Of Things That Go
'Beep!' In The Night
Pausing a moment, Carmen gave me a playful, teasing wink, and said:
"Beep!"
"Huh?" I turned and said to Claudia Schiffer, who had been feeding me fat, juicy red seedless grapes. "What'd she say?"
Claudia giggled and said:
"Beep!"
Roy Rogers galloped by on Trigger and as he passed, he waved his hat and said:
"Beep!"
"Hah? What's going on? Why are you all ... " I began, as the scene dissolved and I woke up " ... beeping?" The last word echoed loudly in my dark, empty bedroom.
I sighed, turned over, snuggled down into my pillow.
"Beep!"
Okay, I wasn't dreaming now. I sat up, gazing in groggy confusion at the wee-hours darkness.
"Beep!"
Oh, bother it, I thought, as reality finally woke up and joined me. The smoke detector.
No, there was no fire. The blasted thing just wanted a new battery and had waited until -- I squinted at the clock radio -- 3:47 a.m. to remind me.
I plopped my head back down onto the pillow.
"Beep!" Loud, piercing, and insistent. "I want a new battery! NOW!"
Yeah, fine, okay, I'll get you one tomorrow, I muttered, still more asleep than awake and not fully aware that ...
"Beep!"
... It was just a cheap piece of plastic and wasn't going to shut up and wait until morning, it was going to ...
"Beep!" ... very loudly every minute or so until I did something to shut it up.
Both shoes missed their mark -- my aim is terrible in the dark, without my glasses -- so I turned the light on, squinted at the sudden glare, and padded over to where the detector stood watch, high up on the wall at the head of the stairs. It greeted me with a disgustingly cheerful ...
"Beep!"
I went into the bathroom and got my little metal footstool. I hefted it, tested the weight and grip. Y'know, one good blow with this ...
"Beep!"
Naw, I thought, remembering the cartoons I had watched as a kid where someone smashes a radio into a thousand pieces with that sledgehammer cartoon characters always seem to be able to pull out of thin air, and one tiny little tube still keeps talking ...
"Beep!"
I mounted the stool and faced the smoke detector, trying to remember how to take it down. The instructions were right there -- microscopic white letters molded into white plastic -- but I did remember you had to rotate it one way or another ...
"Beep!" Lessee ... what's the rhyme? "Righties tighties, lefties loosies?" Works with gas caps and faucets, why should smoke detectors be any different? A quarter-turn right, and ...
"Beep!" ... it came free. I turned it over and looked for any orifice that might contain a battery, but to my bleary eyes, the thing looked as hermetically sealed as a space capsule.
"Beep!"
Will you shut up already? I muttered, as I finally located a hair-thin seam that appeared to be a door of some sort. Naturally, it would not yield to my thumbnail, which meant I had to trundle downstairs with it ...
"Beep!" ... fish around in the junk drawer for a screwdriver and pry the door open. I used the biggest, baddest driver I had, just for meanness' sake.
Ah, there it was. I grabbed the little tab that pulls the battery out, and ...
"Beep!" ... gave it a yank. The battery popped out and arced off into the darkness. I scrawled a notation on tomorrow's shopping list and ...
Silence. Blessed silence.
I padded back to bed, lay down, closed my eyes, waited for Malibu to re-materialize ...
"... How about a little suntan lotion, studmuffin?" Janet Reno cooed, with a playful, teasing wink.
