When she reached the chest of drawers under the empty TV nook, she idly pulled open the top drawer and her breath hitched in surprise. She stood still for a moment, transfixed by whatever she’d found inside.
“What is it?” I asked. And, after a moment of silence: “Taylor?”
She shook her head. I stood up and moved to her side, but her hand quickly darted into the drawer, pulling back whatever it was before I could get a good look. It looked like a piece of paper, but she quickly turned away, blocking it from view. Her hand disappeared into her pocket, and when she turned back, the piece of paper was gone. Her face was set, secretive and angry.
“What is it?” I repeated.
“It’s mine,” she said gruffly. “It’s mine.”
Then she shouldered me aside and headed toward the door.
Dinner was good. Terry served us hamburgers—fresh meat on home-baked bread, crisp lettuce, and fragrant cheese—and a selection of grilled vegetables, including squash, zucchini, carrots, and tiny potatoes. I don’t know if he grew the vegetables himself or if he’d found them somewhere in the city. Despite his plans, despite his book, I hadn’t seen any crops growing up here in the Homestead. Maybe he got them from Mama Cass.
Before we ate, he produced bottles of microbrew beer from an ice-filled cooler and toasted the city mockingly. “To this pile of crap at the end of the world,” he said, “and to my well-deserved escape.” But his tone wasn’t joyous.
Taylor seemed distant throughout dinner. When she wasn’t working at her food, she kept her jaw clenched, and she looked angry. It was frustrating. Up in the tower, I’d managed to help her drop one of her burdens, I think. But in that drawer she’d picked up another.
And this one seemed heavier, something she didn’t want to share.
She hugged Terry for a long time before we parted. There were no tears, but I heard her voice crack as she said good-bye. Terry gave her a nod and a smile, and then we left.
When we reached the stairwell, I cast a glance back over my shoulder. Terry was standing in the middle of the roof, once again staring up at the overcast sky.
That was the last I saw of him.
Taylor didn’t look back.
We found a new poem on the way home. Taylor wasn’t speaking to me then. Once again, a distance had formed between us, a gulf as wide as the city. And she was standing alone on the other shore.
It was frustrating.
One step forward, twelve steps back.
The poem was on Riverside Avenue, painted on the side wall of an apartment building. There was a basketball hoop bolted next to the ten-foot-tall block of text, and a half-court boundary filled the space between the buildings. The poem was drawn in bright red paint—shiny acrylic—and it couldn’t have been more than an hour old. The paint was still wet and dripping, and the smell of aerosol still hung in the air.
I glanced around, thinking I might catch the Poet somewhere nearby. But the block was deserted.
Taylor didn’t even stop to read the poem. When I looked back down, she was already half a block away.
19.1
Photograph. October 24, 09:53 A.M. Green lines:
It is an abstract image. A close-up without sense or meaning.
There is a mesh of bright green light in the middle of the frame, stretching left to right—and right to left—at very shallow angles. The lines are close together, on the same horizontal plane—hundreds of lines of light, forming a flat, tabletop surface. The lines hit mirrors on either side of the image; reflections flee at oblique angles, stretching up and out, toward the top of the frame.
The green is a bright electric green, and the lines are as sharp as razors, cutting into the shadow-gray background, glowing like radium in the night.
Light and line. Angle and vector. Form without context.
19.2
I slept in my own room that night.
The house around me was quiet, and as I lay there, waiting for sleep to come, I wondered what everyone else was doing. Floyd and Charlie, Sabine and Taylor—alone in their rooms (or so I assumed), silent, immersed in the dark. Were they dwelling on the past, scared and alone? Were they frustrated, like me? Were they plotting plans, getting ready to run?
Or were they just sleeping, lost to the world?
Finally, I took three more Vicodins to help me fall asleep. I was going through the pills like candy now—I recognized that—and they weren’t really making me feel any better. They were helping me sleep, yeah, and during the day they helped me relax for an hour or two, preventing me from thinking all those deep and horrible thoughts. But it was only temporary. And the relief I got each time was shrinking, like a stream drying up in the midsummer sun.
And that stream was getting shallow.
But what really scared me was the thought of what I’d have to do next, when I ran out again. What would Mama Cass make me do? What errands would she have me run? It wasn’t going to stay easy. I was certain of that.
As I drifted off to sleep, drugged and floating, I resolved to quit. There were other ways—better ways—to cope with stress and confusion. I just had to find them. I just had to deal.
Unfortunately, nothing’s ever as easy as it seems when you’re high and drifting toward sleep. I should have known that.
Charlie woke me up with a hand on my shoulder. “I know where he is. I know where he went.”
I was in the middle of a dream when he woke me up, and I pulled away from his hand with a start, lost for a moment in my surroundings. I looked up from my pillow and saw Charlie smiling down at me. I was still lost.
“What’s going on?” I managed, clearing phlegm from my throat. “What happened?” And why did he look so happy?
“I got an email. I think it’s from my dad, or my mom, maybe—I couldn’t trace its source. But it’s Devon. I know where he is. I know where we need to go!”
I tried to sit up, but Charlie pushed his notebook computer forward, and I had to roll onto my side to get a good look at the screen. There was an image open on his desktop, a surprisingly high-quality image, still sharp even though it had been zoomed in to fill up the entire window. It was a street view: Devon, glancing over his shoulder, cautiously scanning the street behind him as he pulled open the thick glass door of an office building. “I know where that is. See that planter?” Charlie pointed to a knee-high bowl on the left edge of the photo. The concrete bowl was filled with dead flowers. “I recognize it. That’s a research building, south of I-90, near the hospital.”
I looked up to find Charlie’s eyes searching my face expectantly. His smile was still there. “We can do this, Dean,” he said. “We can find out what’s going on. The radio… my parents…” When he started talking about his parents, his voice got hushed, imploring and desperate. “We can find them. We can find everything!”
“What’s going on here?”
Surprised, Charlie and I both looked up toward the door. Floyd was standing there, resting his shoulder against the doorjamb. His hands were busy lighting up a tightly rolled joint. “Is this when you guys hold all of the important roommate meetings? The crack of dawn? Am I missing out? Are we getting TiVo?”