If it weren’t for Maurice’s clockwork A.M. call-to-nature, we both may have slept our last sleep, so to speak.
I woke this morning to slowly being poisoned by gas. Walking into my kitchen, immediately I smelled it, and I said out loud, “Is that gas?” while thinking, simultaneously, “no, no, it can’t be.”
My stove top is electric and so is my oven. I walked from room-to-room, sniffing the air. “Yes, yes, that’s gas,” I mumbled each time I came back to the kitchen. The smell grew stronger and stronger. “Was it coming from outside?” I wondered. “No, no, it is strongest in the kitchen.”
In the end, I texted my upstairs and downstairs neighbors, asking if they could smell gas. I received the following texts from my landlord, below me:
Omg. I just found my burner on. Might have been last night I just opened my window.
I noticed it about half hour ago. Maybe opening my window sent it upstairs?
In just the ten minutes I had been sniffing around my apartment, the smell had become overwhelming, especially in the kitchen, so that before she had replied, I had already began to open windows, too. I dread what could have happened, had I woken later and turned on a switch. Or simply slept the day away, because I was so drowsy the night before, and went to bed with a headache.
My landlord is a nurse working through this pandemic. A fastidious person, normally, I can’t imagine how tired she is that she wouldn’t immediately check her gas stove top upon smelling gas. I am grateful that she was still home, when I texted. I am grateful we both woke this morning. I am grateful for the rain-saturated air flowing in through my open windows.
I am grateful for Maurice.
No Accounting for Happiness 