Bad Glass

–Your pictures are pretty mundane, considering the reports we’ve been reading. Are the stories overblown? Have you seen anything strange?

–Cool! Post more!

–Please, intheimage, I don’t know if you’ll get this, but I was wondering if you’ve met someone named Travis Paulson in the city? He’s thirty-two years old, brown eyes, brown hair (though he usually wears it shaved bald). He lived in a house on W. Garland, up north. Here’s a picture of him, from about a year ago. [Where the picture should have been, there was nothing but a small red x. Charlie’s program had left the picture behind.] We haven’t heard from him since they closed the city, and his family is terrified. Please, please, please email me with anything.

There was more, but after that last message, I didn’t go on. I got the gist of the thread. There was healthy skepticism, doubt, and a lot of questions. But nothing damning. There was no derision or outright dismissal. And perhaps the most heartening thing here was the sheer number of replies and the number of eyeballs that had found my work. Over five thousand page views in the first twelve hours! That was good exposure. The thought of all of those people looking at my photographs got my heart racing.

Now I needed to figure out my next move.

Obviously, I had to post again, but what should I include? The spider with the human finger? The face in the wall? The underground tunnels? Should I continue to take it slow, or should I jump right into the strange heart of the city?

“I don’t have anything ready to go out today,” I said, “but I might have something tomorrow or the next day. A new post. More pictures. Will that work?” I looked up at Charlie, then across the table at Danny. Danny was smiling.

“Yeah,” Danny said. “I think we can make that work.”

“But not now,” Taylor said. She was standing at the camp stove, scraping eggs out of a sizzling pan. She cast me a significant look as she carried over a plate of eggs and toasted bread. “You’re having breakfast, Dean, and then we’re going out. We’ve got errands to run and people to see.”

My stomach growled at the sight and smell of food. I hadn’t had much appetite in the last couple of days. My stomach had been tied in knots of anxiety, confusion, and fear, not to mention the nausea caused by my wounds and infection. But after reading those replies, I felt suddenly ravenous.

I was headed in the right direction, it seemed, and that did a lot to allay my fears.

I downed my antibiotics with my last swallow of coffee. I didn’t bother with the Vicodin or oxycodone. My hand was feeling pretty good. Hell, I was feeling pretty good. Then Taylor and I hit the streets.

It was surprisingly warm out, and almost all the snow had melted from the ground. The only remaining patches of white were hidden away in the shadows: circles around the trunks of trees, small drifts piled against houses. I watched Taylor as she walked beside me. She wasn’t watching the pavement in front of her feet. Instead, she was looking far into the distance. It made her look strong. She wasn’t squinting despite the bright sun overhead. Her skin was perfectly smooth, a beautiful tea-soaked ceramic. I wanted to touch her, to run my thumb across her smooth cheek. But I could imagine her pulling away in horror, recoiling from my touch, and the thought of that reaction was enough to hold me back. I didn’t want to cause her any type of distress.

She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, a perplexed smile appearing on her lips. “You’re kinda freaking me out here, Dean.”

“I’m just thinking about taking your picture,” I said. “I’m thinking about capturing the way the sun illuminates your skin and sets your eyes on fire. I’m thinking about the lens I’d use, the framing I’d try to get, the stuff I’d keep in the background.”

We continued to walk, and I continued to study her face.

When I didn’t move to unholster my camera, Taylor let out a warm laugh and shook her head. “Okay, Dean. Just keep thinking about that photograph.”

“Always.”

As we continued downtown, she kept glancing my way, a self-conscious smile on her lips. I watched as her cheeks blushed a gentle shade of red—a rosy, pinkish red—and my chest filled with warmth. There was a smile on my lips. It felt goofy—big and unrestrained—but I couldn’t dial it down. It had taken over my entire face and wouldn’t let go.

Looking back now, this was by far my happiest time in Spokane. I was with Taylor, and I’d managed to make her happy; maybe I made her feel beautiful and loved.

And maybe, for a time, she made me feel the same.

“Let me do the talking,” Taylor said as we turned south on Monroe. “These guys are all right, but they can be pretty intense. They’re territorial and very touchy.”