Daily Blague

We had a power blackout here on the Upper East Side yesterday afternoon. It didn't last very long, but as luck would have it I was on the ground when it happened. I have long wondered if I'd be capable of climbing the seventeen flights to our apartment. It would appear that I am.

I had been at the doctor's, for the second of four Vitamin B-12 injections. (I think they're making a difference, but it's too early to be sure.) I walked up to JG Melon for a late lunch afterward. Then I stepped into a taxi, noticing that it seemed about to start raining. We drove up Third Avenue and turned onto 86th Street. I leaned forward, as I always do at this point, and told the driver that I wanted to go to a driveway on the far left of the intersection with Second Avenue. But the driver stayed in the right lane. I was beginning to be annoyed when the combination of his deceleration and a screaming siren made me realize that something was up. Almost instantly, I noticed the chaos at the intersection. And the blank traffic signals. Oh, no, I thought.

The problem with power failures is that nobody has any idea when they're going to be fixed. Had someone told me that power would be restored within forty minutes - well, I'm not sure that I'd have believed it. I am haunted by end-of-civilization nightmares, where things just break down permanently. Cities like New York no longer bustle with new growth so much as they totter on ageing infrastructure, which, as everyone knows, is boring to maintain. (It doesn't help that the city wasn't built with easy repairs in mind.)

Unaccountably, I'd left my cell phone charging by my bedside. I begged the doorman on duty to let me use his, and he somewhat reluctantly agreed. We had no idea how extensive the blackout was, and I wanted to connect with Kathleen as soon as possible. In the event, I was shaking too badly to press the numbers, so the doorman did that for me, too. The call failed.

Two things propelled me upstairs. I will leave one of them to your imagination. The other was the land line, which was probably not affected. Peering down the corridor to the fire stairs, I saw light. So did an older woman from the fourteenth floor who seems to know everyone in the building but has only just decided to acknowledge my existence. (How do I know she's older? Her "Vassar '48 reunion" sweatshirt. I was born in 1948.) She was intrigued by the backup lights, which are new, installed since the last blackout, in 2003. Like most residents, she couldn't believe that the management had actually done something useful, and in fact the note of scolding persisted, as if the management were still guilty of the reprehensible offense of having failed to do install the backup lights sooner.

I decided to follow her up the stairs as long as I could. What she could climb, I ought to be able to climb, even though she bears many signs of the former athlete. We went up seven flights before she paused. I paused. We stood for about a minute, I'd say. The stairwell was a site of some chaos. All the way up to the sixteenth floor, I'd witness ongoing episodes in the drama of a mother whose two year-old boy was trapped in one of the elevators, with his baby sitter. The last I saw, a handyman and the mother were trying to pry open the elevator door at the sixteenth floor. You may be sure that I counted my blessings. Coming home ten minutes sooner, I'd have been in there with the kid, but I don't want to go there.

My near neighbor and I climbed another two flights, and then paused again. That was our pace.  As we approached the fourteenth floor, she graciously  asked if I wanted some water. If I'd felt the least bit unsteady, I'd have accepted, but I declined with thanks. My heart was pounding, but not scarily, and I didn't feel any particular discomfort. I soldiered on up the four remaining flights in a single go.

The first thing I did after I'd let myself in was to strip down and jump in the shower. There was still plenty of it; we weren't fifteen minutes into the blackout. The water in tall buildings is supplied by wooden water tanks situated on the roof. The tanks in turn are supplied by pumps in the basement. The pumps go out in a blackout, of course, but it takes a while for the tank to empty. In addition to the shower, I filled the pasta pentola, just to have water for cleaning my hands. By the time I gathered up all the stuff that I thought I'd need and taken a seat on the balcony - I didn't want to heat up the cool rooms with my presence, and, besides, I can't stand still air - I was soaking again.

I was still shaking too badly to dial the one phone that still worked. With the cell phone, dialing wasn't the problem; the overloaded circuits were. At 4:30, I heard a news report on WINS about the blackout. I was delighted to learn that only a small part of the city was affected. By now, I could see that the traffic signal at 87th and First was working, but I assumed that that was backup power. I finally made contact with Kathleen, who was of course unaffected, although she told me that she'd noticed a surge in the power a while back. We agreed to talk in an hour. I went back inside for something, and saw immediately that the power had come back on.

I took another shower.