He's A Back Door Man

By Rick Horowitz

It's a button, just a button, an ordinary button on a keypad on a wall. He didn't mean to push the button. He didn't even know he'd pushed the button. So what? He pushed the button.

He's such a fool.

The good thing about busy, he was telling himself only that morning, is how much he can accomplish when he jams his schedule to overflowing and zips from chore to chore like a water bug on amphetamines. The bad thing about busy -- well, who had time to think about that? He had chores to do, and right that minute.

Chores to do, and as soon as he was done with all his chores, he had to dash to the airport to retrieve his beloved, who was returning home from some chores of her own and was looking forward to some blessed peace and quiet -- and not, for instance, to the close and personal attention of their town's entire law-enforcement and fire-retardant authorities.

For instance.

But that sort of thing was the last sort of thing on his mind. What was on his mind was getting done and getting out -- out of the house and out to the airport. He punched in the numbers on their home-security keypad, punched them in a second time to disarm the system and grab something he'd forgotten inside, then punched them in a third time (quickly now, he was running late), slammed the door and hit the road.

Do you have any idea how little space there is on the average home-security keypad between the button that turns on the system and the button that sends out a silent "distress" signal to the local police and fire departments? Do you have any idea how easy it is to wreak havoc with a stray digit, to hit one button instead of the other button when you're in a hurry? Neither did he.

Which is why it came as such a surprise to him -- and also to his beloved, certainly, home from the airport now and only moments from that marvelous peace and quiet -- to find the notice from the fire department hanging from their back door. The fire department had been out to their house to respond to an emergency call, the notice said. The fire department had entered their house to respond to this emergency call.

Entered, it turns out, by kicking in their back door.

Which fact they discovered when their back door wouldn't open for them. When they went around to their front door instead, opened their front door and set off the security alarm. When they raced through the house to their back door to shut off the security alarm and found pieces of the back door and the back-door frame lying on the kitchen floor, and a deadbolt lock holding what remained of the door against what remained of the frame. When the police cars came and surrounded their house.

This was not, it turns out, the police cars' first visit to the house that day. The first visit, the officers explained (more than politely under the circumstances), was just a little while earlier, when the silent alarm had gone off. "Medical alert" -- that's the message the fire department had received. So they'd sent out the ambulance and the fire truck, and the police came along, too, just in case.

The fire department had banged on the door on that first visit, the officers explained, had banged on the door and rung the bell. There was no answer, not a sound -- so they kicked the door in, just kicked it in and searched the place room to room and top to bottom.

They didn't find anyone -- because there wasn't anyone home. But did they know that? Of course not. And they couldn't just walk away; for all they knew, the person who had sent the alarm was lying helpless somewhere inside the house.

When in fact, the person who had sent the alarm was sitting clueless somewhere inside his car.

He's such a fool.

5/9/97

©1997 Rick Horowitz. All rights reserved.