Bad Glass Read Online Free

curious, is all, you being a newcomer to our fair city.”
    “Yeah?” I grunted, trying to sound calm and hard-boiled, despite my nerves. “And you’re the welcoming committee?”
    “Something like that.” His smile twitched with nervous energy. “There’s no electricity, no cable, and radio reception’s for shit here … I gotta make my own entertainment!” After a moment looking me up and down, he offered me his hand. “My name’s Wendell.”
    “Dean,” I said, grasping his sweaty palm.
    “You a photographer?” He smiled and nodded toward my backpack. “I saw you with your camera, snapping away like crazy.”
    I shrugged. “I take pictures. I’m not sure that makes me a photographer, though … just a student, really.” I gestured toward my backpack and the camera hidden inside. “For the time being, this is all just … play. An unrealized dream.”
    “Fuck, man.” He laughed, shaking his head. “That’s a dangerous game to play—coming
here
to take fucking snapshots.”
    Annoyed, I turned and grabbed my duffel bag, slinging it over my shoulder. I could feel the man—this dirty derelict—standing behind me, and I paused long enough to mutter, “Yeah, well, my father always said I didn’t have a lick of sense.” Then I started walking away.
    “Jesus
fucking
Christ, kid. I was just kidding. We’ve all got our reasons.” Wendell broke into a trot, trying to catch up to me. “See. See.
See
.” I turned and found him pointing, with both hands, to a wide, shit-eating smile. “All you kids, you’re all so fucking sensitive. You’d think I broke your favorite toy … corrupted all your motherfucking MP3s.”
    “Just tell me where I’m going,” I said.
    “Sure, man. Welcome wagon and all of that shit. It’d be my pleasure.” He once again pointed to that creepy theatrical smile. There were way too many teeth there. It made him look positively demented.
    As we started south on Monroe, Wendell pointed to our left. There was a thin sliver of green visible between the buildings. “Riverfront Park,” he said. “It’s not that big—just a little slip of green—but it’s nice. A nice place to watch the river. There was some type of famous carousel there once, before the evacuation. When the word came down, though, they just packed up all the wooden animals and left.” An odd look passed across his face. “There are other animals there now, in the park. Not-so-friendly animals.”
    “Like what?” I asked.
    Wendell shrugged. “Wild dogs, probably. I’ve heard people say wolves and bears.” After a moment of silence, he added in a lower voice, “And some talk about other things, too … animals you won’t find in any zoo.”
    I studied him for a moment, trying to read the blank look on his face, trying to figure out what
he
believed. “How long have you been here?” I asked. “In the city?”
    “I was here when the curtain came down. Government motherfuckers came in, and I never bothered to get out. No place to go.”
    “You should know, then … you can tell me what’s going on. Out there—” I nodded back over my shoulder, toward the outside world. “The stuff you hear … it doesn’t make much sense.”
    Wendell pulled to a stop. I turned to face him and found a bemused smile spread across his face, not the demented smile he’d flashed earlier, but something softer, more sympathetic. “If you’re looking for sense,” he said, “I can’t give it to you. Here, after a while, you stop looking for sense. I don’t know what you heard out there, in
America
”—the word tripped over his tongue, like it was part of some foreign language—“but in here, it’s just something you live with. Something in the background. There are viciousanimals in the park, so you don’t go there after dark. There’s a warehouse on the east side—it’s been on fire for three months straight. So you stay the hell away. And if you see people in the street, people who