Bad Glass

by Richard E. Gropp

  “Show me,” she said, pushing herself up off her desk. She made a lifting gesture with her finger, like she was flipping over a rock to study the ground underneath.

  I nodded and pulled up my sleeve, revealing the swollen red flesh.

  Sharon bent down over my hand and gently turned it toward the light. After a couple of seconds, she produced a pair of reading glasses from her blouse pocket and bent even closer, staring deeply into my palm. Her face crinkled up in concentration. She looked like a fortune-teller trying to make a difficult read.

  “How long would it take you to find me some antibiotics?” I asked.

  She dropped my hand and leaned back on her heel. There was a slightly amused look on her face. “Are you kidding me? This whole place is just one big rusty nail, crawling with disease. I’ve got a room full of the stuff over there.” She pointed out the door, toward the other side of the kitchen.

  I let out a loud sigh, and my stomach suddenly unclenched. Hearing those words … it was a huge relief. One less thing to worry about.

  “It’s a really nasty wound,” she said, nodding toward my hand. She kept her eyes on my face even as her head bobbed up and down. “How did it happen?” There was something odd about her voice—too much curiosity, maybe, or just a bit too quiet, too careful. It made it seem like she was trying to pull a fast one on me, trying to trick me into revealing sensitive information.

  “I stepped on a rusty nail,” I said.

  She chuckled and shook her head. Then her hand darted up to my forehead. She moved fast, and I didn’t have time to pull away. “You’ve got a nasty fever, too,” she said, resting the back of her hand against my flesh. “If you’d waited any longer, I’d be calling in a chopper. Or digging you a hole.”

  She stood up and left the room. I could hear her exchanging pleasantries with the kitchen staff as she crossed to the other side of the restaurant.

  When she came back, she was holding a canvas bag full of medical supplies. “Amoxicillin,” she said, pulling out a pill bottle. “Twice a day for ten days. And if it doesn’t start getting better in the next twenty-four hours, come back and I can give you a shot. I’d be surprised, though. The pills should do the trick. I’ve seen them work on worse.”

  I nodded and accepted the pill bottle.

  “Take one now,” she said, fixing me with steady, forceful eyes. She pulled a can of Coke from her bag.

  I swallowed one of the pills, chasing it down with a swig of warm soda. She nodded in approval and dug back into her bag.

  “When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?” she asked. Her voice was clipped and fast, without a trace of emotion. It sounded like she was giving a perfunctory reading from a very familiar script.

  “A couple years ago,” I said. Then I smiled. I actually had stepped on a rusty nail for that one.

  “Then you’re fine.” She pulled a syringe from her bag and lobbed it into the outgoing mail bin on her desk.

  After a moment of thought, she pulled another bottle of pills from her bag and tossed it my way. I grabbed it from the air reflexively and let out a pained hiss as my injured hand clenched shut around the hard plastic. I muttered a curse, then turned the bottle in my steepled fingers. The pharmacy label read “Hydrocodone,” but the word Vicodin was printed underneath in shaky letters. The name of the patient and prescribing doctor had been gouged out of the paper label. “For the pain,” Sharon said with a smile. “It must be screaming like a bitch right about now.”

  My eyes darted from the pill bottle back up to her face. She was still smiling, a sly understanding smile. This is how it happens, I told myself. This is where I become indebted to her. It’s one thing to accept antibiotics. Narcotics, on the other hand … that’s a completely different beast.

  If I accept these pills, I become complicit.

  I moved to return the bottle but stopped with my hand only partly extended. Sharon raised her palm and shook her head, warding me back like a traffic cop. “Don’t worry about it, Dean. Really, it’s nothing. Your hand is injured. It’s messed up pretty bad. I’d feel awful if I didn’t help.”

  “What do you want?” I asked, letting out an exhausted sigh. I was too tired to argue. I just didn’t have the strength. “What’s the price?”

