Bad Glass

by Richard E. Gropp

  With my camera giving me strength, I took Taylor across the street to the hotel.

  There was nothing there. The copulating couple, the child in the closet, the girl in the white dress with that abomination looming overhead—they were all gone.

  There was a vaguely human-shaped stain on the ceiling of that one room, but it might have just been a trace of leaking water, a souvenir from a burst pipe sometime in the hotel’s past.

  And that was it. Nothing more.

  And when Taylor asked me what I was expecting to find, why I insisted on scouring the hotel room by empty, abandoned room, I just shook my head. I honestly couldn’t say.

  But I kept my camera ready.

  Photograph. October 17, 08:15 P.M. Dinner by candlelight:

  The shot is off center, canted a few degrees to the right: a group of young men and women gathered around a long dining-room table. All of them are dirty. Bundled in thick clothing. Ragged and disheveled. There are bowls of food set before each seat, but nobody seems to be paying much attention to their meal. They’re lost in conversation—broad smiles all around as a man in a backward baseball cap holds up his hands, illustrating some grand point.

  Another man is looking directly at the camera, a dazed, contented smile on his dirty face.

  There’s a cluster of candles burning in the middle of the table—all different heights, sporting blurred fingers of flame. The picture was taken without a flash, and the whole frame is bathed in this orange candlelight, all other colors washed away. In this respect, it is not a full-color shot, but not black and white, either. Instead, black and orange.

  The photograph is blurred, the scene too dark for any reasonable shutter speed. Filled with trails of movement and bright, unsteady auras. But still, the warmth of the scene comes through. The cozy happiness.

  A dinner by candlelight.

  It was twilight by the time we made it back out onto the street. Purple-tinted clouds were barely visible in the darkening sky, and there was thunder rumbling to the east. The thought of hunting out a place to stay, looking for a hidey-hole in the encroaching dark, was seriously daunting, and I was grateful when Taylor invited me to stay at her house. If I had to trust anyone in this place, I figured, she seemed like a safe bet. Safer than someone like Wendell, at least.

  She pulled a flashlight from her pocket and led the way north, back across the river. Once on the other side, she began cutting back and forth through upscale residential neighborhoods. It was extremely dark out here on the streets. Without electricity, the street lamps stood like dead trees on the side of the road. There were a few candlelit windows, but they were rare, and the weak light seemed somehow ominous, like hooded, distrustful eyes blinking in the night.

  Back in California, I’d wandered through neighborhoods like this during rolling blackouts, deep in the heart of energy-crunch summers. The feeling here was similar, only deeper, more intense. During the rolling blackouts, there had been people all around, out walking the dark streets of the neighborhoods, lounging on their front porches—or, if not visible, there had at least been the sense of people around, the knowledge that they were out there, safely holed up behind their windows. And there had been the conviction that the lights were just about to return, the belief that this silence—so eerily complete—occupied that brief moment just before the click and hum of air conditioners powering back up, just before the epileptic stutter of streetlights flickering back on. Here, there was none of that.

  Just darkness and silence. An extended promise.

  Taylor pointed out Gonzaga University, waving her finger into the void. She might as well have been pointing toward China in the distance. I couldn’t see a thing.

  With a loud crack of thunder, the clouds opened up and sheets of water came crashing down on our heads. My jacket was soaked through in a matter of seconds. Taylor grabbed my hand and started sprinting through the downpour, leading me the last block to her house. During the rush to get inside, I didn’t get a good look at the house’s exterior, but it seemed big—a multistory Victorian, painted yellow. There was a red and blue pinwheel in the flower bed at the base of the porch; it was spinning wildly, caught in a stream of water falling from the roof.

  Taylor pushed through the front door, into a brightly lit entryway. “Wipe your feet,” she said, nodding toward the doormat. She shrugged out of her wet hoodie and hung it on a mirror-backed coatrack. Underneath, she was wearing a bloodred turtleneck.

