Bad Glass

Taylor gave me a look, and I shrugged the backpack off my shoulder. “Here,” I said as I unearthed Mama Cass’s parcel and handed it to Terry. “Mama Cass wanted you to have this.”

Terry accepted the package without looking at me. He unwrapped the brown paper and let it fall to the roof of the building. Then he glanced at the book’s cover and let out a short laugh. He held it up so we could read the title: Sustainable Small-Plot Farming. I felt a bit cheated. This was Mama Cass’s big secret?

“I’m a fool,” Terry said. He hauled off and threw the book as hard as he could. It sailed out over the street, making it halfway to the intersection of Monroe and Second Avenue before finally hitting the asphalt and breaking in two, pages ripping and flying as the textbook bounced and skidded down the distant street. “What was I thinking? Sustainable farming? There’s nothing sustainable here …

“I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m getting out. It’s too painful now, watching it all fall apart, trying to hold it all together while everyone else’s content to just let it fade away.” He paused for a moment and looked down at the street below. “We’re standing at the edge of a cliff here, in the city, and the ground’s crumbling away beneath our feet. I think it’s time I found something new. Something solid.”

Taylor took the announcement in stride. Maybe this was a good thing: Terry safe, Terry out of danger. “Where will you go?” she asked.

“I have friends in Olympia. I’ll stay with them for a while, until I get things sorted out. Maybe I’ll write a book. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be human, about what we owe one another.”

“I’d read it,” Taylor said. And then: “You’ll be okay, Terry. I know it.”

Terry was quiet for a little while, staring out over the city.

“And you, Taylor?” he finally asked, turning back toward her. “You’re strong, but I don’t think strong matters much anymore. Are you going to be okay? Can I convince you to come with me to Olympia?” After a moment, he gestured toward me. “And Dean, too, of course. If that’s what it takes, if that’s what you want.”

“You know I can’t do that. I can’t leave them.” “Them”—her parents.

“Yeah,” Terry said. “I know. You are your own woman. And when your mind is set, your mind is set.”

Taylor laughed. “Yeah, that tautology … you’re starting to sound like Mickey there. Maybe it is time for you to go.”

“Yeah,” Terry said, with a shrug. “Fuck, yeah.”

Then he gestured toward the charcoal grill standing next to his tent and the curl of smoke stretching up into the dark sky. “While you’re here, you might as well stay for dinner, though. Right?” He offered a weary smile. “It seems I’ve got more food in the city than I’ve got time, and I don’t want it going to waste.”

Taylor took me up into the tower while Terry cooked dinner.

When we reached the eighth floor, she gestured to an empty doorway across from the stairwell. “This was my room,” she said. “After my parents … well, after my mom kicked me out, Weasel took me to Terry and Terry put me up here.”

It was a boring room: maroon hotel carpeting, heavy drapes pulled away from a dirty window, nightstand, chest of drawers with an empty TV nook. The bed was a single stripped mattress hanging half off its frame. I inhaled deeply. Underneath a musty layer of abandonment, the room smelled faintly like Taylor.

“I wasn’t in a very good state,” she said. She moved about the room absently. After making a complete circuit, she approached the bed and nudged the mattress back into place atop its box spring. “Weasel found me in the park, camped out on the steps. I couldn’t leave the city—I just couldn’t—and I didn’t know where else to go.”

“It’s good to have friends,” I said. I crossed the room and looked out the window. The window faced the neighboring building, and four floors down, I could see Terry standing at the grill in his rooftop camp.

“Yeah, it was.”