Tangled Tenses

I was just reading Transparent things for the ninety-ninth time and I noticed that the fire scene is played out three times: Once when Armande wants to simulate an escape from the fire by crawling out the window, once in his dream when he kills Armande, and then, of course, at the end of the book when he perishes. The only question is, what tense is represented for the three respective fires? Hugh dies while being reminded of a memory from childhood, a memory of a story from a book. He dies not only in the past, but thinking of a fictional story--he dies in art. When Armande demands they rehearse an acrobatic escape, she is foretelling the future--Hugh fails the escape, just as he will fail it at his death. She ends up peacefully wrapped in a blanket of the third floor, which can be seen as the future. She is living most comfortably in the future. We are left with the Present. How does the fire in Hugh's dream represent the present? That would be saying that the most tangible reality of the fire is brought to life in a dream, which would be saying, it turn, that the most real perception of our lives takes part in our dreams. Interesting.