  This was the first time I’d seen her without the hood. There was a propane lantern burning on a nearby table, but its brilliant white light couldn’t touch her pitch-black hair; it was so dark, it sucked in light like a black hole, refusing to give back even the slightest glimmer. Strands hung in wet rivulets around her face, dripping water onto her shirt. She glanced into the mirror and pushed the stray hair back behind her head, smoothing it into an elegant wave.

  Again, I was struck by her beauty. Her features were angular and sharp; her beauty was strong and intimidating.

  And she’d invited me back to her house.

  What does that mean? I wondered, setting my bags on the ground and shucking out of my jacket. Convenience? Pity? Something more? I tried not to get my hopes up. Already, Taylor had seen me at my worst: weak, scared, confused.

  She picked up the lantern and started back into the house. I grabbed my bags and followed.

  The thick scent of pot hit me as soon as we crossed into the living room. After the day I’d had, it was an enticing smell, pungent and warm, a breath of comfort and sleep in the still air. All of the room’s furnishings had been pushed back against the walls, and a half dozen people sat gathered around the lit fireplace. There were four men and two women, their faces bathed in the flickering yellow light. None looked older than thirty.

  “Glad to see you got the fire going without me,” Taylor said, setting the lantern down just inside the door. She was greeted with smiles, nods, and a halfhearted grunt. “I was afraid I’d find you all frozen into tiny little cubes.”

  One of the men leaned back on his elbows and flashed Taylor a sly little grin. “You know, we got along just fine before you showed up. I myself survived twenty-four years without your help—”

  “I still find that hard to believe,” Taylor interrupted, cracking a smile.

  “The sun rose and set without you,” the man continued. There was something wrong with his voice; his words were drawn out, stretched into a dreamy singsong lilt. It was a disconcerting effect, and it made me feel uncomfortable. “Governments formed and dissolved without you. Plants sprouted, flowered, and died. The tide rolled in. The tide rolled out.” Still smiling, the man lowered himself onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. I was struck by a moment of déjà vu, and I followed his eyes, making sure there was no fractured body looming up above. “And despite your help, despite all you do, things still fall apart. The world decays. The city falls into chaos.”

  “Yeah, Devon,” Taylor said, the smile fading from her lips, her brow scrunching into confused lines. “And morons still bray nonsense.”

  “But we appreciate your help,” the man, Devon, continued, ignoring Taylor’s insult. “Really, we do. Working hard. Seeing the good in everybody. Out there gathering up the lost and the helpless.” He gestured in my direction, a languid flick of the wrist. Then he raised a pinkie finger up toward the sky. “Plugging up the dike with your tiny little finger.”

  “What’s his problem?” Taylor asked, turning to the other people at the fire.

  A girl with short blond hair let out a giggle. “Fuck if we know. He just won’t shut up. I think he found some Quaaludes or something.”

  When I looked back at Devon, I saw that his eyes had fallen shut. He was lying on his back with a distant smile on his lips, rocking back and forth. Taylor just shook her head and gestured me toward the fire.

  Taylor made introductions.

  The girl with the blond hair was Amanda. She’d been studying psychology at Gonzaga. “Big waste
of time,” she said with a giggle. “People just don’t make that much sense. End of story.”

  The man sitting next to her was Floyd. “Pretty Boy Floyd,” one of the others said with a laugh. That’s what they used to call him, back when he’d been making skateboarding videos. But those days were long past. “Fucked-up knee,” he explained. He rapped his knuckles against his leg and gave his head a bitter little shake. “More metal than bone.” His nose was crooked, and his cheekbones didn’t sit quite right. “I had the bad habit of landing on my face.”

  Then there was Mackenzie, a former bookstore clerk with red hair and a thick beard. I had him pegged as the oldest of the bunch, placing him at about thirty. He had a gruff voice, and his laughter was a low bass rumble, subdued and guarded. Maybe it was just the pot, but Mackenzie kept looking around the room, casting nervous glances toward the doors and windows. The smile on his lips didn’t really touch his eyes.

