Marisha Pessl - Night Film

I’d forgotten all about them. They must have fallen there, unseen, when the room was ransacked.

We’d barely burned them, preoccupied with everything else. But why not finish the job? I set them on a plate and lit all three. Hours later, when I was on the couch with a scotch and The Wall Street Journal, I glanced up and saw they’d burned down to nothing, just a sliver of white wax. The first and then the second extinguished, as if waiting for my full attention, the wicks flaring orange for a moment before going out. The third held on, the flame twisting as if refusing to let go, to die, but then it went dark, too.

I realized my cell was ringing.

“Hello?” I answered, not bothering to check the caller ID. My accountant was due to call back to inform me my life savings was on its last leg and it was time to either apply for a new teaching position or consider another investigation, one that actually paid money.

“Scott? It’s Cynthia.”

Fear instantly gripped me. “Is Sam all right?”

“Yes. She’s wonderful. Well, no, actually, that’s not true.” She took a deep breath. “Is this a good time to talk?”

“What’s the matter?”

She sounded upset. “I’m sorry. Not returning your calls. I thought it was the right thing to do. But she’s inconsolable. Scott this, Scott that. Crying. I can’t take it.” Cynthia herself seemed on the verge of tears. “Does this Saturday work for you to spend some time with her?”

“Saturday works.”

She sniffed. “Maybe she can stay the night.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good. How are you, by the way?”

“I’m great now. How are you?”

“Good.” She laughed gently. “So, Saturday, then? Jeannie’s back. She’s recovered from mono.”

“Saturday.”

We hung up. I was unable to take my eyes off those candles.

They were smoking rather innocently, three long gray threads embroidering the air.

It was with the acute sense that a miracle had been worked, when on Saturday, Sam arrived on my doorstep with Jeannie in tow.

It was a clear winter day with all the bounce and bright-eyed resilience of a teenager, sky blue, sun blinding, the two-day-old snow crunching like cake icing under our boots. I pulled out the stops: lemon and ricotta pancakes at Sarabeth’s; an expedition through FAO Schwarz where Sam was quite taken with a twelve-hundred-dollar life-sized African elephant from the Safari Collection ( his coat meticulously hand cut by seasoned craftsmen, according to the tag), which Jeannie promptly nanny-nixed me from purchasing. We lost Jeannie after ice cream at the Plaza; crashing from a sugar high, she opted to skip the day’s crown jewel — ice-skating at Wollman Rink in Central Park — meeting us back at my place.

“Please be careful,” Jeannie said, giving me a hard, knowing look before collapsing into a taxi.

But it was smooth sailing, with just one rough patch: fitting Sam’s left foot into her skate. It seemed to get chewed up somewhere around the ankle and she screwed up her face, which prompted me to whisk it off and wrestle the skate wide open, doing a bit of phony straining like I was a prime contender for Mr. Universe — Sam giggled quite a bit — and then we hit the ice, father and daughter, hand in hand. It was packed with tourists — they were too giddy to be native New Yorkers — but once we were swallowed by the mob, it was as if we were inside a sea of joy. Everywhere — it was colored parkas and laughter, sizzling woosh noises as Central Park South and Fifth Avenue towered over us.

It was when we walked down the cobblestone sidewalk along Fifth that the good stuff happened. Sam disclosed the name of her best friend: Delphine. The girl sounded beyond chic at six, born in Paris.

“Delphine comes to school in a limousine,” Sam noted.

“Good for Delphine. How do you get to school?”

“Mommy walks me.”

Thank Christ, Bruce was keeping his Bentley under wraps. I made a mental note to keep an eye on old Delphine. It sounded like she’d be climbing out of bedroom windows in no time.

Sam wanted to show me her new shin guards and soccer cleats and had recently learned the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius. She also very much liked her new PE teacher, a young woman named Lucy who was happily married to Mr. Lucas, who taught earth science. Sam spoke quietly and categorically on each of these subjects, explaining them with senior official authority, me the cheerful ignorant underling. She also mentioned quite a few proper names— Clara, a dog (or very unfortunate boy) named Maestro, Mr. Frank, something called The Tall Tale Circle —as if I knew precisely who and what each of these things were. And I was moved by this, because it meant Sam sensed there’d never been a moment I wasn’t with her, that I was always seeing what she saw.

After we greeted two passing dachshunds, Sam announced she was ready to go home. In the taxi, I asked if she’d had a good day. She nodded.

“And honey?”

She was yawning.

“Remember the toy Mom found in your coat pocket?”

It was an intriguing enough question for Sam to stare at me.

“The, uh, black snake?” I clarified, as casually as I could.

“The dragon Mommy got mad about?” asked Sam.

“Yes, the dragon Mommy got mad about. Where’d you get it?”

“Ashley.”

I did my best to look nonchalant. “And where did you meet Ashley?”

“With Jeannie in the playground.”

With Jeannie in the playground. “When was this?”

“A long time ago.” Sam yawned again, her eyes comically heavy.

“Did you speak to her?”

She shook her head. “She was too far away.”

“How far away?”

“She was by cars and I was on the swing.”

“But how did she give you the dragon?”

“She left it.” She said it with a teacher’s exasperation, as if it’d already been explained many times.

“When? The next day?”

She nodded vaguely.

“Okay. You’re the most astute judge of character I’ve ever met, and I greatly value your opinion. What’d you think of her? Ashley.”

She smiled faintly at the mention of the name. But her eyes were closing.

“She was a magical …” she whispered.

“What? Sam?”

But she was out, head lolling against my arm, hands on her lap as if holding an invisible clump of violets. At Perry Street I carried her upstairs so she could sleep, though Jeannie woke her up at seven to put her in her cloud pajamas. We watched Finding Nemo. I made egg-white omelets. When Jeannie went upstairs to take out her contacts, which seemed to be code for calling a boyfriend, Sam sat eating quietly at the kitchen table.

It was the chance to ask her more about Ashley, to fathom how on earth it had happened, but then, taking the seat beside her, she looked at me, chewing slowly with her mouth tightly closed, as if she knew very well what I was about to ask and she found it sad that I still did not understand. Swallowing, she set down her fork and took my right hand, patting it like it was a lonely rabbit in a pet store, before reaching for her glass of milk.

And I realized— of course —Sam had told me everything.

She was a magical.

When I said goodbye to Sam the following day, I gave her the tightest hug and kissed her cheek, and then her hot head.

“I love you more than — how much again?” I asked her.

“The sun plus the moon. ”

I embraced Cynthia. She wasn’t expecting it.