The Facades: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

manila folder and rose from my chair. “Well, thanks for thinking of me,” I
     said, halfway out of the room already. “Do keep her in mind.”
    “Of course,” McCready said. “Though I think we should be thanking you, Norberg. You’ve shown us that we need to take a more
     basic approach.”
    “Like the fundamentalists,” the Oracle added. An ironic smile twisted his lips. “The word means what it says, and says what
     it means.” McCready, flopping in his chair, looked disappointed with this tautology.
    The dark beam of the Oracle’s stare remained on me. “I hope your quest ends well,” he said, exhaling a curl of smoke. “I hope
     you are more successful than our friend Jimenez.” And he pushed the shades back over the bridge of his nose.
    I WANDERED OUT into the muggy, landlocked heat of August. The sun was boiling and relentless; flies capsized in a sweet grave of warm soda
     at my feet. I did not contemplate what the word “fundamentalist” might mean, coming from the mouth of an Oracle. It was hard
     to even think about Molly. I thought of the Don in a tight frock chirping about his 1,002 conquests in Italy or whatever.
     I passed the block of the Opera House. It was the architect Bernhard’s first major project in Trude, and he came to consider
     it a conservative, gaudy failure. Yet those gargoylesand chandeliers still drew crowds. Even now the cars were rolling in for the matinee. The people of Trude had a taste for
     opera; my wife had done well here. I stopped at the corner where I’d turned so many times to trace her steps, then forced
     myself to walk away.
    I followed Hamsun Avenue down to the Central Library. A beaux arts palace with high arched windows and two gilded owls whose
     eyes had once glowed in the dark flanking its front staircase. The owls’ eyes had closed with the brass gates. It was now
     a tense disputed zone. Our new mayor, Dwight “the Fist” Fuller, had coasted to landslide on a histrionic and brutal budget
     reform plan. A decorated veteran and an ex–pro wrestler who had sparred with the likes of Jerome the Jackal and the Non-Amigo,
     Fuller had turned his violent energies against the city’s bloated and antiquated infrastructure. His inaugural address began:
     “Citizens of Trude, we have become a sickly, namby-pamby people. Too effete and decadent by far. Think about it—what are we
     known for? Our mental asylum, our shopping mall, and
opera
.” In his first days of office, Fuller pummeled the Historic Preservation Board, the Forestry Department, the Complaint Desk.
     The Beautification Bureau found itself exiled from its crumbling office suite. But he wasn’t done. He slashed public library
     budgets so deeply that they were forced to sell off their rare books, their extensive holdings of city records, their bound
     medical and legal periodicals (Boggs had bought a set of these), and, finally, large portions of the circulating collection.
     Amid layoffs and emergency book sales, it became clear that Fuller intended not a bureaucratic overhaul, but a complete starvation
     of the public library system. The neighborhood branches soon closed, followed by the larger regional branches. Outraged editorialswere printed and ignored. When Fuller announced a second round of closings, the remaining librarians organized and took refuge
     at Central. Availing themselves of newly liberalized gun laws, they formed a small militia, which for a time kept the peace
     while maintaining access to the stacks. Now, however, Fuller’s demolition team had moved in, buffeted by a handful of police.
     The police, smarting from salary and pension cuts, and the loss of the annual Policemen’s Ball, were more ambivalent than
     the mayor expected. They refused to raid the library. This civic crisis had reached a standstill by midsummer.
    Roadblocks were up now, and the street was full of loitering men in orange flak jackets and library patrons irrationally waiting
     for the building to