FIRE SALE

W…ritten by 

jaron summers © 2026

Donna met Paul the night a bear tried to unzip her tent.

It was a paid campsite in a California national park, the kind with posted rules and intermittent cell service, as if the wilderness were on a subscription plan. The bear had been methodical at first, testing coolers, nudging bags. When it lunged at her tent, the sound wasn’t a roar but fabric surrendering. Nylon tore and collapsed inward. Donna screamed—a short, startled sound, almost administrative.

Then an arrow arrived from the darkness and the bear fell.

Paul stood twenty feet away, holding a bow, breathing hard, as surprised as anyone. For a moment they only looked at each other, both trying to remember whether this was how people were supposed to meet.

By morning the forest had returned to its approved condition. Sunlight. Birds. A ranger with a clipboard explained that the bear had been “a problem anyway.” Paul was thanked. Donna was given a blanket. Violence, once correctly categorized, became permissible.

They had breakfast at a diner with laminated menus and drank too much coffee. They laughed too quickly, the way people do when something terrible has been resolved without consequences. That night, by a fire that was built deliberately this time, they slept together. It felt inevitable, which they both mistook for meaning.

Paul drove Donna back toward Los Angeles in his blue BMW. She watched the road slide past and asked him careful questions about his work, his apartment, how long he’d been single.

When he dropped her at her condo on Roscomare Road, they lingered in the car longer than necessary.

The building was older than it looked and quieter than it should have been. It had a view that made people stop talking. Somewhere, a fire alarm chirped—a low battery, easily ignored.

Paul met the old couple next door a few days later. Martin and Ellen had lived there forever. They were wealthy, gracious, and tired of stairs. They liked Donna. They liked Paul even more. When they learned he was looking to buy, they offered to carry part of the financing. They said it would make things easier. Paul accepted before he learned the difference between ease and mercy.

Donna told her friend Leigh that she was in love.

She said it while driving, one hand on the wheel, describing Paul’s steadiness, his competence, the calm he seemed to carry with him. Leigh listened without interrupting. When Donna pulled into traffic, Leigh noticed the car—a blue BMW, identical to Paul’s. Donna said nothing about it. Leigh didn’t ask.

The assessments arrived later.

Deferred maintenance. Emergency repairs. References to earlier bankruptcies folded discreetly into meeting minutes. Paul had an MBA and a terrific income, which meant he recognized a bad deal the way some people recognize a smell. Donna could have warned him. He had given the impression that he had money. Neither felt particularly guilty.

Donna was president of the condo association. She had been for some time.

The finances were complicated in ways that favored certain units more than others. Tradespeople repaired private apartments and billed the association for common-area work. Everyone told themselves it was temporary. No one said felony.

Paul decided to run for the board.

The election was unpleasant. Emails lengthened. Neighbors chose sides with the intensity of people protecting small investments. Donna and Paul continued sleeping together—often after meetings, often near fire. The sex remained excellent and increasingly strategic. Each reunion felt like a ceasefire negotiated by people who fully intended to resume hostilities.

Beneath it all was an understanding they never discussed aloud: the building itself was the problem.

It was underinsured. It always had been. The land, however, was worth a fortune.

Donna explained this to Leigh one evening as if outlining a business plan. Leigh listened carefully. Later, Leigh would pull fire alarms and call neighbors and do the right thing quickly enough to matter.

The ravine behind the building was known as the Raven. It was dry, overgrown, and conveniently ignored. Donna went there late one night with matches. Paul arrived separately with the same idea. They were surprised, but not shocked. Some coincidences no longer require explanation.

They slept together again, urgently, carelessly, while something nearby began to burn.

By the time the fire crews arrived, the residents were outside, wrapped in blankets, watching the building erase itself. By morning, the land was priceless.

Donna and Paul were gone.

Later, people argued about whether it had been an accident or something worse. Eventually they stopped arguing. The story settled into a familiar shape—a lesson about neglect, about money, about how things end when no one wants to fix them.

The view remained excellent.