Bad Glass

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 Floyd 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.”