Bad Glass

by Richard E. Gropp

  She shook her head. The violent motion dislodged tears from her cheeks, and I watched one hit the mattress next to her leg. Then she looked at me, and a gentle smile surfaced on her lips. “Like I said, Dean, there’s something wrong with you. Something deeply and truly wrong.” But the way she said it, it was gentle and warm.

  She reached out and rested her hand on my leg. It was only a brief moment of contact, but it filled me with confidence. It felt like I was doing my job here. I was lifting some of her burden, and that made me happy.

  I nodded toward the window, indicating Terry down below. “The food should be ready by now.”

  Taylor nodded and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Then she started a last circuit around the room, idly trailing her fingers along the hotel walls. Her expression was distant as she moved slowly through memory.

  When she reached the chest of drawers under the empty TV nook, she idly pulled open the top drawer and her breath hitched in surprise. She stood still for a moment, transfixed by whatever she’d found inside.

  “What is it?” I asked. And, after a moment of silence: “Taylor?”

  She shook her head. I stood up and moved to her side, but her hand quickly darted into the drawer, pulling back whatever it was before I could get a good look. It looked like a piece of paper, but she quickly turned away, blocking it from view. Her hand disappeared into her pocket, and when she turned back, the piece of paper was gone. Her face was set, secretive and angry.

  “What is it?” I repeated.

  “It’s mine,” she said gruffly. “It’s mine.”

  Then she shouldered me aside and headed toward the door.

  Dinner was good. Terry served us hamburgers—fresh meat on home-baked bread, crisp lettuce, and fragrant cheese—and a selection of grilled vegetables, including squash, zucchini, carrots, and tiny potatoes. I don’t know if he grew the vegetables himself or if he’d found them somewhere in the city. Despite his plans, despite his book, I hadn’t seen any crops growing up here in the Homestead. Maybe he got them from Mama Cass.

  Before we ate, he produced bottles of microbrew beer from an ice-filled cooler and toasted the city mockingly. “To this pile of crap at the end of the world,” he said, “and to my well-deserved escape.” But his tone wasn’t joyous.

  Taylor seemed distant throughout dinner. When she wasn’t working at her food, she kept her jaw clenched, and she looked angry. It was frustrating. Up in the tower, I’d managed to help her drop one of her burdens, I think. But in that drawer she’d picked up another.

  And this one seemed heavier, something she didn’t want to share.

  She hugged Terry for a long time before we parted. There were no tears, but I heard her voice crack as she said good-bye. Terry gave her a nod and a smile, and then we left.

  When we reached the stairwell, I cast a glance back over my shoulder. Terry was standing in the middle of the roof, once again staring up at the overcast sky.

  That was the last I saw of him.

  Taylor didn’t look back.

  We found a new poem on the way home. Taylor wasn’t speaking to me then. Once again, a distance had formed between us, a gulf as wide as the city. And she was standing alone on the other shore.

  It was frustrating.

  One step forward, twelve steps back.

  The poem was on Riverside Avenue, painted on the side wall of an apartment building. There was a basketball hoop bolted next to the ten-foot-tall block of text, and a half-court boundary filled the space between the buildings. The poem was drawn in bright red paint—shiny acrylic—and it couldn’t have been more than an hour old. The paint was still wet and dripping, and the smell of aerosol still hung in the air.

  I glanced around, thinking I might catch the Poet somewhere nearby. But the block was deserted.

  Looking up

  The taste of the sky

  on my tongue

  And the taste of asphalt

  on the back of my head

  My right eye rolled back,

  in a pool of blood.

  And there is a face

  Above me, there is a face

  Funny

  Taylor didn’t even stop to read the poem. When I looked back down, she was already half a block away.

  Photograph. October 24, 09:53 A.M. Green lines:

  It is an abstract image. A close-up without sense or meaning.

