The Book (18 page)

Holden got off the train and grabbed a taxi with a simple decision at his core. He was going to seek out the only location in the city where a historic landmark had been branded and the emblem had never been removed. It was there he knew he would find his answer. And it was there that he did.

* * * * *

016-42319

It had been one of the first ornaments of architecture and one of the first monuments in Chicago marred by the work of
The Free Thinkers
. Eager to keep his actions clandestine, Holden coasted safely between buildings in the back of a taxi, beyond the radar of watchful eyes, until they reached the corner of State and Washington.

The Reliance Building stood as a testimony of faith from a time when the world didn’t fully trust its architects. The building had been launched to mass fear because the windows, quite small in comparison to today’s modern glass facades, had been too large for the people of that time. So much fear eventually gave the building clout and it became an enticement to the daring. Because of its avant garde nature, a rich appreciation grew for the structure in the years to come until it was eventually granted landmark status and adored by the city.

The architects of
The Free Thinkers
had a different view of the building. They decided that it was the perfect structure to receive their very first brand of molten graffiti. And it was left on the one spot the landmark committees would be unable to remove. The extinct rectangular tiles of polished white clay that lined the building were now interrupted above the State Street entrance with a small version of the soon-to-be-well-known emblem. At the time of its origination, the crest, with its arrow and revolver crossing over the puzzling words of
Think Again
, was odd and the newspapers were baffled. For months, journalists asked themselves where it had come from and what, if anything, was its purpose. Something told Holden, as he walked down the street toward the building, seeing the rain splash against the windows that had been so infamous in the past, that he would find himself at the end of the day with the exact same question burning his mind.

But then something
unfortunate
happened. Mister Twenty Dollar Bill.

The tremendously tall, rotund oaf from the Sears Tower was now camped out along the side of the Reliance Building, rattling a glass jar of coins at innocent people on their way home from work. This shrine to all that was still wrong with the world noticed Holden at the same time and puffed out his cheeks, adjusting his monumental weight on the plastic milk crate that was straining to keep its shape below his wide girth. Holden almost didn’t want to cross the street and force another confrontation just to inspect the emblem, but he had come all that way and there were little options left.

He approached the building from across the street and gazed up at the crest that was, once again, positioned directly above where the large man was stationed. In the brighter light, Holden could see that the man was a heavily tattooed, Polynesian whose shaven head looked a little clean for an Unfortunate. Holden neared the glass and looked up at the emblem, but he couldn’t avoid the dark eyes that were burning into him. In a fleeting look, Holden glanced down and it was just enough time.

“Can you spare a twenty?”

Holden laughed. That guy was pretty insistent. He looked him in the eyes and, in the lighter drizzle of the day, was able to see something else in them that hadn’t been there the night before. Or at least something he’d been unable to see in the dusk. “I’m a vet and I’m selling ribbons.” The whale-like man pointed to the light green ribbon on the lapel of his tattered jacket and then down to a coffee can beside him that was filled with them. “You got a twenty? Want to buy a ribbon?”

He saw it again. Something in the man’s eyes made Holden believe that he was saying something entirely different. Against his better judgment, he reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. “Yeah,” Holden replied, taking out a twenty dollar bill. The man reached for it slowly, never removing his steadfast gaze. After placing the crisp bill into his shirt pocket, he unpinned a ribbon from the inside of his jacket and lowered his eyes before handing it over.

Suddenly the large man’s demeanor changed and he threw his entire jar of coins at Holden’s arm. The thick glass rebounded and shattered on the sidewalk with a triumphant crash. He rose like a giant over the crowd and began spouting random complaints and gibberish with a snarled, insane expression that frightened everyone outside the famous building. A wide-berthed grin lightened his face maddeningly and Holden had to remind himself that this was some sort of act before jogging to freedom like everyone else on the street. A faint thrill chased his shadow and a block away he slowed to glance back at the man who was swiping the shards of glass from his scattered change. He looked psychotic as he flailed his arms about and things magically made sense. Holden surmised that the only way such a group could recruit new members was to place beacons around the city and station someone near the beacon to guide the boats to shore.

He had done it. He had found
The Free Thinkers
.

With the smooth texture of the silky ribbon between his fingers, Holden felt his heart race. He needed to look at it without anyone seeing. Halfway down the block, he dodged a cavalcade of pedestrians and hid in the wide loading dock of Marshall Field’s before retracting his fingers and looking down into his palm. The green tone of the ribbon was bold against the gloomy background of dirty concrete. Along the rim of its edge were four black words stitched into the silk. Holden smirked as he quickly understood where he needed to go. On one of the ribbon’s crisscrossed wings were the words,
The Spire
; on the other were the words,
Top Floor
.

* * * * *

017-43331

This was the first night in many that would see Holden wearing a sport coat. It was one of his father’s humdrum hand-me-downs and smelled a bit musty, but Holden wore it on special occasions and he felt the night called for a bit of poise. Of course, he had forgotten to shave which, with the accompanying rain and smattering of wetness on his shortly cropped hair, Holden knew that, to these people, he would likely resemble a greasy raccoon scurrying around their legendary building for scraps of food. Granted, he was given the invitation by an Unfortunate who stank and dressed far below par, so it was quite possible that he would find himself the diamond of the Emerald City.

