The fire marshal called a couple hours later and explained that he couldn’t make it that night but was hoping to come “have a look” on Sunday morning, if that was possible. I said it was and he said until then not to touch anything. He asked me a couple questions, like who else had access to my balcony, who else has keys to my place. Do I smoke, when was the last time I smoked. Have I ever seen anyone climbing up the balconies of my building, and stuff like that. I answered everything as clearly and honestly as possible. Yes sir. No sir. Not that I’m aware of, sir.

From the pictures he was looking at, his early suggestion was that it was possible a cigarette or other burning thing could have blown over from one of the adjacent buildings, and touched the dead plants out there, and that’s all it would take. The plants were the accelerant, the yoga mat was the main hot fuel that enabled the harder to burn stuff, like the plastic chair, to fully ignite.

He said he still needed to come over to have a look around, and Sunday morning he called saying he was on his way in from Queens.

Fire Marshals are like police detectives. Their job is to investigate conditions and causes, and they have the power to make arrests, close buildings, seal evidence and essentially perform every other task a police detective does. When the one assigned to my precinct arrived, I hoped to learn more about what his life is like. That’s the level of ridiculousness I’m at: the Fire Marshal is coming to investigate me and a fire that nearly burned my place down, and I’m mostly thinking about the questions I’ll ask him, like what’s the coolest fire he’s ever seen, how long can he hold his breath for, what would happen if a subway was vest-bombed by a terrorist, etc.

He and his fat partner came in. The fat guy just stood around looking at stuff, not speaking, and made me uneasy. The fire marshal, however, was exactly as I had imagined. He had gray and black hair, deep lines in his face and he had very rugged look, like maybe his skin had been partially dried out and preserved by all the smoke he’s been exposed to through his career. To be a Fire Marshal you have to have been a fire fighter first, usually for 20 or 30 years, and work your way up. It’s unlikely to become a fire marshal because of all the qualified candidates and limited positions.

He was shorter than me, and somehow that made sense. His accent was as Queens as there is; more or less a younger, tougher Archie Bunker.

He looked around and tried to confirm his early hypotheses. He saw some cigarette butts out there in the soot and I had to explain they were from a get-together months ago, and that no one had smoked on that balcony in months. He seemed unconcerned with finding out if that was really true (it was), possibly because it wouldn’t matter either way. The truth is that it was and had been windy on my street, and my street is filled with smokers and kids who light fire crackers, and it could have come from dozens of different windows, fire escapes, and potentially hundreds if not thousands of different people who were there that day, and who smoke, and who smoke from their windows. If every cigarette in my neighborhood was a tiny smoke stack, my block would be the deepest, densest industrial sector in all of Manhattan, I bet.

He advised me that the balcony needed to be cleaned of all stuff from now on, that the smell should go away in a few days, and that the candle on my table didn’t make him happy. He asked if I was prior military and I said I was and he said he could tell and that so was he. We shook hands, his fat partner looking on, and he left, and that’s that. Case closed. I think maybe his partner was there for backup, or perhaps even at his level, all investigations require more than one witness.

Wednesday night of this week, the night before last, I moved everything that was burned– which was everything on the entire balcony– down the street for Thursday morning pickup with the regular garbage. I wrapped the big, half-charred stuff in plastic and borrowed a dolly truck and slowly moved everything down onto the curb. There’s now hardly any evidence there was a fire at all. My balcony looks big and comfortable again. So, thanks fire!

I have to pay for my door and a new AC which will be a couple grand. I signed up for renters insurance earlier this week, having thoroughly learned my lesson as it all would have been covered had I been enrolled. That’s only $15/month.

There’s a blizzard outside today and all I want to do is head into the woods with a dog, a thermos, and stay in there, in those woods, for a long, long time.

But instead I’ll probably be in some coffee shop later, working on a dissertation that is now my only anchor to NYC.