Pam's been dreaming about fire a lot lately.

One of the dreams that seems to be stuck on repeat in her head revolves around the coal walk. In it, she’s back at the beach and she’s just taken off her shoes. She looks down at the expanse of smoldering embers and feels a wave of fearful exhilaration. She knows, though, that she can do this. She tells herself that. Then, Karen is there….dressed in a cocktail dress and looking amazing. She leans over and whispers into Pam’s ear.

"You have to go to him."

When Pam looks toward the far side of the coal walk, she sees Jim standing there. He’s wearing an expensive corporate suit and his baseball cap and he’s still got that stunned and empty look on his face. His hands are shoved in his pockets. She starts to lose her nerve. Just as she’s about to back down, though, Karen pushes her and her feet are forced onto the hot coals.  She starts running, but she can never seem to get to the end of the coal bed. It stretches on and on in front of her and Jim looks like a tiny speck in the distance. She can hear Karen yelling behind her.

"You have to jump!"

So she jumps, but she doesn't quite make it to the end. Her feet are still in the fire, but instead of coals, it's now lava and her feet and legs are being consumed. It's like that scene in the subway tunnel in Volcano or like she's a wet wicked witch. She's dissolving. She reaches out to Jim hoping he can pull her out of the pit of fire. Instead, though, he just turns and walks away while mumbling.

"You have to save yourself, Pam."

It's usually then that she wakes up.

 *************
She has this dream again the night after she drove Jim home from Poor Richard's and it leaves her unsettled, edgy and unable to get back to sleep. She thinks about the way she left things with him earlier in the evening and she’s not sure that they’ve made any progress at all.

She had walked him to his door, helped him with his keys and then said goodnight. She turned, about to walk back to her car when he grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around towards him. She could tell that he was trying to say something to her...trying to make her understand something that was important to him, but even though his lips were moving, no words were being formed. Whether it was the the fact that he was drunk, or scared or nervous, he was rendered mute. He had looked at her then...or maybe more accurately...through her. In his eyes, she could see shadows of a winter night on Lake Wallenpaupack, the glint off of the embossing on wedding invitations, the shimmer of a periwinkle dress and the embers of one hundred other disappointments. He was asking her to rescue him and to restore his faith and his trust in big ideas like love and friendship.

She didn't feel qualified to shoulder that responsibility for him. How could she? She was looking to him for the same things.

Back on his doorstep, there was too much lying heavy in the air between them. She knew then, just like she does now, that if she had followed him inside, she could have answered so many of the questions raised in her fantasies. She would have learned what he looked like without clothing, what his hands felt like on the secret expanses of her skin and what he sounded like when he found release. Had that happened, though, she knows she wouldn't have the answers she really needed to the questions that were still forming in her head. She needed to know who they were to each other. She needed to know what his head and heart were telling him about Karen. She needed to know how they could come back from the places they had both exiled themselves to. Being friends again was a good step, but she didn't want to go further while he was drunk, desperate and upset about Karen.

Her first inclination had been to say "We can't, Jim." She knew, though, how charged those words were...how a simple contraction had so much history with them. Her next thought was to blurt out that he had just broken up with Karen and probably needed time to process that. She didn't want the idea of Karen to be conjured there between them, though so she simply reached up and touched his cheek. It was warm and her fingers tingled just to be touching him there. She was hoping to convey everything she couldn't tell him just yet with the tips of her fingers and the pressure of her palm.. She could feel his jaw clench and unclench. She reluctantly pulled her hand away and simply said, "Goodnight, Jim. I'll see you at work."

********
So now she sits in her bedroom and imagines her regrets and worries as flickering sparks lighting up her darkened walls. Karen had described her life as a soap opera and Pam gets now where she was coming from. Everything is so difficult with Jim. Nothing seems to be easy and it should be so natural. It's that damn history that keeps holding them back....licking at their heels and threatening to consume them like the lava in her dream.

Her dream....it's funny how it seems that the answers she's been craving were embedded in her subconscious. Karen is behind them, she's pushed Pam towards Jim and now there's only one thing left to do.

"We have to save ourselves," she says out loud to the darkness and the sparks of worry and regret disappear.

**********

The next morning when she arrives at work, Jim isn't there.