Bad Glass

The photographer shook his head. He didn’t seem put off by my abrupt summation. He just seemed very, very tired. “There was a sickness there, Dean; I could feel it. There’s something horribly wrong with the very nature of the universe, and it was centered right there, in that room, at that meeting. Like suddenly physics had gone awry. Stars had collapsed, and atoms had split. And it was tearing everything apart. And this—” He gestured about the room, but it was clear he meant the city and not the chaos of his apartment. “—this is a symptom. This place. This feeling.”

I shrugged and lifted my palms into the air, a gesture of pure frustration. “It could have been a delusion, a chemical state that imbued your visions with a sense of importance, with spiritual clarity.” As I talked, memories of Psych 101 came flooding back in. “That’s what religion is: epiphanies and euphoria. Just neurons misfiring.”

Cob Gilles smiled and shook his head. “I saw through the veil, Dean. During that trip, the scales—as they say—they fell from my eyes.”

He once again reached for the bottle of Scotch, this time almost knocking it over. Instead of refilling his glass—a task I don’t think he could have managed—he drank straight from the bottle. “And what I saw … that was the reality. And this world—this whole fucking world—is the delusion, nothing but a fever dream spinning away inside a dying mind.”

He paused for a moment, then continued: “And what happens, Dean? What happens when that mind dies? What happens when there’s no one left to hold it all together?”

“Dean!”

Sabine’s voice was shrill and frantic, and it sounded a long way away.

At the sound of her cry, Cob Gilles started in his chair. He’d been so focused on me—and his booze and his story—I think he’d forgotten all about Sabine, left to wander through his apartment as we talked, as he let the drugs and alcohol work their magic on his body and nerves.

I spun around and started toward the confusion of bookcases, then decided to bypass that maze altogether. Instead, I stayed near the wall, passing a small, garbage-strewn kitchenette before finally reaching the front door and picking up Sabine’s trail.

“Dean!” She was closer now, and her voice sounded more frantic, more desperate.

“Sabine!” I called back, but she didn’t respond.

What will I find? I wondered. Her body, sunk into the floor? Her eyes, pleading for help?

I collided with a bookcase and sent a shelf of notebooks cascading to the floor. A binder popped open, and the air filled with photographs.

I turned a corner and found Sabine standing in the narrow space between the wall and a row of bookcases. Her face was contorted with confusion and anxiety, but she looked healthy, unharmed.

After a moment of tense silence, she turned and faced me. “It’s the Poet,” she said, her voice congested, breaking into a breathless sob. “It’s the Poet … and she won’t speak to me!”

I followed her gaze back down the narrow space. There was a woman sitting on a stool about a dozen feet away. She sat perfectly still, facing away from us. Her back was ramrod stiff, and her whole body looked tense, ready to spring.

She was wearing a hood. It was a black leather fetish hood, and it covered almost her entire head, leaving just her eyes, mouth, and jaw visible. A spill of dark brown hair cascaded out from beneath the back of the hood, falling over the collar of a gray, paint-spattered peacoat. I could see her face in profile. Her pale lips trembled with suppressed energy, and her bright blue eyes—framed in cut-out ovals—quivered as she looked pointedly away.

“Sharon said she wore a mask,” Sabine gasped, her voice harsh and breathy. “That’s why she sent me here—so I could find her! But she won’t say a word!”

Unleashing a sudden burst of anger, Sabine turned back toward the masked woman. “Fucking say something! Fucking talk to me!”

The Poet remained still. I thought I could see her eyes widen at Sabine’s outburst.

A hand grabbed my arm and jerked me back. My foot slipped on a loose photograph, and I almost fell to the floor. “It’s time for you to go,” Cob Gilles growled. He was drunk and unsteady, but that didn’t diminish the force of his hand, or his words, as he pulled me toward the front door. He launched me in that direction with an abrupt shove, then went after Sabine.

“You better fucking leave her alone!” he yelled. “She’s my angel—my angel!—and she’s been through enough shit without some crazy bitch yelling at her!”

He grabbed Sabine’s coat and pulled her back, but unlike me, Sabine did fall. The photographer didn’t wait for her to regain her feet. He just kept pulling, dragging her across the hardwood floor. Sabine kicked out, knocking stacks of books across the floor and setting one bookcase tottering precariously. Finally, one of her flailing arms struck Cob Gilles’s shin, and he lost his grip on her coat.