  There is a mesh of bright green light in the middle of the frame, stretching left to right—and right to left—at very shallow angles. The lines are close together, on the same horizontal plane—hundreds of lines of light, forming a flat, tabletop surface. The lines hit mirrors on either side of the image; reflections flee at oblique angles, stretching up and out, toward the top of the frame.

  The green is a bright electric green, and the lines are as sharp as razors, cutting into the shadow-gray background, glowing like radium in the night.

  Light and line. Angle and vector. Form without context.

  I slept in my own room that night.

  The house around me was quiet, and as I lay there, waiting for sleep to come, I wondered what everyone else was doing. Floyd and Charlie, Sabine and Taylor—alone in their rooms (or so I assumed), silent, immersed in the dark. Were they dwelling on the past, scared and alone? Were they frustrated, like me? Were they plotting plans, getting ready to run?

  Or were they just sleeping, lost to the world?

  Finally, I took three more Vicodins to help me fall asleep. I was going through the pills like candy now—I recognized that—and they weren’t really making me feel any better. They were helping me sleep, yeah, and during the day they helped me relax for an hour or two, preventing me from thinking all those deep and horrible thoughts. But it was only temporary. And the relief I got each time was shrinking, like a stream drying up in the midsummer sun.

  And that stream was getting shallow.

  But what really scared me was the thought of what I’d have to do next, when I ran out again. What would Mama Cass make me do? What errands would she have me run? It wasn’t going to stay easy. I was certain of that.

  As I drifted off to sleep, drugged and floating, I resolved to quit. There were other ways—better ways—to cope with stress and confusion. I just had to find them. I just had to deal.

  Unfortunately, nothing’s ever as easy as it seems when you’re high and drifting toward sleep. I should have known that.

  Charlie woke me up with a hand on my shoulder. “I know where he is. I know where he went.”

  I was in the middle of a dream when he woke me up, and I pulled away from his hand with a start, lost for a moment in my surroundings. I looked up from my pillow and saw Charlie smiling down at me. I was still lost.

  “What’s going on?” I managed, clearing phlegm from my throat. “What happened?” And why did he look so happy?

  “I got an email. I think it’s from my dad, or my mom, maybe—I couldn’t trace its source. But it’s Devon. I know where he is. I know where we need to go!”

  I tried to sit up, but Charlie pushed his notebook computer forward, and I had to roll onto my side to get a good look at the screen. There was an image open on his desktop, a surprisingly high-quality image, still sharp even though it had been zoomed in to fill up the entire window. It was a street view: Devon, glancing over his shoulder, cautiously scanning the street behind him as he pulled open the thick glass door of an office building. “I know where that is. See that planter?” Charlie pointed to a knee-high bowl on the left edge of the photo. The concrete bowl was filled with dead flowers. “I recognize it. That’s a research building, south of I-90, near the hospital.”

  I looked up to find Charlie’s eyes searching my face expectantly. His smile was still there. “We can do this, Dean,” he said. “We can find out what’s going on. The radio … my parents …” When he started talking about his parents, his voice got hushed, imploring and desperate. “We can find them. We can find everything!”

  “What’s going on here?” />
  Surprised, Charlie and I both looked up toward the door. Floyd was standing there, resting his shoulder against the doorjamb. His hands were busy lighting up a tightly rolled joint. “Is this when you guys hold all of the important roommate meetings? The crack of dawn? Am I missing out? Are we getting TiVo?”

  “Floyd? Are you okay?” The last time I’d seen him, he’d been passed out in his bed. And before that—the last time I’d seen him awake—he’d been inconsolable.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. And listen, about before, about that … I’m sorry.” He gave Charlie a cautious look, like he might not want to talk in front of the seventeen-year-old, but he went on, anyway. “I was being stupid, but I’m better now. I’m under control.” He held out his hand, palm down, and tried to hold it steady in midair, to demonstrate just how cool he was. When it started to shake slightly, he clenched his fist and took another drag on his joint.

