Sirens

   After more than 10 minutes of sirens going off somewhere out beyond the window, I got out of the warm bed and I flattened myself to slip behind the curtains. Batting my way, I passed a bulky rounded-square cutout that Who Knew? was in that wallpapered drywall, and then I stepped against the vast rectangle of night-chilled glass. 
   NO traffic in the luminous gray below, no cop cars streaking past; but in the middle right hand distance, through a crevice of roofs and walls, a cluster, a sloppy asterisk of neon pink flashing, flashing. 
   Back in the warm bed now, I am thinking that must not have been the scene of the emergency, that must have been some tourist-amusing decoration spot, like the Power&Light district’s over the top power-wasting lights.
   Surely not even in this city, which is trying much too hard to be upbeat, cop cars won’t wear hot pink emergency lights. 
   Maybe that jazzy area is one of the fountains the tourism lady told us about, one of the “more than any other city in the world except Rome.”
   Supposedly there are 200 officially registered fountains in the metro, not counting those at corporation or subdivision entrances, inside offices and on private grounds. Here’s the official list, from http://www.kcfountains.com/fountains.
   While I've been typing, the sirens have stilled, replaced by a sound that makes soothing sense, the linear pulsing hum of a freight train. On and on, a calming sonic cradle endlessly rocking.
   Rome has about 2,000 fountains. It has trains, too, but their brakes screech and fart. Rome doesn’t leave a person remembering the comforting white noise of trains. 
   You’re trying too hard with these fountains and sirens, KC. You have trains. Go with that.