She leaned forward and patted my knee. The annoyance was gone from her eyes, and now there was nothing but sympathy and understanding. “I’m not operating under any illusions here, Dean. I’m no saint. But you might as well face that truth yourself. You’re invested in the status quo, just like me. You’re invested in the city staying strange. So you can take your pictures. So you can explore and report. And the reason you’re here, the reason you came here, of your own free will, is because you’d rather be here, inside this weirdness, than anywhere else in the world.”
I leaned back in my chair and looked away. I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “I’m still getting my feet wet,” I said lamely. “I’m still waiting for the big picture.”
Sharon let out a laugh. It was a loud, barking laugh, and it surprised me. “Big picture? You’re waiting for the big picture? Well, let me tell you, Dean, from where you’re standing, you won’t see a thing.” She smiled and gave me a wink. “From where you’re standing, you won’t be able to see the forest for the forest fire.”
She waited for me to respond. When I didn’t, she gave me a nod and went back to work on my wounds.
Her words struck hard. They were a sucker punch to the gut, a big, strong jolt of truth.
And it is the truth, I realized. That’s why all of those people out there in the restaurant gave me those withering looks. I came to the city to take pictures, while they scratch and scrape just to survive. I’m exploiting their hardship. I’m turning it into a product, something to study—dispassionately—and consume.
I could have lied to myself right then and convinced myself that I did have noble intentions, that I was looking for the truth, trying to show the world what was going on inside the military’s oppressive media blackout. But that wasn’t the truth. Carrying my camera, street to street, day to day, I’d never even thought about those things.
I just wanted people to see my pictures. I wanted them to be amazed. By me. By my skill. I wanted to save myself from a mundane future.
Not exactly a noble endeavor.
I was lost in thought when Sharon finished with the bandage. After a vague, shapeless length of time, I looked up and found her leaning back on the edge of her desk, studying me with cool, sympathetic eyes.
“Don’t worry about it, Dean,” she said. “Whatever’s happening here, it’s not the real world. We all just have to do what we do and hope there’s no judgment in the end.”
“If it’s not the real world, then what is it?” I asked, my voice high, almost pleading. “What the fuck’s going on?”
She shook her head. “If you’re suggesting I might have some real knowledge, I don’t. If, on the other hand, you’re asking me what I think… well, I think we’re all going insane. I think there’s some previously unknown agent at work on our minds—something synthetic, maybe, or some naturally occurring ergot. And what we’re seeing, what we’re experiencing, it’s all just the ravings of a city gone mad.”
“But my pictures… all the shared experiences…”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have all the answers,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “It’s just what I think, what I feel.”
I nodded, preoccupied. I was considering her suggestion.
Could an insane mind grasp its own insanity? And if not, what would a city full of insane minds look like? Would they share delusions? Would they create their own scattershot mythology?
“Well, one thing’s for certain,” Sharon said, offering me a gentle smile, “you’re not going to find any answers sitting there with that confused look on your face. It’s time to get moving, Dean. My errand’s not going to run itself.”
I took Sabine with me on the delivery. That was Mama Cass’s final request before she pushed me out the door. It’s important, she said, for Sabine.
Taylor was there when I swung by the house—I could hear her voice up on the second floor—but I managed to grab Sabine and get out without attracting her attention. Certainly, I wanted to see her, to set things straight, but I figured that this was not the right time. Not while I was out running errands for Mama Cass. And besides, my own feelings remained ambivalent. I wanted to be close to her, but she kept pushing me away—both literally and figuratively—and that was driving me nuts.
I needed more time. I needed time to figure out what she wanted from me… and what I wanted from her.
It was nearly six o’clock when Sabine and I hit the streets, and the last traces of sunlight had already fled the sky. The moon and the stars were hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, and again I was struck by how unnatural the darkness seemed.
Cities were never supposed to get this dark. That was their purpose, right? To keep the darkness at bay.
Both Sabine and I had flashlights, and as we walked back toward the river, we sent twin beams racing across the pavement ahead. Objects emerged from the darkness like strange alien fish swimming up from the depths of a deep, dark sea: ordinary items, cutting sharp shapes across our wavering circles of light—cars, mailboxes, trash cans—made alien in their stark isolation. I played my light across a snow-shrouded yard and found a ten-speed bike lodged up in the branches of an apple tree.
“What did Sharon say?” Sabine asked. “What does she want me to do?”
“I don’t know. She gave me a package and asked me to deliver it to St. James Tower on Maple Street.”
“That’s near Homestead territory.”
She was quiet for a moment. I think she was waiting for me to respond, to react, but I didn’t know the Homestead, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. Was she expecting fear, maybe, or amusement, or annoyance? The Homestead was some sort of commune, I gathered—Weasel had mentioned it during his quick prelarceny tour—but that was about all I knew.
“Maybe Taylor should have come,” Sabine continued. “She’s the Homestead expert. She worked with them for quite a while.”
I nodded but didn’t say a word. Sabine was probing, pushing buttons, trying to figure out what was going on between Taylor and me. But that was my personal business, and I didn’t feel much in the mood to share.
After crossing the bridge, I let Sabine take the lead. She knew the city well and didn’t hesitate as we moved from one street to the next, first heading south, then west.
The buildings grew in height the farther we got from the river. Here, on this side of the water, there were actual signs of life scattered across the cityscape. Laughter came from a tower to our east, followed by dueling jovial voices. I could see dim flickering lights in a couple of the windows above our heads, and the tinny sound of a portable stereo echoed down, losing its coherence and becoming a monotonous whisper inside the vast canyonlike street. A loud, jangling crash sounded in the distance, followed by a muted yell—angry and confrontational.
Suddenly, Sabine broke into a trot. She ran halfway up the block, her flashlight bobbing up and down in the darkness. Then she pulled to a stop on a vacant stretch of sidewalk.
“Here, check this out,” she said when I finally caught up. I couldn’t see her face behind the flashlight’s glare, but I could hear the smile in her voice. She raised the flashlight beam from the sidewalk, revealing words spray-painted across a concrete wall.