  I felt uncomfortable lying on the futon with both Charlie and Floyd towering over me, so I pulled back my covers and sat up in the middle of my bedding. I was still wearing my jeans and sweatshirt. I couldn’t remember when I’d last taken them off.

  Floyd saw the screen of Charlie’s notebook and quickly knelt down at his side, grabbing the computer and lifting it up into his lap. He handed me his joint, freeing up his hands. “Is this Devon?” he asked urgently, mousing back and forth on the image, panning it from side to side. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Maybe,” Charlie said. “Yes.” He turned his pleading glance back my way. “I was just telling Dean about how we need to go there. My parents … I think Devon knows something about my parents.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Floyd said with a nod. “That fucker’s got some shit to answer for.” He looked at me and tapped at his temple, his eyes going wide. “Binocular shit. Tunnel shit!”

  After a moment, I nodded reluctantly. I didn’t feel too confident about this, following Charlie’s mysterious email, looking for Devon. It felt like we were being led by the nose here, and I didn’t trust that sensation; there was too much potential for traps, for disaster. But I could see that it was going to happen whether I liked it or not. With or without me.

  Charlie and Floyd had already made that decision.

  Floyd’s joint was sitting idle between my fingertips. I took a deep drag before I handed it back.

  Taylor answered her door on the second knock. She looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept at all that night.

  “Yeah, Dean, I’ll come,” she said coldly, when I told her what we were planning to do. “I’ll help Charlie any way I can.”

  I stared at her for a while, taking in her pinched lips and wrinkled forehead, the clenched and jutting muscles of her jaw. Who is this person? I wondered. At times like this, I couldn’t figure her out. She was wearing a mask—a cold facade that she hid behind whenever she came under assault—and I had absolutely no idea how to peel it back.

  “What’s wrong, Taylor?” I finally pleaded. “What did you find in that drawer back at the Homestead? What can I do to help?”

  For a moment, her expression relaxed and her jaw unclenched. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head, raising a hand to cover her dark and weary eyelids.

  “There’s nothing for you to do, Dean,” she said, speaking from behind the sanctuary of her fingers. “But don’t worry about it. It’s not you; it’s not your fault. I just need time, okay? I need time to figure things out. Priorities, you know?”

  After she finished speaking, she lowered her hand. Her eyes were red—bloodshot—but there were no tears. She tried to force a smile, but it came across as a horrible grimace, a mélange of fake, stillborn emotion.

  “But you can count on me,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can … for you, for Charlie, for my friends.” After the word friends, her voice trailed off, and I barely caught her final sentence: “I’d never let you down.”

  Next I went to check on Sabine. She was smiling when she opened her bedroom door, practically beaming. Her forehead was dotted with beads of sweat and smeared with graphite. I looked over her shoulder and saw large sheets of drawing paper scattered across the floor. They were dark with pencil and charcoal.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, surprised at her attitude and her energy. She’d been hiding from everyone for the last couple of days; ever since she’d met with the Poet, she’d been locked away in what I had assumed was a depressive funk.

  “It’s a surprise,” she said, flashing me a sly smile. “It’s a project I’m working on. And it’s absolutely brilliant. Just brilliant!”

  She saw me staring over her shoulder and reached up to block my view with her palms. “No, no! It’s a secret,” she said. “It’s not done yet, and I can’t sacrifice the impact of that first viewing. It’s got to hit! It’s got to hit hard, like a kick to the balls.” She pulled back her leg as if she were going to demonstrate the impact on my balls. I stepped back in surprise, and she laughed. Then she closed the door to just a crack and peeked out at me through the narrow gap.

  “Are you okay, Sabine?” I asked. “You’re acting strange.”

  Her face settled for a moment. “I’m just excited, Dean. That’s all. It’s my process. It’s how I work. But I’m fine, really. In fact, I’m better than I’ve been in a long time now. I’ve got a plan, a purpose.” She nodded toward the art on her floor. “But I’ve got to get back to work. The muse—she’s moving, and I don’t want to fall behind.”

