Just when you think you’re on terra firma, whoa, there you go, sucked down into some awful hellhole. A snowstorm blows the huge tree in your yard onto your house, turning your front porch into kindling, but the “wind deductible” in your insurance policy is $30,000 and it costs $29,998.45 to fix the porch. That lovely nightgown in a gift box shoved under some papers in your husband’s study was not, it turns out, purchased with you in mind. What can you do about it? Nothing, usually. Not a thing.
Thank goodness for popular entertainment, where threats are well-known and crystal clear, and there is always a way out. What a comfort! That’s why I like to soothe myself to sleep by reviewing everything I’ve learned from television and movies. The older I get, the more I realize that their lessons are the only things I know to be true:
I am certainly not going back into the house where something bad or creepy has happened to me already.
I am never going to a carnival or a fair, particularly if there is happy calliope music playing. Apropos of fairs, there is no way I am attending the Feast of San Gennaro under any circumstances. Someone will get shot, and I don’t want to be in the way.
You will not find me owning, or spending any time with, a ventriloquist’s dummy, or the kind of doll that “walks” and “talks.”
If I become an astronaut, am I leaving the spaceship under any circumstances? No, I am not—not to fix anything on the outside of the spaceship while tethered to the ship by one not-that-strong cord; not to explore the terrain of the planet we land on, a dusty place that looks like it has no life-forms but surely will, ones that do not wish me well.
If I get arrested for something, in no way am I accepting the arresting detectives’ invitation to “just go down to the station” with them to “have a chat.” Everybody knows what happens when you go down to the station to have a chat—they put you in “the box” and grill you for hours, and before you know it, you have confessed to some horrible crime you didn’t even commit—and yet so many people, people who should know better, go anyway. Not I. If they want to have a chat, we will go directly to my lawyer’s office, with my lawyer doing all the talking.
If I forget my no-going-down-to-the-station rule and find myself in the box being brutally interrogated by the police, I will certainly not be dumb enough to accept refreshments, particularly a can of soda. How many times do we have to learn that a can of soda is a transparent effort to get DNA from our saliva?
Conversely, if I become a detective, here is one police-work rule I am never forgetting: backup, backup, backup. What is the point of all that training if I don’t use backup the only time I need it?
Okay, sure, I know my partner is indisposed—sometimes it’s a “good” reason, like he’s just been shot in the leg by the bad guy and is therefore incapable of keeping up with me while we give chase through streets and across rooftops and down alleyways—but that’s not a good enough reason. I will gladly lose the bad guy before I continue without backup. Going in without backup is for sure going to get me shot, or hanging from a roof ledge while the bad guy stomps on my fingers. A big NO to that. I will just talk to the captain and get a substitute partner for the day. That’s all there is to it.
* * *
If someone poisons my dog or other pet and leaves its corpse on my front porch, I will not mistake this for an isolated, freak event, but know that it is merely the beginning of a cascade of progressively more terrible events.
I am never going to go into a parking garage at night. Correction: I am never going to go into a parking garage, period. Ditto any apartment building’s basement laundry room—op. cit., not going.
If I find that pieces of furniture have relocated themselves around my house, I will not “gaslight” myself by thinking, Oh, maybe I forgot I moved them, when it is all too obvious that they have been moved by paranormal activity.
I am never going into a raffish bar, especially not one with a name like O’Malley’s or O’anything’s. Nothing good will happen to me in there, and whatever does happen will probably happen in the disgusting ladies’ room.
If I am reckless and go in anyway and the worst happens to me (i.e., I am killed by Westies or another gang), I will know that the guys who did it will get the priest who molested them as children, who has to do everything they say so they won’t kill him, to hide my corpse under the parish house, depriving my loved ones of the small comfort of at least having a body to bury.
In terms of other bars, I am never going into a cocktail lounge with a giant fish tank at the bar. I will end up falling into it somehow, and having to swim around in my clothes, surprising and amusing the patrons at the bar but disgracing and humiliating myself.
I am never going to trust any contemporary artist, or anyone in the downtown art scene. They are snooty and always think they’re so great, which makes them think they can get away with anything, including murdering people. If there is a murder, everyone knows that the artist or la-di-da gallery owner did it, and I do not want the murdered person to be me.
I will steer clear of all teenagers. Because if the art gallery owner didn’t do it, the teenagers did. Particularly if they are rich and entitled and wear the uniform—the navy-blue blazer with the school crest and gray slacks, or pleated plaid skirt—of the tony private day school they attend. It doesn’t matter how politely they shake hands; you never know when they’ve woven you into their warped web of resentments. If I’m dating their widower father, they figure I’m after their inheritance, and that’s the end of me—poisoned with some tasteless yet toxic brew they’ve cooked up in the chem lab at St. Switherington’s and stirred into my iced tea, or pushed quietly down the stairs while I visit their weekend estate in the Hamptons, breaking my neck and dooming me to live the rest of my life as a quadriplegic.
Speaking of resentments, and of being rich, if I do become rich, I am definitely treating all of my servants with the proper respect, thus quelling any desire to murder me. These include the obvious staff members—my maid, my trainer, my chef, my driver, et al.—but I am going to be extra-careful not to forget the helpers who work less frequently, who would be easy for me to overlook: the quiet Mexican guy who comes to weed, the tuner of my Steinway grand piano, the strange fellow who biannually winds the priceless grandfather clock in my vast foyer. “Good morning, Mr. So-and-So,” I will say in greeting them. “Here’s three hundred dollars, as a thank-you just for coming. And bill me whatever you wish!”
* * *
As for my health, I am never sitting or standing next to anyone who is coughing innocently. There are no innocent coughs, only ones that signal imminent pandemics. I am going to be particularly wary of getting anywhere near coughing children, as their cute looks will make me think, wrongly, that they could not possibly be incubating a new kind of plague.
In regard to allowing people to wire me to machines that will implant ideas in my subconscious by manipulating my dreams: Will I agree to this? No, thank you, I will not. I know that the result will be my inability to tell the difference between my dreams and my real life, and I have enough trouble with this already. Exception: if the idea that is being implanted has me diving into a giant chocolate cake or having intimate relations with George Clooney, I will do this.
* * *
I think you may at this point be able to guess my position on camping in the woods with friends. Camping in the woods with friends would be like my sending out an engraved invitation: “Come and get me, crazy people. I’m just here in front of the campfire, listening to my friends tell scary stories about crazy people in the woods, and laughing off the stories, so that when you do get me, it will almost serve me right.” No, no, sir, nyet. No camping. Not going. Some things you just know are true.