  “Nothing. This is a community service, an act of fellowship. Hershel out there would call it a mitzvah.” She nodded toward the kitchen, and I guessed she was referring to the rail-thin man working at the griddle. “We’re in a dangerous situation here, and we all have to look out for each other. Am I right?”

  I nodded in wary agreement. Then I waited for the other shoe to drop, for her mercenary intentions to become clear. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Although,” she said, that sly smile returning to her lips, “if it’s not too much of a problem, there is an errand you could run for me. A simple errand. Actually, it’s something you might enjoy, something you might find … illuminating.”

  And with that, her smile widened.

  Sharon put new bandages on my hand. She dug antiseptic and clean gauze from the depths of her bag, then cleaned and dressed my wounds, going about the task with the care and competence of a trained nurse. Every now and then, she glanced up and gave me a reassuring smile. It was the smile of a confident mother. A saint. A perfect, loving angel.

  And it bothered me.

  The way this was going, I couldn’t tell if she was trying to fuck me or trying to tuck me in for the night.

  When I couldn’t take it anymore, I pulled my hand out of her grip. “Don’t you think this whole thing is incredibly crass? What you’re doing here, to these people?” I nodded out toward the crowded restaurant. “You’re taking advantage of the situation. You’re gaining profit and power from these people’s misery.”

  Sharon sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, I’m not exactly alone in that boat, now, am I, Dean?” She seemed exasperated by the accusation but not surprised, as if she’d been waiting for this, as if she’d seen it coming. “Think about it. Think about what you’re doing here. You’re not coming into this situation as a scientist or a policeman; you’re here as a photographer, a journalist.” She nodded toward my camera bag, and I fought the urge to push it back behind my chair, out of sight. “You’re not looking for a fix or a cure. You’re not invested in the situation; you don’t have family to protect, or even property. And you’re certainly not trying to save lives. No, what you’re doing … you’re looking for the next cool shot. You’re looking for fame. Your own special kind of fame.”

  She leaned forward and patted my knee. The annoyance was gone from her eyes, and now there was nothing but sympathy and understanding. “I’m not operating under any illusions here, Dean. I’m no saint. But you might as well face that truth yourself. You’re invested in the status quo, just like me. You’re invested in the city staying strange. So you can take your pictures. So you can explore and report. And the reason you’re here, the reason you came here, of your own free will, is because you’d rather be here, inside this weirdness, than anywhere else in the world.”

  I leaned back in my chair and looked away. I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “I’m still getting my feet wet,” I said lamely. “I’m still waiting for the big picture.”

  Sharon let out a laugh. It was a loud, barking laugh, and it surprised me. “Big picture? You’re waiting for the big picture? Well, let me tell you, Dean, from where you’re standing, you won’t see a thing.” She smiled and gave me a wink. “From where you’re standing, you won’t be able to see the forest for the forest fire.”

  She waited for me to respond. When I didn’t, she gave me a nod and went back to work on my wounds.

  Her words struck hard. They were a sucker punch to the gut, a big, strong jolt of truth.

  And it is the truth, I realized. That’s why all of those people out there in the restaurant gave me those withering looks. I came to the city to take pictures, while they scratch and scrape just to survive. I’m exploitin
g their hardship. I’m turning it into a product, something to study—dispassionately—and consume.

  I could have lied to myself right then and convinced myself that I did have noble intentions, that I was looking for the truth, trying to show the world what was going on inside the military’s oppressive media blackout. But that wasn’t the truth. Carrying my camera, street to street, day to day, I’d never even thought about those things.

  I just wanted people to see my pictures. I wanted them to be amazed. By me. By my skill. I wanted to save myself from a mundane future.

  Not exactly a noble endeavor.

  I was lost in thought when Sharon finished with the bandage. After a vague, shapeless length of time, I looked up and found her leaning back on the edge of her desk, studying me with cool, sympathetic eyes.