  Then she closed the door in my face. I heard a playful little laugh come from inside the room as I turned and headed back toward the stairs.

  The manic swings here were dizzying. At the moment, Charlie, Floyd, and Sabine were up—way up—and Taylor was down. But I got the sense that it could change at any moment. We were all fragile here, fragile and out of control.

  Give the city a moment, I knew, and everything would change.

  This house needs some serious therapy, I thought as I clambered down the stairs, cinching my camera bag tight against my back. I met Charlie, Floyd, and Taylor at the front door.

  The research park was deserted. And it wasn’t really much of a park. It was just a square of squat gray buildings with a grassy space in the middle.

  Charlie knew just where he was going. He led us down a path between two of the buildings and out into the central courtyard. There was a cherry tree here in one corner, and a stagnant fountain in another. Sometime in the last couple of months, the cherry tree had toppled over, pulling up a huge knot of roots. Its bent trunk stretched across the path, ending, leafless, in a crown of broken branches. There were eight buildings in the square—two on each side—and empty windows looked down on us from every direction. One of the buildings had a broken window up on the third floor, and an office chair lay in the courtyard below, surrounded by glass and shattered computer parts. It was perfectly still inside the courtyard. There wasn’t even a hint of wind inside this secluded space.

  Charlie smiled widely and gestured for us to follow, breaking into an excited trot as he crossed to the far side of the square. He led us around the base of one of the buildings—the one with the broken window—and back out onto the street. The planter from Charlie’s photograph was right there, at the building’s entrance.

  “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” Taylor asked. “You didn’t hesitate, didn’t take a wrong turn.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I walked by weeks ago, looking for my parents. I just remembered it, that’s all. I’ve got a good memory for this type of thing. Places. Directions.”

  Taylor responded with a skeptical grunt.

  “C’mon,” Floyd said. “Let’s see if this fucker’s home.” He crossed to the front door and pulled at the handle. It rattled in its frame but didn’t open. “Fuck. What now? Should I knock?”

  “No,” Charlie said. “Look.” He pointed toward the planter. On the wall, behind the concrete bowl, I saw a red light blinking steadily.

  We made our way over, and Floy
d leaned down into the narrow space between the planter and the wall. “It’s a keypad,” he said, surprise and confusion in his slow, mildly stoned voice. “It’s still got power. Battery, do you think?”

  The keypad was set about a foot off the ground, completely hidden in that dark crevice—even more so if the planter had been in bloom, if the flowers hadn’t already wilted into mulch. A secret keypad, I thought. Nobody would have noticed it—not in a million years—if he or she didn’t already know it was there.

  “Let me try,” Charlie said, and Floyd stepped back, letting Charlie take his place. The seventeen-year-old punched in a string of numbers, and the light on the keypad turned green. The lock on the front door ratcheted back audibly. “5869,” he said. “It was in the email.” He met our eyes one by one, then added quietly: “It’s my parents’ birth years: 1958, 1969.”

  “Did they set this up?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” Charlie reached out and touched the keypad gently, as if it were something precious and fragile. “I think they’re leading me here. I think they want me to find them.”

  I let this sink in. Then, after a moment of silence, I repeated a question that I’d already asked him once, a question that he hadn’t been able—or hadn’t been willing—to answer: “What does your father do, Charlie? And what does it have to do with the city?”

  “He’s a scientist. They’re both scientists—theoretical physicists. And … I don’t know, they might have been working here, on the phenomena. Before it got bad, before the evacuation.”

  “What do you mean, they might have been working here? You don’t know where your parents were or what they were doing?”

  “We lost contact. It’s hard to explain.” He looked genuinely confused. “Just … they had to be away, okay, and they couldn’t tell me—they weren’t allowed to tell me—where they were or what they were doing. But I knew—I suspected, at least—that they were here. It made sense timewise; this was right when the government started calling in all the experts. I had to stay with my grandparents in Portland for a while.”