Set Fire To The Rain

A Work of Art

Noe

2000

Stuck at the firehouse until the chief was done busting my balls about faking sick, I sighed and sat Cassie's camera down on the kitchen table.

It wasn't the first, nor would it be the last time, this camera would bring me back to her.

"So, what's with the camera?" Riley asked, picking up Cassie's camera and scrutinizing every detail of it. "What goddamn fires you planning on putting out with this thing?"

"All of them, theoretically."

"That's ambitious for an object with no nozzle experience. Rather passive choice of equipment, wouldn't you say?"

"It's better than a nozzle," I replied. "The mind processes an image faster than what it hears. Photography makes one hell of a prevention tool."

"And are you wearing your wife's skirts lately too? Sheesh," he brushed me off. "It's a nice little hobby you got there, Noela, but I'm sorry to tell you that it's not putting out any fires. I'd rather have a nozzle between me and a fire any day."

Half a smirk broke my lips as I lightly screwed the lens cap back on.

"Noela? Fuck you too, Riley," I chuckled, shaking my head.

Though how ardently I would've agreed with the guy only just a few years earlier, before I met Cassie.

I guess marriage had changed me too.

Photography being the one thing that stuck.

I didn't take art in school, and to this day, I still don't mess with most of the projects my wife brings home.

Art never really got me as much as it gets her.

Art played on abstraction, which isn't as simple as I like to keep things. Unless you're the artist, you'll never be absolutely sure what you're looking at or what message they're trying to tell you. It's easy to misinterpret.

Photography was different, in my opinion.

It captured the raw moment, without embellishment and bias, communicating a clear purpose toward a clear objective with less guesswork. Straight and to the point.

"Pushing button and making big flash" was about as artistic as I got.

Photography is near and dear, not because I'm any good at it, but because it always brought Cassie back to me.

Granted, it was rough in the beginning.

Despite the fact that I wasn't a bad looking guy and respected her more than most crackpot college kids her age, she wanted nothing to do with me, and that went on for a while.

I couldn't tell you why she wouldn't give us a try, at first.

Maybe it was the age difference that got to her. I mean, even if we weren't doing the math, someone else was doing it for us.

We still get the occasional stare at FDNY events.

I always find some way to distract her from it, telling her how much I love her and that I wouldn't take back a goddamn thing, because I know how much it gets to her that my friends and family still haven't fully accepted us.

And who am I kidding? It gets to me too.

I knew how it looked, especially right after a divorce.

I understood why they'd think it was a "rebound" or some badly timed "midlife crisis", or that maybe Cassie had been looking for a "sugar daddy with status", even if that line of thinking was completely false.