California Fire and Life by Don Winslow

together, destined for the trash heap or the yard sale.
    “And there is something about
wood
, isn’t there? Do you know what I mean? For the sacrifice of a beautiful tree something beautiful should be created. To see those fine grains of mahogany and walnut shaped into something exquisite and lasting. And something that you use every day—a chair, a cabinet, a bed—you have a
relationship
with the wood, with the woodworker, with the designer. You become part of the continuum of history. Can you understand that, Jack?”
    “Yes.”
    He really can. It’s why he spends half his free time sanding old wooden longboards in his garage.
    “So when I made my fortune,” Nicky says, “I indulged my passion. Ibought Georgian furniture. Some I sold, some I traded, most I kept to fill my home. To create a space around me that fed my soul. That’s my story, Jack: Russian Jew turned California cabbie turned English gentleman. Only, as they say, in America. Only in California.”
    “Why only in California?”
    “Come on, you know.” Nicky laughs. “It is truly the land of dreams. That’s why people come here. They say it’s the weather, but it’s really the atmosphere, if you will. In California you are unhooked from time and place. You can untie yourself from the bonds of history, nationality, culture. You can free yourself from what you
are
to become what you
want
to be.
Whatever
you want to be. No one will stop you, scorn you, criticize you—because everyone else is doing the same thing. Everyone breathing the same ether but from our own individual clouds. Endlessly floating, shifting and changing shape. Sometimes two clouds drift together, then apart and then together again. Your own life is what you want it to be. Like a cloud, it
is
what you imagine.”
    Nicky stops and then laughs at himself.
    “So,” he says, “if a Russian Jew wants the sunshine and the freedom and the ocean and the beaches
and
to be an English country gentleman all at the same time, in California he simply loads his house full of expensive furniture and creates his own reality.… So much of it gone now. Gone in the fire.”
    Not to mention your wife, Jack thinks.
    Which, in fact, you don’t mention.
    But the fire, Jack says. Not to be offensive, but please tell me where you were the night of the fire.
    Now that we’re, you know, chatting.

21
    Here, Nicky tells him like it’s simplicity itself.
    I was here.
    And he shrugs, like fate is an inexplicable thing.
    “And thank God,” Mother says, “the
children
were here.”
    “When did you pick the children up?” Jack asks.
    “About 3 o’clock,” Nicky says.
    “Was that the usual arrangement?”
    “There was no usual arrangement, strictly speaking,” Nicky says. “Sometime middle to late afternoon.”
    “And were you here from 3 o’clock on?”
    “No,” Nicky says. “I believe we went out to dinner around 6 or 6:30.”
    “Where?”
    “How is that relevant?”
    Jack shrugs. “I don’t know at this point what’s relevant and what isn’t.”
    “We went to the Harbor House. The kids like that you can have breakfast all day. They had pancakes.” He adds, “I’m sorry, I don’t recall what I had.”
    With just a whiff of sarcasm.
    “What time did you get home?”
    “Eight-thirty.”
    “It was closer to 8:45,” Mother says.
    “Eight forty-five, then,” Nicky says.
    “Big pancakes,” says Jack.
    “They are, in fact,” Nicky says. “You should try them.”
    “I eat breakfast there almost every Saturday.”
    “Then you know.”
    “I’m a Denver omelet guy myself.”
    Nicky says, “We went for a walk after dinner. Down around the harbor.”
    “What did you do after you got home?”
    Nicky says, “I’m afraid we watched television. The children are, after all, Americans.”
    “Do you recall—”
    “No,” Nicky says. “The shows are all the same to me. I suppose you could ask the children.”
    Not me, Jack thinks. Even I couldn’t ask two little kids,
Do