Burning Down the House

Here’s a story to tide you over. Golden Sun ate my dungeon.

It was a horrible day. Mid-March, still a little too cold for spring, certainly far too warm for winter. It was the kind of weather where if you wore a coat, you got too warm, and if you didn’t, you got too cold. It was raining, but not the kind of rain that makes that nice rhythmic pattering sound on the asphalt and leaves a delightful ozone smell and a rainbow in its wake. It was the kind of rain that’s little more than an obese fog blanket, getting in your eyes and making it impossible to look up.

All in all, not the best day for George’s work. He sat, twenty-seven stories off the ground, on a slippery I-beam above the corner of Seventh and Madison, on the construction site of a new office building. He hated his job.

The reassuring clang of his safety rope did little to improve his mood. He had been angry ever since he got the job, back when he really needed to pay his rent and he’d pawned off everything he didn’t care for. However, and this was the really bizarre part, they’d contracted him.

How many construction companies contract you and don’t let you quit? The contract was for two years. He’d served three months of his time, from mid-December (he’d had Christmas on the job, so he’d missed being with his family), through January (New Years, too – he’d watched the crowds from thirteen stories up and hated them), through February (one of his co-workers, an inbred Scotch-Irishman named Dougal MacNaghten, had threatened to throw him off the building for not wearing green of St. Patrick’s day). It had snowed nonstop, and then it had rained nonstop.

The only comfort he ever took was from his lunch, which he always baked himself, just before work, even going so far as to be late to get the food burned just right, and his music, the one liberty still afforded to him by his wardens. He carried a large battery-powered CD player everywhere on the site with him. He never wore headphones, partly because he hated everyone at his worksite and loved to annoy them and partly because he felt that speakers complemented the sound better.

Presently the CD ended and restarted. He listened to the delightful noise of the music as the song began, and then, as the first verse ended, he looked at the player, puzzled and somewhat unnerved.

What a disturbing coincidence.

The CD, he remembered, was Talking Heads’ masterpiece Speaking in Tongues. The first track, which had just begun, went:

“Watch out
You might get what you’re after.
Cool, baby
Strange but not a stranger
I’m an ordinary guy
Burning down the house!”

He glanced at the stream of oil leading from the elevator to the wooden supports, and then at the can of oil in his hand, dripping, as hesitant as he was. He looked at his lighter, clutched like a weapon in his other hand..

Caught in the act, he thought. But the speakers couldn’t see anything. He’d be fine.

But he was a little scared. It was odd that the music had fit the situation so well, and even odder that he had chosen it for that day. He also wasn’t used to committing serious felonies, so he was a little jumpy. Nobody could see him – he’d chosen today because he and everyone was off work – but his law-abiding side wasn’t quite at peace with this whole affair.

He hurried, hoping the player wouldn’t restart again. He oiled his way up to the twenty-ninth floor. Got into the elevator. Picked up the CD player with apprehension. Picked up his lunch remains. Rode the elevator to the bottom of the empty construction site. Dropped his lighter like a grenade.

Sprinted like a scared deer.

They never found out who did it. There were no witnesses. The company payed everyone a thousand dollars in compensation. George invested it. Several weeks later he struck it rich when Google skyrocketed, and he never had to work again. He stayed home with his food and his music.

But he never played Burning Down the House again.

~ by pieboy on January 4, 2007.