Sleep doesn’t come easily that night and doesn’t last very long when it does arrive. For whatever reason, I’m up at three in the morning and discover it has stopped raining. Or at least stopped to the point where a downpour has petered out to a drizzle.
I walk downstairs, and after replacing the fuse, risk hitting the basement light switch. No housewide shortout. No sign of sparks. So far so good. I can inspect the damage in relative safety.
The good news is that the water sits only six inches deep on the basement’s tiled floor. The bad news is that there’s no drain in this flooring, and even without further liquid contributions from outside this room-sized puddle will stay at its present level until someone takes steps to deposit it elsewhere. I seem to be the only candidate for the job.
For the next few hours I scoop water with an empty plastic food container and dump it into the kitchen sink, an apparatus I don’t intend to use again for washing dishes any time soon. After three or four inches have been skimmed off the six inch pool on the floor, a towel is substituted for the plastic container. When the towel has soaked up as much water as it can hold, I carry it dripping to the sink, squeeze it out, then bring it back and drop it on the floor again. After what seems like hours, this labor intensive exercise ultimately leaves a very slippery floor that looks like it has had a very good washing.
The floor’s improved appearance aside, there remains the six-inch high ring visible on the basement kitchen’s walls. I’m no expert on house construction, but the words rot, mold and mildew come to mind. For a homeowner with equity to worry about this would be a disaster. For someone with only residual residence privileges it merely presents aesthetic challenges.
It now being seven in the morning, I consider these challenges and how to address them upstairs while taking a shower and dressing in preparation for my meeting with Joe Connors at the Bernstein Building.
Coming out my front door at eight-fifteen, prepared for a leisurely walk to Bernstein’s palace of finance, I find the hole digging crew already at working on the pit they dug the day before. The foreman stops shoveling and looks my way. I motion him over.
“Find the leaking pipe?” I ask.
“No leak. Somebody made a mistake. Happens.”
The foreman has to know that the canvas that was supposed to cover his handiwork was removed and that a ton of water fell into the hole. He also must have seen the place where water seeped into my basement.
“Your fucking hole caused a flood in my house. Probably caused major structural damage.”
“Happens,” the foreman replies. We are once again very close and almost within breathing range. The other workcrew members have also again also left their stations and are slowly easing their way toward the budding confrontation.
“Don’t you cover these holes with metal plates when you leave them overnight?”
“Usually,” says the foreman.
“Or at least with plywood?”
“Sometimes,” he says.
“But this hole, the one that caused my basement to flood, you just covered with canvas.”
“Happens,” says the foreman. He’s now giving me The Expression. The bring-it-on expression. The look a cop with a pistol, a club and a partner nearby gives a suspect he doesn’t like in order to provoke a swing that can justify a forceful response. The one a club bouncer gives a smartass who won’t leave so he has an excuse to apply enhanced removal techniques. I’ve employed this same expression on occasion. I know it well.
“We’ll get this thing closed up this morning and have it paved over by afternoon.” There’s no apology in the foreman’s voice.
“And who’s going to pay for the damage to my house?”
The foreman pretends to consider the question. “City maybe. If you sue. Might take a couple of years. But settlements can be pretty good if you got the patience and the right lawyer.”
I’m half expecting this guy to reach into his back pocket and pull out a business card for a brother-in-law who’s a member of the Philadelphia Bar and just happens to specialize in flooded basement litigation. Philadelphia is a great lawyers’ town. Its got more of them per capita than anyplace east of Los Angeles.
Doctors are fleeing this city because they can’t afford malpractice insurance in a
place where they’re sued so often and where jury awards are so big. Car insurance rates are fifty percent higher than in the rest of the state because of law suits and jury awards. People here sue over anything. Local lawyers will take almost any case.
A few years back SEPTA, the area train system, conducted a test to see how
well it could handle a major emergency. It staged a mock train wreck. To make the exercise more realistic actors were hired who pretended to be injured in the wreck and were carried away on stretchers.
The test was shown on local television stations. Some people must have seen the news coverage with the sound off, or misunderstood what they were seeing. Forty-one found lawyers who filed suit the next week claiming serious train wreck injuries.
I’m suddenly thinking that maybe I should sue. Maybe talk to Pam Rogowsky, my some time legal advisor, about suing when I see her later today. It’s something extra to throw out while explaining my current status with the local poleizei and my curious new relationship with the Bernstein crowd.
But first I have to decide how to finalize the present confrontation with the gaggle of municipal toilers who have now surrounded me, picks and shovels at the ready, practically slavering at the prospect of a physical activity more entertaining than digging and filling holes. It’s a conundrum.
I’m at the borderline stage of the American macho cycle. In the big city neighborhood where I grew up, the crowd I hung out with, a guy my size had to fight no matter what the odds. On the other end of the male macho demographic, you reach your fifties and you’re pretty much off the hook when it comes to swing outs because no self-respecting, testosterone riven younger male moves up a notch by taking you down one.
In a calendar sense I’m a few years on the nobody-pushes-Bernie-around side
of this great divide. But I know that if I inflict the damage I can still inflict, this urban improvement project might not get completed until the Eagles trade Donovan McNabb, their franichise quarterback, for an eigth round draft pick.
“This is a person’s home you destroyed here,” I say, a note of sadness in my voice, hoping to move the conversation into a more neutral gear.
“Happens,” replies the foreman, still waiting to see how far the aggreived homeowner is going to take his grievance. Unlike our last meeting, he doesn’t offer a face-saving promise to lessen noise or speed up the work. He’s reverted to what is probably his regular view about his job and its consequences. He’ll dig and pave this morning, or he’ll take part in my dismemberment. Then he’ll dig and pave. He’s here until three in the afternoon, knock off time, with a half-hour for lunch. Whatever fills his work day fills his work day.
“
Shit,” I say, and turn to go to my meeting at Bernsteins.
“Happens,” says the foreman finishing my sentence. The laughter bounces off my back as I walk away.
