Bad Glass

Floyd and I were sitting on a bench in the garden, surrounded by dormant rosebushes. He was playing his bright red guitar—moving from Pearl Jam, to Bowie, to the Pixies—and everyone else was on the back porch, watching by the light of a single gas-powered lantern.

Amanda, Mac, and Devon were sitting on the steps. Amanda was leaning back against Mac’s chest, resting her head in the crook of his neck. She looked sedate, at ease, her dogs a million miles away. Taylor and Sabine shared an old wicker bench beneath the eaves. Sabine had her feet tucked into a lotus position on her lap. Her eyes were closed, and there was a peaceful smile on her lips.

Even Charlie was there, sitting on the floor at Taylor’s feet. He’d emerged from his room right after dinner, surprising us all with his upbeat, almost cheerful attitude. Somehow, locked up in his room, he’d managed to make peace with that photo of his mother. In fact, he seemed downright ashamed of the whole melodramatic episode. And he didn’t want to talk about it. Not at all.

And then there was Taylor. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Taylor.

I looked down and noticed my camera sitting in my lap. I turned on the LCD display and scrolled through a dozen pictures: Charlie, on the ground, resting his head against Taylor’s knee; Mac, kissing the side of Amanda’s head; Devon, taking a huge hit off his bong; Sabine, flipping me the bird. And then there were a dozen pictures of Floyd playing his guitar, his forehead wrinkled in concentration, utterly focused on the instrument in his hands.

As I scrolled through the memory card, Floyd cleared his throat and started in on a new song. I recognized it immediately: “The John B. Sails.”

It was an old song—a traditional folk tune—and I knew it because the Beach Boys had recorded a cover of it back in the sixties. When I was a kid, my father had played that CD a lot. Sitting in his den with a tumbler of Scotch dangling from his hand, he’d play it, and then he’d get sad. I think it reminded him of something, something painful. I never thought to ask what.

So hoist up the John B. sails,

See how the mainsail set,

Send for the captain ashore, let us go home,

Let me go home.

Floyd played the song with a surprising amount of emotion, his voice a crooning moan, rooted deep in his chest. I put my camera down and focused on his performance. There was no carefree, surfer lilt to this version of the song, just pained longing.

He sounded so hurt. So bitter.

And I could tell it wasn’t just something he was doing for us, wasn’t just part of his performance. He was digging down into his very core, and after a couple of lines, I don’t even think he realized we were still there, watching.

I noticed blood on his hand. Floyd was playing so hard that he’d cut his fingers on the strings. But that didn’t stop him. He remained completely oblivious, eyes closed, heartache twisting at his lips.

So hoist up the John B. sails,

See how the mainsail set,

Send for the doctors now, just let me go home,

I wanna go home.

This is the worst trip—

Then, abruptly, he stopped midsentence. His fingers halted on the bright red guitar, and his open mouth snapped shut. The sudden silence was a shock, a jarring slap at our comfortable, intimate gathering.

And for a brief moment, there wasn’t a sound in the world.

“Wait, man,” Floyd said, turning toward me. There was a perplexed look on his face, like he’d just suddenly come awake to find this guitar in his hands. “What the fuck was I singing?” There was no pain in his voice. Not anymore. Just confusion.

And that was when I noticed the snow—big, lazy flakes tumbling from the pitch-black sky.

Photograph. October 20, 01:25 P.M. A window in the snow:

A surveillance photo, set slightly askew. Peering in through a window at a man frozen in action.

It is a second-story window, perched directly above a protected front door. The eaves above and below are coated in several inches of snow. On the other side of the glass, a young man is glancing back over his shoulder into the unseen depths of the room. He is wearing a black knit cap and a thick winter jacket. His mouth is open, and his arms are raised at his side, caught in midgesture. He is talking. Or arguing. The lines on his face convey a look of pure frustration.

It is a moment of candid emotion, caught and frozen in time.

There are no furnishings visible in the room behind him, nothing but a small swatch of wall. A blue light glows somewhere out of view, coloring the wall a vibrant shade and tinting the man’s pale complexion. It is a subtle light, but it stands out inside that frame within a frame—a touch of color inside an otherwise monochrome image. It makes it look like the man is trapped under tropical water or frozen inside a cube of polar-blue ice.

We can’t see who he’s talking to.