The Book (11 page)

The only information that Holden had to go off of was what Winston had fed him that morning. Any fear that gathered in his chest and moved his legs, fear that caused his heart to dash with dread, was born from the sense that they were in danger. Holden felt that the information he was holding, including the bags of pages in the van, were extremely important and hauntingly dangerous. If what Winston said was correct, he couldn’t assume he was safe. There were layers here. Layers of danger, where one element could be more dangerous than another and he was choosing, rather foolishly, to walk further into it once again. Willingly. By returning to the bar, he risked. By taking Marion and the garbage bags, he risked. And now, by going into her apartment, he risked.
But wasn’t Marion his responsibility?
She was innocent in this.
He
ripped the page off the wall;
he
learned the truth;
he
sought out the museum exhibit, the antique dealer and eventually Winston; she was innocent in this and he couldn’t allow her to suffer over his lust for the truth. He wouldn’t allow her to be harmed over his need for answers to questions that should have been left alone. The least he could do for ruining her life was attempt to retrieve her diary.

Thankfully, his fear was overpowering and it often forced him to think creatively. He assumed that, by entering her building as a common worker, someone with a job to do, he wouldn’t be bothered. What kind of guy would carry an enormous ladder into a building when he needed to look inconsequential or would need a quick getaway? He hoped that this attitude would give him looks of disregard if anyone involved with The Book were waiting for her to come home. Walking around with a badge of blamelessness was always a safer route.

As he entered her building, climbed the quiet stairs to her floor and walked down the empty hallway to her apartment, his mind began its cynical re-evaluation.
When he pulled up to The Library, hadn’t one of the regulars been yanking on the door?
Maybe it had been the same guy later, just searching for a drink to drown his Sunday sorrows.
What if all this had been the ravings of a senile old man? What if they were fine? What if a lot of people were aware of the edits in The Book?
Holden considered that maybe there had been a clear explanation online and if he had only taken a moment to review his curiosities on the internet, he would have found that they were perfectly safe. That this was a government sanctioned, socially accepted detail that he had stumbled onto and overreacted about; and some elderly man’s conspiracy theory made him yank Marion out of the business she had destroyed over some perplexing anxiety. It could have all been for nothing.

This attitude sustained Holden and strengthened him as he reached for her keys and drew close to the door to her apartment.

One of the interesting details about Marion’s building was that there were short, rectangular windows above each door that could be propped open a few inches to allow air to circulate. At times, it made the hallways stink of many different scents that should never circulate, but it remained an interesting architectural detail and Marion, it seemed, was one of the few people that took advantage of the window. It was by that small detail, that Holden was saved.

As he neared the door with the ladder balanced evenly on his shoulder, he stopped. There were noises. Faint, suspicious noises that could have been anything. If the window above her door had been closed, Holden would have ignored the noises and unlocked the deadbolt. With it open, he could tell that they were coming from her apartment. There was a scratching. A shuffling. Then footsteps followed by the cracking sound of a plastic bag being whipped open in hollow, suspicious air.

There were people inside her apartment and he was standing at the door, holding her keys. Holden quickly realized how foolish and dangerous it had been to go into that building. To think, for even a moment, that he was safe enough to risk entering her apartment. He holstered the keys and walked silently back to the staircase, being careful not to knock the walls with the ladder. He didn’t look back, didn’t act out of the ordinary and didn’t rush. He calmly returned to the lower level and exited the building, as if nothing had happened. Winston had been right. Marion’s simple act of searching The Book to confirm the writing on the pages from her walls had launched a chain of events that caused men to conceal themselves inside her apartment and search through her stuff. It made him appreciate how right he was to race back and rescue her, despite the improbability. If he hadn’t, she may have already been inside one of those bags that had been whipped frivolously open.

Holden could see through the rain and passing cars that Marion was sitting calmly in the front seat. Her eyes were closed and her hands were pressed together, as if she were praying. And he was right. She had been praying. In fact, it was the most intense time with God she had ever experience. But once she heard him reattaching the ladder to the roof, Marion swung her hands to the sides of the vinyl seat and gripped tight, staring intensely at the driver’s side window. He had come back quickly and she was certain of the reason – Holden had found her diary on the bedside table without a problem. When he opened the door looking frightened, his hair and shirt soaked in the rain, and tossed his jacket to her saying, “Cover up your face,” Marion guessed she was wrong.

Holden started the car and put it in reverse, waiting to move until she was completely covered. “What am I doing Holden? Why do I have to hide?”

“There are men in your apartment and, more than likely, they’ll review the traffic cameras out here at some point. We cannot have them trace you back to me because…right now I think my apartment is the only place we can go.”

Marion agreed with a frightened nod and pulled Holden’s thick work jacket over her head, all confidence, all strong self-confident sprit within her, stripped away. Holden couldn’t believe, as he drove calmly out of the parking lot and in the direction of Ashland Avenue, (
Home again, home again. Jiggety Jig
) that the actions of only a handful of hours could have altered their lives so dramatically. With life changing so fast, he was almost unable to imagine tomorrow or the next day or a week in the future. Marion couldn’t stay in his apartment without eventually being linked to him. And how long could Holden go before they, the men with the plastic bags, started combing secretively through
his
apartment. His small story, his small life, had become so suddenly immense.

And as Holden drove his van through the dismal, dreary street, he felt as if a wide, effervescent green light was radiating from his van, pulsing a warning in the rain to those who would be looking.

Alert: those within the green light know the truth.

Here’s where you can find them.

