Longlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Annual Writing Competition
The ex-Super called asking for my husband, which is never a good sign, especially after he told me that the new Super, who’d started working in the building two weeks ago, was stuck in traffic in the Bronx and couldn’t get to Brooklyn for like ninety minutes.
The big problem was that fire sprinklers on the fifth floor had burst again because it was ten degrees outside, and the idiot tenant had turned off the radiators again and gone to L.A.
The water was flowing unconstrained and would rapidly flood everyone’s apartment down to the ground floor, and he needed my husband to follow his instructions and turn off the valve so the water could be stopped.
My husband went to the basement to turn off the water, but I heard water dripping, so I went to his office on the ground floor and discovered that three of the ceiling lights had become impromptu showers, pumping gallons of water onto the wood floor and his law books on the shelving against the wall.
I grabbed all the towels from the bathroom and scattered them on the floor, and quickly emptied three wastebaskets, which I placed under the lights to catch the water, and emptied them several times until, after an hour or so, the water flow stopped.
Even though we’d vowed to watch our spending more carefully this year, nothing was defrosted, and it was too late to cook, so we ordered Chinese takeout – heaven.
Suzanne C Martinez’s fiction has appeared in North American Review, Wigleaf, Vestal Review, Ghost Parachute, The Citron Review, and Gone Lawn, and nominated for Pushcart Prizes, The Best of the Net, and Best Short Fictions. She lives in Brooklyn. scmwrites.com.