  “Don’t worry about it, Dean,” she said. “Whatever’s happening here, it’s not the real world. We all just have to do what we do and hope there’s no judgment in the end.”

  “If it’s not the real world, then what is it?” I asked, my voice high, almost pleading. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  She shook her head. “If you’re suggesting I might have some real knowledge, I don’t. If, on the other hand, you’re asking me what I think … well, I think we’re all going insane. I think there’s some previously unknown agent at work on our minds—something synthetic, maybe, or some naturally occurring ergot. And what we’re seeing, what we’re experiencing, it’s all just the ravings of a city gone mad.”

  “But my pictures … all the shared experiences …”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t have all the answers,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “It’s just what I think, what I feel.”

  I nodded, preoccupied. I was considering her suggestion.

  Could an insane mind grasp its own insanity? And if not, what would a city full of insane minds look like? Would they share delusions? Would they create their own scattershot mythology?

  “Well, one thing’s for certain,” Sharon said, offering me a gentle smile, “you’re not going to find any answers sitting there with that confused look on your face. It’s time to get moving, Dean. My errand’s not going to run itself.”

  I took Sabine with me on the delivery. That was Mama Cass’s final request before she pushed me out the door. It’s important, she said, for Sabine.

  Taylor was there when I swung by the house—I could hear her voice up on the second floor—but I managed to grab Sabine and get out without attracting her attention. Certainly, I wanted to see her, to set things straight, but I figured that this was not the right time. Not while I was out running errands for Mama Cass. And besides, my own feelings remained ambivalent. I wanted to be close to her, but she kept pushing me away—both literally and figuratively—and that was driving me nuts.

  I needed more time. I needed time to figure out what she wanted from me … and what I wanted from her.

  It was nearly six o’clock when Sabine and I hit the streets, and the last traces of sunlight had already fled the sky. The moon and the stars were hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, and again I was struck by how unnatural the darkness seemed.

  Cities were never supposed to get this dark. That was their purpose, right? To keep the darkness at bay.

  Both Sabine and I had flashlights, and as we walked back toward the river, we sent twin beams racing across the pavement ahead. Objects emerged from the darkness like strange alien fish swimming up from the depths of a deep, dark sea: ordinary items, cutting sharp shapes across our wavering circles of light—cars, mailboxes, trash cans—made alien in their stark isolation. I played my light across a snow-shrouded yard and found a ten-speed bike lodged up in the branches of an apple tree.

  “What did Sharon say?” Sabine asked. “What does she want me to do?”

  “I don’t know. She gave me a package and asked me to deliver it to St. James Tower on Maple Street.”

  “That’s near Homestead territory.”

  She was quiet for a moment. I think she was waiting for me to respond, to react, but I didn’t know the Homestead, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. Was she expecting fear, maybe, or amusement, or annoyance? The Homestead was some sort of commune, I gathered—Weasel had mentioned it during his quick prelarceny tour—but that was about all I knew.

  “Maybe Taylor should have come,” Sabine continued. “She’s the Homestead expert. She worked with them for quite a while.”

  I nodded but didn’t say a word. Sabine was probing, pushing buttons, trying to figure out what was going on between Taylor and me. But that was my personal business, and I didn’t feel much in the mood to share.

  After crossing the bridge, I let Sabine take the lead. She knew the city well and didn’t hesitate as we moved from one street to the next, first heading south, then west.

  The buildings grew in height the farther we got from the river. Here, on this side of the water, there were actual signs of life scattered across the cityscape. Laughter came from a tower to our east, followed by dueling jovial voices. I could see dim flickering lights in a couple of the windows above our heads, and the tinny sound of a portable stereo echoed down, losing its coherence and becoming a monotonous whisper inside the vast canyonlike street. A loud, jangling crash sounded in the distance, followed by a muted yell—angry and confrontational.

  Suddenly, Sabine broke into a trot. She ran halfway up the block, her flashlight bobbing up and down in the darkness. Then she pulled to a stop on a vacant stretch of sidewalk.

