California Fire And Life

100

Jack's watching TV

He's sitting down in front of two monitors hooked to VCRs and running two tapes side by side.

The Vale home movies of Pamela showing off the furniture, and the tape he made of the Vales' burned and blackened bedroom.

Very weird, watching them simultaneously.

Almost like watching Pamela's ghost – beautiful, sexy, alive – walk around the ashes of her bedroom. Watch her point out the chairs, the card table, the desk… the bed. Or where they were. Where she was.

Because he burned them and he burned her.

No, he didn't, Jack thinks.

He sure as hell burned her.

But he wouldn't burn the furniture.

No more than Olivia Hathaway would dump her spoons.

Nobody burns what they love, Jack thinks.

Not while there's a chance that they can still have it.

Except me.

I burn what I love and then scatter the ashes.

What was it I said to Letty? Pintale?

Get out.

What was that bird? A mythical bird that rose from the ashes. The phoenix.

Like Letty and me.

Like Pamela on the tape.

Like Nicky's precious furniture.

Show me, Pam.

Show me how Nicky's precious antique furniture rose from these ashes. Show me what I'm missing, Pamela's ghost.

Pam's trying to tell you something.

The fire is trying to tell you something.

The fire's running smack like, Listen up, dummy. I'm trying to give it to you but you're too stupid to see it. I left it all there for you. You speak fluent fire, right? You're the Dalmatian. You the man.

So read me.

He runs the tapes three times before he sees it.

The heat shadows.

Pam's showing off the cabinet, "a rare bombe-based red-lacquered and japanned bureau-cabinet from about 1730… A very rare piece."

Jack freeze-frames both tapes.

There it is.

He compares where Pam is pointing to the same place on the wall of the fire scene tape.

The heat shadow is the wrong shape.

He rewinds and looks at it again.

No question about it. The paler shape – the "heat shadow" on the wall – is smaller and lower than what it should be if the bureau-cabinet had shielded the wall from the heat.

It's the wrong shadow.

The wrong ghost.

It's the shape of the writing desk.

Jack rewinds to Pam describing the writing desk.

Freeze-frames both tapes.

Again compares what Pam is pointing out to the heat shadow on the wall.

The wrong shape.

It's the shape of the cabinet.

You screwed up, Nicky.

And thank you, Pam.

And thank you, fire.

And thank you, Olivia Hathaway.