know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”
Then, all of a sudden, I yawned. What a rude bastard, but I couldn’t help it!
Mr. Antolini just laughed, though. “C’mon, Holden,” he said, and got up. “We’ll fix up the couch for you.”
I followed him and he went over to this closet and tried to take down some sheets and blankets and stuff that was on the top shelf, but he couldn’t do it with this highball glass in his hand. So he drank it and then put the glass down on the floor and then he took the stuff down. I helped him bring it over to the couch. We both made the bed together. He wasn’t too hot at it. He didn’t tuck anything in very tight. I didn’t care, though. I could’ve slept standing up I was so tired.
“ How’re all your women?”
“ They’re okay.” I was being a lousy conversationalist, but I didn’t feel like it.
Holden exhaled a long breath, but he was no less confused. He backed out of the stall and stumbled toward the sink. He saw himself in the mirror, and yet there was a different person standing there. His forehead and eyebrows were knotted into a tangle of curls and wrinkles. His eyes were sharp and stunningly focused. Suddenly nothing else mattered. He didn’t know why, but nothing else mattered beyond the words he had just read. The page was prodigious. The very moment he had been thinking of his trust in The Book and faith in what was written between its digital pages, he was besieged by a sense of betrayal. There soon came a hollowness in his chest and Holden knew that none of what was happening would make sense until he could make sense of it all.
He left the bathroom imbalanced; his mind overflowing with indefinable possibilities. He stepped quickly toward the bar where Marion was laughing with a customer, drawing a long draft of vanilla white beer, and shoved his way through the giddy patrons watching the game on a small television that was integrated into the mirror behind her before spitting out to her, “Where did these book pages come from?” She noticed him and her eyes brightened. “Marion, where did these pages come from?”
She handed her customer his drink, pointed to her ear and mouthed the words, I can’t hear you .
Holden walked around to the side of the bar and ducked below the hinged countertop, joining her near the register. Marion couldn’t help blushing in his sudden presence. Holden closed his eyes and leaned close to her ear, repeating, “The pages on the wall…where did they come from?”
Marion shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d have to ask my mother. Why?”
“I can’t really explain. Find out for me, will ya?” Holden muttered, scurrying back to the legal side of the bar. Marion watched as he fought with his jacket, mumbled crazily to himself and left the bar. Shane looked as confused as she did, but he shook his head and assumed the same. Once again, Holden Clifford had to escape the reality of life.
In truth, the reality of life was becoming frighteningly clear for him. As each moment passed, Holden continued to fear the worst and told himself that what he was imaging was incorrect. What he thought he had just stumbled upon was too implausible to be true. He wouldn’t even consider it until he saw the text for himself. It was simply horrific; the connotations behind such a discovery were all together too frightening to accept. So he took a cab back to his neighborhood, walked slowly through the rain toward his apartment, stumbled absently to the darkened corner where he had left his father’s copy of The Book open and plugged in and fell to his knees before the greenish tint of the glowing screen.
With the excerpt from the bar in his mind, Holden scanned to the corresponding page. At once, he noticed it was different. Whatever scene he had read, it wasn’t on this page. He scanned two pages forward and two pages backward, and still nothing. For the sake of argument, he scanned back one more page and
G.B. Brulte, Greg Brulte, Gregory Brulte
James Silke, Frank Frazetta