Bad Glass (16 page)

I nodded. I didn’t really feel any better about the situation, but I couldn’t argue with her, and I couldn’t change her feelings. Her words made sense, whereas my hurt feelings did not.

Perhaps sensing this, she leaned forward, hesitated for a moment, and gave my hand a tentative caress.

“How about this,” she said. She was perched right in front of me, and I couldn’t avoid meeting her eyes; they were deep, dark, and filled with honest emotion. “We forget about this for a while, okay? We see if you fit in here. We see if there’s something—” She halted abruptly and looked away, blushing slightly. The awkward motion caught me by surprise.

And how does that sentence end?
I wondered, watching her shift uncomfortably in her chair.
We see if there’s something … between the two of us?
Was she acknowledging—in that broken sentence, in that blush—the possibility of a relationship?

And just like that, my hurt feelings were gone, swept away with those unspoken words.

She continued: “If after a week you still don’t want Weasel here, we’ll figure something out. Okay? Does that work for you?”

“Okay,” I said, and I smiled. It was a genuine smile.

“Good. I’m glad that’s settled. Maybe now you can stop your pouting.”

Taylor grabbed a milk crate from the stack against the wall and started packing up Weasel’s things. There was a pile of black-and-white composition books near the head of the futon, and she took care tucking them into the bottom of the crate.

“What did he help you with?” I asked as I watched her work. “You said he helped you when the city went crazy. What did he do?”

Taylor paused for a moment, frozen over a pile of clothing. She stared into the milk crate for a couple of seconds, lost in thought, then resumed her chore, gathering up dirty flannels, wool socks, and a pair of ratty jeans. “My parents,” she said. Her voice was low. When she’d been placating me earlier, her voice had been strong, cajoling. Now it was breathy and weak, like the wind had started to leak from her lungs. “Back in September, my parents … something happened. They were just … gone. Weasel helped me cope. He kept me fed. He kept me from giving in to despair.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, suddenly realizing just how little I knew about her and her life. “Is it like Charlie’s parents? Maybe they’re still here somewhere?”

“No. Not like Charlie’s parents.” She shook her head, a hint of frustration coming into her voice. “My mom and dad … they’re just gone.
Gone
. And they aren’t coming back.”

I stood up, wanting to comfort her, wanting to put my arms around her and lend her some of my strength, but she abruptly turned and put the milk crate between us. “I’ve dealt with it,” she said, her voice suddenly hard. “It’s in the past, and it’s not something I want to talk about.”

I nodded.

The moment was gone. The vulnerable, caring Taylor had disappeared, chased away by my stupid questions.

I could tell I wasn’t getting the whole story—about her, about her parents—but I didn’t want to push her any harder.

“You should move your stuff up here. Get yourself settled in,” she said. “You’ve cluttered up the living room long enough.” And with that, she turned and left, taking Weasel’s belongings with her.

After moving my stuff up to the new room, I sat down at the sewing table and started to change the dressing on my hand. The wounds on my palm had reopened a couple of times during the day, and the gauze was tacky with drying blood and pus. I hissed as I pulled it away from the skin, a sharp stab of pain radiating up my forearm.

“Shit, man. Let me help you with that.”

I turned and found Floyd standing in the open doorway. He had a guitar case dangling from his hand, an old, well-used case covered in stickers and hand-drawn graffiti. The words
Pretty Boy
were drawn across the front in bright pink nail polish. He propped the case against the wall and came over to the table, taking a seat next to the sewing machine.

He lifted my hand and started studying my palm. There was a
thin trickle of blood seeping from the largest puncture. “Fuck, I can’t deal with blood,” he muttered, turning my hand toward the sunlit window. His face was going pale, but he didn’t look away.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I can clean the gore and blood. Just help me wrap it up when I’m done, okay?”

