≡ high windows ≡

On the other side of the park Mac glides into place, cocking the passenger door open between a light post and fire hydrant where Glasseye's path comes to an end.

He'd seen the guy at the Coney Isle, a black guy by himself, didn't want to talk to anybody, sitting upon the last seat of the bar, near a blank wall of some absolute refuge, flipping his napkin over and over. Glancing toward the bathroom door and shadowy backroom areas, where assassins held out, or worse. His ankles below ragged khakis, sockless in crushed penny loafers. Heavy wrinkles in the blue-dark skin displayed some sort of white caking, like sedimentary deposits of lime.

He's fixed between the post, hydrant, and door handle, reverse as a physical impossibility.

"Hey, little Buddy. I ain't worried about you cutting me. I swear."

Somewhere off a siren increases, and with an airy moan Glasseye morphs inside without seeming to bend at the waist, perching inflexibly on the bench seat. "All right," Mac chimes victoriously. "Now, let's just take it easy and cruise around."

Mac wheels behind the hospital, past the blown-clouds of steam and the mysterious furnace device, cuts across at the police station and through the civic center parking lot and on to the abandoned railroad station. Here begins territories of roam and building debris and inexplicable grass fields and the friend of a friend and the search for the pill that was effective and effective again and always effective.

"I was at the Fill-A-Bill across from the Honda-On-A-Stick, you know where I mean? the place where the Icee machine breaks down a lot. And this guy just flips me the bird in the parking lot.  I was just going to say hey, nothing else. And I never done anything to him. Not a thing. You know what I'm saying? You know how it feels when somebody don't even say hey back to you. I don't know, maybe it never happened to you, but it does to me. A lot, it seems like."

God, is what Mac thinks Glasseye says.

"Yeah. Just like that. I know. Gets you right there. It can happen and you go on and it happens again and you can go on and it happens again."

"You got anyplace I can take you?" Glasseye's head cocks over—at Sixth street? Is that where he wants to go?

Mac wheels around, and before he can even slow down the door flies open and Glasseye is out of the seat. Mac watches him roll log-style off the tar and gravel street across a grassy shoulder and into a ditch. By the time Mac throws it into park and jumps out he can barely see Glasseye up and running through a yard and past a dark house.

He shoots down the block and around, coming up the opposite way on South Seventh, but no Glasseye. He continues circling the area for half an hour or so.

"Hope he didn't break anything." Mac swings by the charity hospital ER; they can't give out information. It's a violation of patient rights to release information to anyone not specified. "That's OK, I don't even know his real name. Does that make it all right?" The guy, studying some textbook folded open, shakes his head, but indicates to Mac no story like that's come through lately.