* * * * *

011-25602

A thin needle of pain bore its way into Holden’s neck, stirring him from dreamless sleep. Without opening his eyes, he pushed himself to a sitting position and hung his head over his knees. Normally his neck and back accepted the discomfort of the couch, but with all he had gone through in twenty-four hours, even his body seemed unsure of itself. The boards beneath Holden’s bare feet knocked and groaned as he stood and walked to the toilet, trying to be as silent as possible. The door to his bedroom was half open, but he waited to peek in until he was finished with his morning duties. Marion was resting over the covers of his bed, the picture of tranquility, and Holden closed the door. Better if she were asleep while he determined what to do with her.

He dragged his feet toward the bay window where he normally sat to read each morning before work and felt his ritual calling to him in the item that sometimes gleamed in the morning sun.
Not today, though. Weather sucked.

The Book was tilted out toward him, looking innocent and full of knowledge. It pulsed a beacon of desire and Holden smiled in fear at the device’s uncanny ability to draw him in like the landing lights of a runway despite the horrible truth he had learned. Holden glided toward it, inch by inch, until The Book was just below his hand. He flicked out his pointer finger and allowed the sharpened nail to trace the lines in the leather cover, almost helpless against its power over him. It was wrong, Holden knew that now, but he couldn’t help himself. For so long The Book had been his salvation against the monotony of life, an object of harmony in a world of uproarious boredom. The habit of losing himself in its pixels when life grew difficult was so ingrained in Holden that he found himself lifting the lie machine and flipping back the thin cover.

From the center of the dark screen, the recycling icon bled forward in the brightest green, sparkling and intense. It welcomed him with the gentlest animation and Holden fell further as the arrows followed one another on their triangular path. It throbbed as the darkened background turned the white of stagnant water and the recycling symbol faded away in a haze of greenish brown. The Gratis Press digital newspaper arrived at the center of the screen and Holden awoke fully in the shock of what he saw on the front page. For no reason, other than the bold black text of the headline, he hurried to his bedroom door to check on Marion before discarding The Book on his entryway table and racing to the television in the kitchen. On the plasma screen was a photograph of Marion. Holden glanced into the living room before raising the volume enough to make out what the news anchors were saying. The man’s cyborgian face read the news alert with a cold, expressionless tone. Holden inclined his ear closer to the speaker to hear it more clearly.

“…to the ground late last night. An icon of a generation long past that was struck down too close to home. The flames over The Library burned until two o’clock this morning when the Chicago Fire Department was finally able to gain control over the inferno. Marion Tabor, the proprietor, is now wanted for suspicion of terrorist activities linked to the anarchist group
The Free Thinkers
. If you have any information on her whereabouts or can provide assistance to the government in any way, please contact the number listed below.”

Holden blinked. It was much worse than he’d thought. He fought the urge to turn the television off and throw it out the window, but leaned closer instead. The newscasters broke to banter about how sad it was that these terrorists could be lurking anywhere and that this historical monument, this watchtower of environmentalism in the city, was now gone. All those wonderful walls, covered in book pages, were all burned in the fire. They were talking as if The Library had been their favorite bar and the disingenuous feelings made him sick.

An image of the charred and blackened bar came to the screen. The sidewalk, lined with police tape, was covered in shadowed flashes of the flames from the night’s blaze. Holden couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The Library was gone, and so perfectly. Not a brick on the businesses nearby, or a board on the elevated tracks above, had been harmed.

Old images of the interior fluttered to the screen, showing Marion’s grandfather shaking hands with the Mayor of Chicago. Another showed a billiard room that had eventually been replaced by handicap accessible bathrooms. The mug shot of Marion shrank to the bottom of the screen beside a phone number in bright white text. After adding that her picture and the information on how to contact the authorities would be up on the screen throughout the duration of the broadcast day, the newscasters moved on to the topic of a festival in Old Town. Holden backed away from the television, knowing exactly what the broadcast meant – it would be that much harder to get around with Marion. More than likely, she would be added to a
Most Wanted
list that covered every major news outlet in the world. Marion Tabor, the innocent woman in his bedroom, was now a wanted felon. A terrorist, apparently, to society with a face that would be published generously along the waves of the ever-ebbing internet.

Holden turned the television off, knowing their options were limited. He went to the refrigerator to pour a glass of orange juice and, after seeing her in the living room, spilled half the bottle on the floor. Marion was sitting on the chair in the bay window, holding his leather Book. Her face was drawn and out of place, with eyes that dragged, tired and confused. She was reading the article. And from her expression, the typed version was more detailed than the televised version. After cleaning up the floor, Holden poured two glasses from the rest of the orange juice and tiptoed into the living room, so as not to startle her, wishing he hadn’t left The Book open on the table.

Marion wouldn’t look up at him. She was a part of the article now and she wouldn’t allow herself to leave until she finished reading. Holden rested the glass on the window ledge and returned to the awkward discomfort of the couch. When she was done, Marion closed the cover and rested The Book silently on the window ledge. She looked out the window, through streaks of rain water that created asymmetrical patterns and stripes on the glass, and studied the life below. Children racing to school. People walking their dogs under multi-colored umbrellas. A jet plane cutting its way through ever-angry clouds. Holden didn’t need to ask Marion to know what she was feeling. Her freedom was gone. It was gone and, more than likely, forever.

“Marion. I know this has gotta be hard for you and I wish there was something I could say that could give you a sense of peace, but the fact is…we need to get out of here. Only the people who have seen or read the news this morning will be looking for you. I wish we could take a few days to mull things over, but you’re too exposed being here in the city and the time to leave is now.” Holden could see that Marion was ready to talk, so he took a nervous sip of his drink, rested it on the coffee table and waited.

“Holden,” Marion whispered, still staring out the window. “My life is over. There’s nothing I can do to defend myself. These people are…so powerful. This whole thing is so much larger than…I don’t think there is anything I can do except hide and live…long enough until they eventually catch me.” Her head tilted to her chest and Holden rose to place a hand on her shoulder.