Shoving the silken ribbon into his jacket pocket, Holden tilted his head toward the rain to follow the winding lines of the building to the topmost floor. It was magnificent to behold. The Calatrava Spire corkscrewed into the violet clouds like some mechanical edifice that controlled the weather one rotation at a time. Holden paused in the drizzle because he felt he should offer the building some note of respect before entering its holistic lobby. Once inside, he was instantly drawn to the back of the structure. Beside the north elevators was a full height mirror that spanned the decadence of space. Holden wiped some of the moisture from his sport coat and adjusted his appearance in the polished mirror before pressing the elevator button.

The journey to the top floor was long. A few people joined him along the way and each of them left before he reached the top. As he watched the numbers grow higher, Holden felt the elevator was reminding him that each floor they passed was another chance to bail. Each was a freedom untaken. He was haunted by the elevator’s continual chime as it rose to the highest floor because of a singular worry that had plagued him since the moment he received the ribbon. He could be walking directly into a government run militia meant to smoke out those interested in taking down The Book. Passing every floor was a risk.

Still, Holden was a believer. Along the rim of Lake Michigan, at the highest point for blocks around, with the most stunning views he had never seen, were all the answers. After that night, all his anxiety would cease. Everything would be resolved. He was a believer. Had to be.

When the elevator reached its destination, the doors opened to the immediate and surprising sound of joie de vivre. Large groups of people were laughing and drinking and sitting and flirting and listening to the quiet digital music that felt altogether abnormal and left Holden completely dislocated. He felt for the ribbon in his pocket to determine if he had read it correctly when a woman came to the elevator doors and hastily removed his jacket without explanation. The doors began to close. Holden stepped off and walked after the woman to find her sprucing up his coat. Unable to mentally accept all that was happening around him, Holden stared at the woman as she diligently toweled the moisture from the mostly-nylon fabric. The dark hair that had been slicked down to the contours of her head was bound into a tight braid that traced her back through her black, open-shouldered gown. Holden was entranced by her thick, unmoving braid because it latched onto her skin as if it were attached to her spine like some exoskeletal accessory. He tried to protest, but was too overtaken by the sheer chaos around him to even open his mouth. Once she returned his jacket, Holden felt more than underdressed. What he had walked in on was so much less of a gathering of anarchists and terrorists and people bent on secretive governmental overthrow and so much more of a dinner party for the upper echelon, mid-western socialite. Actually, there were a few people he recognized. A famous architect, an author that he knew had hailed from Chicago, an actor and a few men and women that he was certain were politicians.

Was this it?
Holden thought.
Could this actually be what he was looking for?
If this were an outlet for change, why had he, a lowly pipe fitter who had come from nothing, been invited?

The moment the thought arrived, the enormous man that had given him the invitation, the man who Holden had deemed unworthy to speak to or even look at on the sidewalk of the Sears Tower, now approached with a wide grin, dressed to the nines.

Nervous, Holden laughed unnecessarily loud and stifled himself quickly. Moby got a kick out of this response and released his hand with a smirk. He reached into his jacket pocket and removed a crisp twenty dollar bill. “Welcome to
The Free Thinkers
.”

Holden couldn’t hide the grin on his face as he took back the money. This was really it. He couldn’t believe it.

As he stepped past the entry way, Holden was amazed at the space before him. Stretching out, covering the entire floor, was a wide room that extended to the wrapping corkscrew of windows. At the eastern end of the open room, with an awe-invoking view of the fog-lined lake, was a sunken oval seating area with a white, patent leather couch that ringed the circumference. The polished surface that was broken only by a short series of concrete steps grabbed his attention because it seemed to faintly reflect the life of the room around it.

There had to have been sixty people there, dressed elegantly and carrying on giddy conversations. The temperature of it all was electrifying, but somewhat irregular. Wrong, even. Choosing to remain within himself, safe behind a thin glass of sparkling water, Holden continued to study his surroundings. To the left of the sleek, open kitchen and oddly visible bedroom, with a bed that seemed to hover beyond its hidden base, was a slab of slate on legs with fire spilling from a square that wasn’t quite centered. Mirrored, on the opposite end of the room, was a table of turquoise glass. It rose four inches from its rough wooden feet and had a movement that bewildered Holden until he was standing beside it. The glass was hollow and within it swam a multitude of minuscule fish. Already, this evening had shown him so many things he had never seen and revealed a world he was never meant to enjoy.

Over the course of an hour, Holden mingled around intellectual conversations and introduced himself to many people who were more than entertained by his profession. A few times he had heard,
I wonder how we’re going to use you
. And other times he would hear,
we certainly are taking in all different types these days, aren’t we?
He was too excited by being there to recognize their comments as insulting. Everything that night was complimentary, especially to his eyes.

The luxurious furniture pieces, the shallow wading pool near the bathroom, the built-in art piece of thick, marbleized metal ribbons that took up far too much real estate, and the exquisite light fixtures that hung sporadically near the darkened ceiling like so many stars. Even the smells were heady and laced with enticement. The drinks and hors d’oeuvres being passed tasted so fantastic that, in a double bite, Holden forgot all the stress he had been feeling. He imagined Winston and Marion sitting by the fireplace playing chess and wished they could experience the joy and rapid acceptance he felt from such higher class people. Purpose and success played like music and he had finally joined the song. What they were up against in The Book was a power unseen and unquantifiable, but there were people in that room that carried an entirely different power.

More comfortable, despite the awkwardness of his appearance, Holden gladly replaced his water for a glass of wine from one of the women walking around the room with the same sleek, black hair and opalescent face, just as the man that Holden had recognized as a famous architect raised his hand and ushered for everyone to gather around the seating area.