laid back on the garage floor with a groan. He put his head back just
in time to see the school bus pull away from the end of the driveway.
“Dad! What did you do?” his nine year old daughter, Joy,
demanded.
“WOW! Dad, this is SOOOO cool,” six year old Chris commented.
“Look at Mom’s car -- it’s sick-odelic!”
“Psychedelic,” Roy corrected him weakly.
“The other kids’ll be so jealous,” Chris enthused.
“No they won’t. Daddy will be washing this all off,
won’t you, Daddy?” JoAnne said coldly.
There was no question in Roy’s mind now. She was definitely mad.
Just then the phone rang in the kitchen. Joy ran into answer it. She’d
just gotten off the bus five minutes ago, who knows how much gossip she could
have missed. She and her friends kept themselves informed.
“It’s for Dad,” she called out in a disappointed tone.
“Something about the dryer.”
“I never touched the dryer. I swear!” Roy vowed as JoAnne’s
anger became even more evident.
“I’ll get it. You start cleaning up this catastrophe.” She
walked back into the kitchen and slammed the door.
“Glad it’s you instead of me for a change,” Chris commented.
“Thanks,” Roy muttered pushing the now empty metal shelving unit
off of himself.
The kitchen door opened again. JoAnne stood there. “It was the Department.
They want you to work for Dwyer tomorrow. I told them you’d be glad
to,” she announced in a voice that brooked no argument. Then she slammed
the door again.
Work, Roy thought pleasantly, that place where I only have to face
fires, speeding traffic and the occasional explosion. Of course, I’ll
be happy to go in for Dwyer. It was much safer than having a day
off.