While walking past this scene on my way to the subway in New York last week, I saw that a woman was emptying out what hadn’t burned from this former car. Being a curious extrovert, I paused to ask her about it. The conversation, best I recall:
“This your car?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. What happened?”
“Somebody around here sets fire to bags of garbage*. One spread to the car.”
“Any suspects?”
“There are surveillance cameras on the building.” She gestured upward toward two of them.
“Did they see anything?”
“They never do.”
So there you have it. In medicine they call this kind of thing a fascinoma. Perhaps in civic life we should call this an arsonoma. Or, in law enforcement, a felonoma.
*In New York City, we now put out garbage and recycling in curbside bags.
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