The Glasses

The following events do not assert that the glasses belonging to Mx. Mulcahy are the first glasses to move on their own; in fact, the preponderance of data points, over centuries of glasses’ existence, indicates that they are not.

 

This is why glasses are frequently not where the owner of the glasses remembered them last. “I thought I put them down on the bathroom counter,” the glasses’ person will fret. But finding the glasses on the kitchen table or in the pocket of a robe will allay their concerns. Glasses, though playful and curious creatures, are also loyal. Rarely will they stray out of the territory they think of as home. Unless, of course, they’re adventuring on the head of their person.

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However, when Con tripped on the pile of shoes and the glasses went flying off, this was not a desirable adventure. It did not resemble joining the circus as much as the glasses had always dreamed. The glasses had puzzled over the persistence of a dream in which they soared through the air on Con’s ears. Con had never seemed likely to join the circus, nor did a trapeze class seem a probable activity, but the glasses still imagined this weightless existence every time they were in a swiftly accelerating elevator.

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But this was not like that.

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They knocked into the coat rack, where a few unseasonal coats, topped with light fall jackets, graciously cushioned the blow. As they fell against the coat rack’s legs, one of their temples was knocked into the closed position, and they tumbled down, landing sideways. Dust had accumulated underneath the coat rack, but fortunately, the glasses had no allergies.

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Their lenses were pointed away from the kerfuffle audible to them in the hallway. Particularly tuned to the sound of Con’s voice, they heard their person say “I can’t see,” and experienced a pang for the unwilling dereliction of their duty. When Con called out “my glasses,” they quivered at the sound of their name. But they didn’t move, not even with the discomfort of their position. Hope remained that they would be found, and one of the humans could be looking in their direction at that very moment in an attempt to locate them.

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After faithfully showing the world to your person—all the other human faces, trees, books, sunsets, paintings, street signs, oncoming cars, television shows, words typed into a Pages document, the landscape running alongside the car window, memes, dogs on promenade, NY Times headlines, watches, elevator buttons, light on water, shoe laces, and so on—the second-most important tenet among glasseskind is not to be caught moving. Humans are fragile creatures, glasses are taught; the truth that glasses are sentient and mobile would be too much for them. Humans want to believe they’re seeing everything on their own. Even when they’re so bad at actually seeing.

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This truth was on evidence for the next few minutes, as the humans lumbered up and down the hallway looking, to no avail. No one parted the unseasonal coats to let the light glint down to the baseboards. Along the floor under the shadow of the adjacent bookshelf, the glasses saw some kind of holiday card ensconced, covered in a snowing of dust.

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Oh dear, the glasses thought. This doesn’t bode well.

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Brief hope swelled when one of the humans looked under the bookshelf and removed the holiday card. But after a moment, he simply replaced it, and didn’t look under the coat rack.

 

Drat, thought the glasses.

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But concern didn’t truly descend until the glasses overheard a plan formulating for Con to leave without them. This, they knew, would be disastrous for them both. Con could not possibly see well enough to make it home without them. The glasses, meanwhile, ran the risk of being replaced, after they had been so faithful. After they had almost never moved, except when no one was home, and they had wanted to pass the day reading a book. Con’s other glasses, the ones with the large plastic frames, (may they rest in peace) were always gallivanting about. Dangerous behavior, the black glasses knew, even before the plastic frames’ unfortunate end. The couch is not a safe place for glasses to go roving, no matter how inviting it may look. The glasses knew that.

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Con was lamenting that the world was Rothko, which the glasses took at the face-value of its emotionality despite personally being a great fan of Rothko’s work. Drastic measures might be necessary. Quietly, they let themselves close onto the temple that lay on the floor. It was a relief to be folded. If they inched forward into the light at the base of the coatrack, someone would be sure to see them. But as they started to enact their plan with careful, mincing tiptoes, they became aware that Con was already on their way out, flanked by two friends. Their voice took on the echo of the hallway.

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In panic, the glasses froze at the lip of the coatrack shade. Emerging into any spot that would be noticeable, at this late juncture, would also raise the question of why they hadn’t been spotted with such a (purportedly) thorough search. As they dithered, the door rang closed with a dreadful finality.

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Devastation fell fast. To be separated from their own sweet person was the worst fate they could imagine. Con could not make it in the world without them. And they could not make it in the world without Con. They sat in the shadow of the unseasonal coats and wanted to cry, being intimately familiar with the act of crying and its potential for therapeutic catharsis. But they did not cry. Glasses don’t have tear ducts; that would be absurd.

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Why had they trusted the humans to find them? They could have crept to the base of the bookcase to be discovered, and would be homeward-bound on Con’s ears right now.

But clearly, they would need to take matters into their own temples. A young man and woman were conversing about Con in the hallway’s crossroads, but their area was temporarily empty. Quickly, they scuttled onto the neighboring shoe pile and dropped into the nearest sneaker. This, they imagined, would increase their likelihood of being found, without making it suspicious that they hadn’t been discovered already.

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They peered over the pillowy edge of their high-top of residence. Left alone, the young man wavered in indecisive space. Then he moved, swiftly, towards the shoe pile, his hand reaching down--

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I will be found! the glasses thought. Salvation approaches!

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And then Oh no, the young man grabbed up one in the pair of sneakers next to the glasses, sticking his socked foot (the sock had a hole, the glasses observed in passing) into a well-worn pair of Converse.

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I’m right here! Hello! Your friend’s glasses! they wanted to yell, but of course, glasses do not have mouths.

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They tried a miniscule shift, hoping the light would catch in their lenses or silver rims in his peripheral vision. But oblivious, he stood, flung open the door, and charged into the stairwell. Again, the slam of the door.

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Drat, thought the glasses.

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The hallway was clear, so they risked lifting themselves out of the shoe to make a survey of the terrain. A realization: were they occupying one in a pair of red Reebok high tops?

 

They were.

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Now, there was no way to be certain that these red Reebok high tops were the same ones that Jessie owned—that minx who had broken Con’s heart—but undoubtedly, Jessie had been wearing similar shoes when the glasses spotted her arriving. And, as the glasses looked with mounting discomfort over the rest of the shoe pile, they did not see another pair of red high tops to suggest that there was a chance these belonged to someone else and in that case PANIC!!! Jessie was the last person by whom the glasses wanted to be discovered. She was, after all, a noted glasses killer. Whether it had been a murder of forethought or negligent glasses-slaughter, the result was the same. The most generous explanation implied carelessness on Jessie’s part, but with that level of inattention, who could say she wouldn’t ram her feet into her sneakers in a second act of glassescide? And if she did find them, she would recognize them as Con’s, and what vengeance might she then enact? Oh, unsafe! Unsafe! The glasses leapt from the sneaker and clattered, quivering, against the back wall.

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The sense of their own peril hemmed them in. Jessie stalked these few, limited rooms. There was no Con to protect them. They could hardly trust a stranger to find them and turn them over to the appropriate authorities (ie., Theo). After all, a squadron of humans had not located them within the confined space of half-a-hallway.

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They needed to get out of there. They were going to have to find Con themselves.