  Sabine was sitting perched between Mackenzie and the fireplace. (“Sabine Pearl-Grey,” she said with a half-mouthed smile. “That’s my stage name.”) She was a small, delicate girl with small, delicate features—porcelain-doll cheekbones and a long, thin neck. Her hair was dyed black with stripes of bright red shooting out from her scalp like bolts of lightning. Her smile was bright and gleeful. She was an artist. “Performance artist,” she said in a husky nicotine purr.

  Floyd let out a laugh. “Like the take-a-shit-in-a-shot-glass type of artist.”

  Sabine threw a chunk of firewood at Floyd and shook her head, the wide smile still on her lips. “Fuck no! I may occasionally yell at strangers and roll around on the sidewalk, but that’s about it. Nothing too crude. And I do charcoals, too,” she added hastily. “And poetry!”

  The youngest of the bunch was Charlie, and he couldn’t have been older than seventeen. He was a skinny black kid with wire-frame glasses. His smile was tight-lipped, and his tired eyes looked just about ready to fall shut. “We found him wandering the streets, looking for his parents,” Taylor said, whispering in my ear. “He was out of town when the quarantine hit—staying with his grandparents in Portland—but his parents were here, in the city. He’s convinced they never left, but we haven’t found a single trace of them.” After a moment she added: “The boy’s a genius. Fixed my watch when it broke.” She held up her wrist, showing me a beautiful Bulova. Its crystal face was cracked, but its elegant hands still ticked off the seconds.

  And then there was Devon, still lying on the floor, gently rocking back and forth. Taylor gave me an exasperated shrug. “Yeah, he’s just a fuckup,” she said. “Mac says he used to see him up at the Jiffy Lube on Division, working on cars.”

  “Shut up,” Devon mumbled, the smile disappearing from his lips. “If you don’t quit talking about me like I’m not here, I’ll fucking Jiffy Lube my arm and sodomize the whole damn lot of you.”

  “He doesn’t like talking pre-evacuation,” Sabine said, holding her hand next to her mouth, like that little barrier might keep Devon from hearing. “He’s got issues.”

  “And he’s got the best fucking pot!” Floyd said, suddenly dropping to the ground and planting a big theatrical kiss on Devon’s forehead. Everybody laughed, Amanda nearly collapsing to the ground in hysterics.

  “Speaking of, where is that shit?” Floyd asked, his voice suddenly serious. “I need another hit. I can feel the horrors starting to creep back in.”

  And just like that, the laughter stopped. Amanda giggled once, but there was no levity in it this time, just nerves.

  Mac started to nod violently. I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with Floyd or if this was some type of nervous tic. His eyes once again made a circuit of the room before finally settling on Taylor. “And … and,” he rumbled, his voice strained and unsteady. “Are you sure we’re alone in here? Are you positive?”

  After a moment, he continued, his voice dropping down into a low conspiratorial whisper: “Is there someone else in the house?”

  The pipe went around the circle a couple of times, then Taylor grabbed Mac’s hand and coaxed him to his feet. She took him on a circuit of the house, trying to show him that we were alone. I could hear them moving through the rooms upstairs, the sound reaching me through a pleasant, drug-induced haze. It sounded like there were a lot of rooms up there. And a lot of stairs. Three stories, maybe. Four or five bedrooms.

  Moving catlike, on all fours, Sabine crept over to my side and gestured toward my bags. “Can I take a look?” she asked. She started digging through my duffel, not even waiting for my permission. Laughing, she pulled out article after article of clothing—T-shirts, sweaters, jeans, and underwear—and set them in a pile on the floor. She tossed aside my copy of the AP Guide to Photojournalism. Then, finally, she reached the food. She let out a delighted yelp and started stacking cans in a little pyramid.

  “Amanda!” she called, startling the blond girl out of a droop-headed daze. “Shelve the fucking pasta. We’ve got dinner right here!” She rolled several cans across the hardwood floor.

  “Thank God,” Amanda sighed. Then, under her breath: “Fucking pasta. Every fucking day.” She looked up toward Sabine’s pyramid. “Got any meat … or bread?”