  “Here, check this out,” she said when I finally caught up. I couldn’t see her face behind the flashlight’s glare, but I could hear the smile in her voice. She raised the flashlight beam from the sidewalk, revealing words spray-painted across a concrete wall.

  It was a simple phrase, painted in crimson red: THEY’RE BEHIND YOU NOW.

  I turned around.

  “This is one of my favorites.”

  Sabine panned her light to a brick wall on the far side of the street. There were black shapes covering its surface, and at first, I couldn’t tell what they were. Burn marks? Mud? But they were far too intricate, too regular … too planned. And, as my flashlight beam joined Sabine’s, the marks seemed to move.

  A cold chill rocketed up my spine. Spiders. There were spiders all over the wall, climbing out of a hole in its center.

  I took an involuntary step back, remembering the feel of spider legs crawling up my thigh. Feeling it again, this time on my back, on my shoulders, on my neck. I dropped my flashlight and started to brush at my clothing. For a moment, I lost myself, transported back to that empty apartment building, to the feel of those spindly legs, to the fear of being trapped and vastly outnumbered.

  “Relax, Dean,” Sabine said, a note of perplexed amusement in her voice. “It’s just spray paint. Just fucking art!”

  I forced myself to stop, clenching my hands down at my sides. My fingers ached, shaking as I fought the urge to brush at my neck and face. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and took a deep breath. There are no spiders. Not here, not now.

  But the painting was so close to my memory. Spiders swarming out of a hole in the wall. It was like the mural had been plucked straight from my head, a moment from my past, sketched out line for line.

  I moved forward, crossing to the middle of the street. Then I stopped. I wanted to study the image up close, to look for a single stubby-jointed spider leg amid all of those crudely drawn figures—something that might represent a human finger—but I didn’t want to get too close.

  I took the camera out of my bag. It was a comfort, moving through these well-choreographed motions—setting my backpack down, unzipping the topmost compartment, lifting my camera out, popping off the lens cap, raising it to my eye—and it settled me into a calmer state of mind. I had a task to perform, and it was a task I enjoyed, a task I wanted to do well.

  “Fix the flashlight beams, one on either side of the hole.”

  Sabine complied. She grabbed my flashl
ight from where I’d dropped it to the street and moved the two beams into place.

  I took a couple of shots with the flash on, but I was afraid all the subtle colors would be lost in that artificial glare, and I had no idea how the glossy paint would react to the light. I played with the camera’s settings—switching the flash off, increasing the ISO, cranking the aperture as wide as it would go—then took a couple more shots. Even with the adjustments, I had to use a fairly slow shutter speed, and I fought to hold the camera steady.

  They don’t have to be perfect, I reassured myself. Mostly, I wanted to compare these images with the ones I’d taken back in the abandoned apartment building. I wanted to compare the two sets of spiders.

  What would I see, I wondered, when I held these fake spiders up against the real ones? Would they match up? Would the number and placement be the same?

  Impossible.

  “How long has this been here?” I asked, lowering the camera.

  “At least two weeks,” Sabine said. “Probably longer.”

  I grunted and continued to stare.

  Sabine moved the flashlight beams back and forth across the wall, finally focusing on the deep, dark gash in the middle of the mural. It was the focal point of the entire piece: the nexus, the birth canal, from which all those spray-paint spiders emerged. The flashlight beams failed to illuminate anything inside. Nothing but inky black.

  If I stuck my head in there, what would I see? A dim blue light? A face, staring back at me, fixing me with accusing eyes? Maybe a spray-painted face—a bright yellow smiley face, mocking me.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, once again storing my camera. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “And go where?” Sabine replied. The smile was back in her voice; I could hear it playing at her lips. “We’re already here.”

  She raised her twin flashlight beams, casting the spider-infested wall back into darkness. Three floors up, I could see a square of light trickling out around the edges of a boarded-up window.