Bad Glass

When was the last time I’d taken the antibiotics? I felt a rush of panic and immediately grabbed for my backpack. I found Mama Cass’s pills and swallowed a double dose. Then I started to unwrap the dirty gauze. I took it slow, my fingers shaking. I was afraid of what I might find.

What I found, however, was a pleasant surprise. The infection was gone. Completely gone. Underneath the bandage, which was stained a disgusting phlegmy yellow, there was nothing but a hardened scab. The surrounding skin was pale white, without even a hint of red. And even the gamy, rotten smell was gone.

I held up the hand, and Danny nodded his approval.

“And how’s he doing?” Danny asked, turning his attention to Floyd. I turned toward the bed, and, as if feeling the weight of our eyes, Floyd let out a pathetic groan and rolled toward the window. His hand crept up and covered his eyes. “Did our boy have a rough night?”

“Yeah. He overdid it on the oxycodone.”

“Fucking lightweight,” Danny said with a smile. The smile didn’t last long. He turned back toward me, and his expression collapsed into serious lines. “And what about Taylor?” he asked, his voice hushed, concerned. “She’s usually here this early. I brought her some breakfast.”

I shrugged, dejected. “I don’t know. Yesterday … she just ran away from me. We found Weasel—” I didn’t want to describe it. I didn’t want to tell Danny about the fingers in the floor. “It’s just … Weasel’s gone, and she freaked out. She ran away. And I don’t know where she went.”

“Did you try her parents’ house?”

“What?”

“Did you try her parents’ house?” he repeated, more slowly this time, as if my incomprehension were the result of poor enunciation. “She goes there a lot. She visits them almost every morning.”

“Her parents are here? In Spokane?” I was shocked. This information … it seemed ridiculous to me, utterly strange and unlikely.

Danny nodded, his eyes suddenly going wide. “I guess she doesn’t talk about them too much, but I assumed …” He paused. “I’m just surprised she didn’t tell you. She likes you, man. She likes you a lot.”

What had she told me about her parents? I tried to remember.

She’d said that they had disappeared. She’d said that they were gone.

“Where do they live?” I asked. “How do I get there?”

Danny watched me for a second. He was wearing an expression of concern, and for a moment I didn’t think he was going to talk. Why? Is it something he sees? I wondered. Something written across my face? Something that scares him?

Then Danny pulled out a small pad of paper and started drawing me a map.

It was gray out on the streets—still early morning, but you really couldn’t tell. Under that low, gray ceiling, it could have been morning, noon, or almost night. The clouds could have been ready to spit out rain or snow or just break apart and let the sun shine in.

It was waiting-room weather. Purgatory weather.

I left Danny behind with Floyd and my computer. Charlie had shown him how to transfer outgoing information onto his thumb drive, and he agreed to upload my latest post. He wasn’t too happy about it, though. He had a couple of hours away from the courthouse and didn’t want to spend them baby-sitting Floyd and mucking around with my computer. He wanted to go with me to find Taylor. He wanted to make sure she was okay.

But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want him coming along.

And I couldn’t even give him a valid reason why. I just told him no. Sorry—really, I’m sorry—but no.

Danny’s map took me east on Mission, then south toward I-90. I stayed off the main road as I rounded the university, instead crossing to the residential street one block to the east. I probably didn’t need to bother. There wasn’t a soul around. The only sound in the still air was the rasp of my breath and the sharp echoes of my footsteps.

I took pictures of the abandoned houses as I walked. Most still looked pretty good—it hadn’t been that long, after all—but they all showed signs of neglect and abuse. In the first month after the evacuation, the yards had sprouted out of control, crowding sidewalks and invading lawns, and then they’d died. The streets and sidewalks were plastered with wet leaves, and there were broken windows up and down the street. A couple of the front doors hung wide open.

I approached one of the houses and took a picture of its shattered door; there was a splintered dent to the left of the knob where a boot had staved it in. Looters, scavenging for food or money, or maybe just looking for a warm place to stay. Since that act of violence—maybe a month ago, maybe more—the world had slowly started to make its way into the house. I crouched just outside the door and took pictures of the entryway. Dead leaves and dirt littered a nice Persian rug. Lumps of wet, shapeless paper—once-glossy magazines, a stamped handwritten letter—adhered to the tiled floor. There was a whiff of mold in the air and hard-water stains on the dingy beige walls.