  “Just canned meat,” I said with a sigh, watching as my store of food moved from hand to hand. Floyd was lost in a can of pork and beans, his eyes locked on the picture on the label. Mac, just back from his tour of the house, dropped to his knees at Sabine’s side and started cycling through the cans on the floor.

  “And crackers!” Sabine said, lifting a box of Saltines from my bag.

  “And crackers,” I confirmed. I’d meant for this food to last me a while, but I couldn’t—not in good conscience—greet their hospitality with selfish hoarding.

  “Don’t worry, Dean,” Taylor said. I turned and found her standing in the doorway, surveying the room like a mother watching her children unwrap their gifts on Christmas morning. “Tonight’s dinner is on you, but we’ll pay you back.” Then, with a cryptic smile: “We look after our own.”

  While Amanda and Mac made dinner, Charlie asked to see my camera.

  “I want to see what kind of gear you’ve got,” he explained. It was the first time I had heard his voice, and it was stronger than I expected. I thought he’d have a weak, tentative little kid’s voice, but his words were deep, self-assured, and confident.

  I nodded and passed him the camera. Devon surfaced from his stupor long enough to give the camera a distrustful glare.

  “Nice,” Charlie said, turning it over in his hands. “Canon,” he noted. “Is it a pro model? Consumer? How many megapixels?”

  “Eighteen,” I said. “Not quite pro, but close enough. It’ll do the job for magazine work … maybe not glossy advertising shots, but most people wouldn’t notice the difference.”

  Just then, Sabine crawled over to Charlie and plucked the camera from his hands. She raised the viewfinder to her eye and started snapping shots.

  “Careful—” I said, but she interrupted me with a shake of her head.

  “I took classes,” she said with a placating smile. “I know what I’m doing.” She crawled off with the camera, taking pictures of Floyd and Devon on the other side of the room. I watched her go, anxious even after she slipped the carry strap around her neck.

  “Have you had anything published?” Charlie asked.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Well, university publications. But nothing real.”

  Suddenly Taylor appeared at my side. I hadn’t noticed her listening in the doorway. She touched my forearm tentatively and caught my eyes. It was a warm, friendly gesture. “And that’s why you’re here?” she asked. “To make your mark? To get published?” There was a note of incredulity in her voice when she said that word—published. She made it sound so trivial, so unworthy.

  After a moment of silence, I nodded. “And I figure I don’t have much time. When my father found out I was getting a fine arts degree, he absolutely flipped out. ‘There’s no future there,’ he
said, ‘no money.’ And he put his foot down—he actually said that: ‘I’m putting my foot down!’ He threatened to stop paying for my education if I didn’t switch degrees. So there I was, twenty-two and short on credits, returning for a fifth year to get a degree I desperately didn’t want. And once I was done with that, I could see my future laid out before me: an accounting job at my father’s firm, everything arranged neatly beneath his big thumb.

  “It was terrifying, seeing it like that, and I knew I couldn’t escape just by taking pictures of fountains and trees, flowers and old buildings, people in contemplative poses. Everything was so tame—pictures I’d seen a hundred times before, and usually done better. There was no way I’d make a reputation doing that. No way I’d secure a job, a future.” Taylor and Charlie were watching me intently, their expressions curious, genuinely interested. I felt the need to explain myself—especially to Taylor—to let them know what I was trying to accomplish here, to let them know that I wasn’t just some fucking tourist. That I had goals and ambition. I struggled against the pot, trying to find the words I needed, trying to nail down the … drive buried deep down inside my chest: this powerful thing that had propelled me across three states, through a government quarantine, and into this strange wasteland. “One of my professors … he said, ‘Great photographers don’t make great photographs; great photographs make great photographers.’ And the things I’ve heard about this place, the images that have made their way out …”

  I shook my head, unable to find the words. Once again, Taylor touched my arm, prodding me to continue. “There’s something great here,” I finally said, “in the unknown, the impossible. And it’s something, I think, that can make me great. Something I need. Desperately.”

  After I finished, I searched their faces for understanding. Do they get it? Can they possibly understand such a vague, inscrutable drive … this thing that keeps me moving, unsatisfied?