Bad Glass

I didn’t know how to feel about the picture. Conflicted, I guess. Certainly, there was a warmth and comfort in it. This was the closest I’d ever come to Taylor, but reaching up and feeling her breast, it was also the moment that the line between us had been drawn. I could come this close, maybe, but not an inch closer. And looking back, it was proof that she had feelings for me, genuine feelings, just like the ones I had for her. No matter how damaged those feelings were, how damaged she was.

I saved the seven images to an empty folder, then created a new text document and put together my post. It was a very simple post, just html tags for each picture, one after another: dinner table, face between the walls, real spiders, spray-paint spiders, close-up of spider, and then, in closing, Weasel’s fingers. I considered including the picture of Danny and me but decided against it; even blurred and almost incomprehensible, it was too revealing.

My hands hovered over the keyboard for a couple of minutes as I considered captions. But what could I say, really? This is true, this is real, this is what the city is? It wouldn’t do any good. They would believe me or they wouldn’t. And I don’t think I really cared anymore.

I’d been in the city for just under a week now, but I was already having a hard time imagining the world outside its borders. Were there people out there, still going about their daily lives? Were they sitting in front of their computer screens, looking at my pictures and daydreaming about Spokane, about the strange and the forbidden and the horribly, horribly romantic? Were there college classes going on right now? Was there nightly television and pizza delivery? Was there bus service and traffic jams and drive-through windows? Was there a government out there, looking out for the public good?

And was there a physics? Was there a reality? Was there comfort and warmth and happiness?

I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell. It just didn’t seem real anymore.

I saved my work and shut down the computer. Then I curled up on the floor, rested my head on my backpack, and let the steady in and out of Floyd’s breath lull me to sleep.

My second post on the Spokane message board was the one that started attracting media attention. I’m not sure I would have launched it out into the world if I could have foreseen the response, or, more accurately, if I could have foreseen my reaction to the response.

When I first got into the city, of course, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Not for a moment. That was the whole point, after all: getting attention. Attention for me and my photography. But by the time I heard—by late November, when Danny brought me that first article from the Seattle Times—I doubt I would have bothered.

The person who had taken those photographs, who had composed that post, had in the intervening weeks become someone completely different. He’d packed up his cameras and gone to ground. And he just didn’t give a shit anymore.

The article was mostly speculation. It recounted the standard government lines—about environmental contamination and tainted topsoil, carcinogenic buildings and ongoing threats to the public’s health and well-being, and, as always, the need for further study—but it did ask some important questions.

What exactly is the threat, and why is cleanup taking so long?

Is the river tainted, and do the towns downstream need to worry?

Is it in the air?

And where exactly did this threat come from, and why is there such a need for secrecy and security?

In response, the article quoted an unnamed army general:

“First and foremost, we need to assure the people that there is absolutely no need for panic or distress. We have the Spokane situation well in hand. And while we can’t go into the specifics of the threat for fear of jeopardizing ongoing investigations and research, we can tell you that we know exactly what’s going on. We are still testing—under the purview of the EPA and with the assistance of some of the nation’s greatest environmental scientists—in order to ensure that every last molecule of contamination has been removed from this great city. The safety of the good people of Spokane is our primary concern, and we are not going to rush our efforts, not when we have the health and happiness of our citizens on the line. Only when every last one of our concerns has been addressed—only then, and not one second sooner—will we consider reopening the city to residents. In the meantime, the good people of Spokane have been well compensated for their inconvenience.”

When asked about a class-action lawsuit filed by cancer victims and surviving family members, the commander general replied, “No comment.”