I hoped to catch Pavel in the caesura between medications, but as soon as I merged onto the road to his house, I encountered a lava flow of brake lights. Traffic both ways was jammed. I slumped in my seat, easing the car forward a few hopeless feet at a time. The heat came off the hoods in waves, and out of the overpass shade emerged the west-siders. In dusty flip-flops, skin burned to blisters, they carried squeegees and buckets and bottles of water for sale. I shook my head as they passed.

I tried calling Pavel to let him know I was running late but got a busy signal. Meanwhile, I was stuck with the guy in the car beside me. He was packed into the cab of a landscaping truck, the cargo bed piled with rakes and mowers all covered in blades of grass. I’d accidentally made eye contact and he’d looked from the penis to me with a horny grin. I stared forward but could feel him watching, finding a way to keep himself perfectly framed in my wing mirror.

Finally, we curved onto the last stretch before Pavel’s house. That’s when I saw a black pillar of smoke rising high and unfurling, lime green at the edges in this uncanny light. The sight gave me a vague, sick feeling as I sized up the distance between the car and the source. After another moment I pulled over to the side of the road and got out. An acrid smell stung my nostrils. I crunched along the road’s rocky shoulder, eyes fixed high on the smoke, and began running when I knew I was right.

Up on the slope, three homes were on fire, the middle one Pavel’s. Orange flames ripped through wood and spewed from windows. Walls collapsed in a burning whirl, crackling white at the core. Firefighters blasted water into the house beside Pavel’s, subduing the flames, the structure now buried in a blue smoke that piled in the air. Water ran down the slope, red hoses writhing like snakes in the dust.

I was stopped at the yellow tape by a cop.

“No entry.”

“I’m a journalist.”

“Who with?”

“The Messenger.”

To my surprise, she let me through. I stood by one of the fire trucks, where I could listen to the radio and watch the scene on the slope. Pavel’s house burned so purely, the flame was almost clear in the daylight. You could hear the wood of the house crack and snap. The firefighters’ beam of water vanished in the flame and the smoke turned gray.

When they’d finally beaten down enough of it, a firefighter took his ax to Pavel’s door while another began prying the bars off the windows, smoke disgorging from every hole and flowing smoothly up the roof. The men pushed through the wreckage into the house, flames still gnawing at the walls.