Floyd stood up and walked over to the window. The window was in the wall over the futon, providing a view of the street out front. “I didn’t used to be such a pussy,” he said, shaking his head. “Fuck, I’ve laughed off shit worse than that.” He pointed toward my hand. “When I was living in Santa Cruz, I wiped out jumping off the side of a parking garage, fell ten feet onto a concrete divider. I broke my ulna—my fucking
forearm
,” he said, seeing the question on my face. “A compound fracture. And I walked six blocks to my friend’s house, laughing the whole way. Granted, I was pretty fucking delirious, but I wasn’t a shrinking pussy about it.”

I poured rubbing alcohol onto some paper towels and began scrubbing my open palm. “What happened?” I asked, gritting my teeth against the chemical pain. “What changed?”

“My knee,” he said, reaching down and rapping his knuckles against his right kneecap. I remembered that gesture from my first night at the house; it seemed like an automatic motion, some type of unconscious reflex. “And I didn’t even see the blood that time. I was in a competition, and they had a medical staff—they put me right under when my knee exploded. The kicker is, it wasn’t even a spectacular wipeout! I just landed wrong, my weight coming down just a couple of degrees too far forward.”

Floyd let out a disgusted grunt, a low sound, like a growl, at the back of his throat. “And that was it. No more Pretty Boy Floyd. And now I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

When I finished cleaning my wounds, I found bright pink rings starting to form around the punctures. I ran my finger across the puckered flesh: the damaged skin felt hot to the touch.
It’s just bruised
, I told myself.
Just bruised flesh, flush with blood
.

“Help me wrap it up,” I said. I hid my wounds beneath a fresh
bandage, then nodded Floyd toward the roll of gauze. He wrapped my hand up tight, securing the dressing with a fresh strip of tape.

“Does it hurt?” Floyd asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It throbs. And my whole arm’s sore.”

Floyd went over to his guitar case and set it atop the futon. He opened it up, revealing a shiny red acoustic guitar. Unlike the case, the guitar looked like it was in pristine condition, its lacquered finish polished to an immaculate sheen. He lifted the instrument and began digging through a small compartment hidden beneath its neck. After a couple of seconds, he came up with a handful of picks and several prescription pill bottles. He studied the labels for a couple of seconds, then upended some pills onto his palm. He bounced them a couple of times in his loosely curled fist, his face screwed up like he was engaged in some inner debate, and then handed them over.

Four pills. Small green circles, light and insubstantial in my uninjured hand. “OC” etched on one side, “80” on the other.

“Oxycodone,” Floyd said. “They’ll help with the pain.”

“No shit, they’ll help with the pain.” I stared at the pills for a couple of seconds. I’d had oxy once, after oral surgery, and I remembered the fuzzy-headed warmth of the stuff. I’d lost three days under its sway, camped out in front of the television, barely able to flip the channels.

But there hadn’t been any pain.

“My knee still aches,” Floyd explained, “especially when it’s cold. And my doctor is … well, let’s just say he’s generous. He keeps me well stocked.”

I hesitated for a moment, staring down at the pills. Then I flexed my left hand. The pain was immediate, enough to make me wince. The way I saw it, I didn’t really have much of a choice: on the one hand, I had pain and discomfort; on the other—resting neatly on the other—I had fuzzy-headed oblivion. I grunted and tossed one of the pills to the back of my throat. It was bitter going down, a chalky floral taste.

It’s just a temporary thing
, I told myself, putting the other pills in my pocket.
Just until I’m healed
.

Floyd smiled. “Cheers,” he said, raising the pill bottle in a toast. And: “Down the hatch.” He bolted the rest of the bottle like it was a shot of whiskey.

I was pretty fucked up. After dinner, we smoked a shitload of pot, and on top of the oxycodone, it left me feeling numb, floating free from reality.

And that was a good place to be.

Here, in this place, I wasn’t feeling my hand. I wasn’t worrying about the shit I’d seen: the body in the ceiling, the face in the wall, the spider with the human finger. I wasn’t thinking about the soldier and his fall from the hospital window, the way his limp body had spun in the air, so eerie and silent. Instead, I was just sitting there, at peace, watching Taylor from across the backyard.

And despite the evening’s frigid cold, I felt warm. I felt comfortable. I felt good.

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.

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.

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: