The Book (4 page)

He saw so many. The word
vertigo
. The word
triumph
. The word
bliss
. The word
infantile
. He saw the words
retraction
and
conglomerate
,
God
and
sacrilegious
. He saw the word,
finality
. He saw the word -

Holden slipped on the floor and caught himself on the toilet paper holder. It tore free from the 100% post-consumer recycled content divider walls. Fragments of the composite plastic material rattled on the floor of the stall and the toilet flushed as his shadow passed over the fixture’s cyclopean eye. Inebriated men at the urinals were laughing, but he didn’t hear them. Holden pushed himself terribly close to the toilet until he could see it again. See the word that had his heart cycling in erratic disagreement. On the haphazard, paper-coated wall he found the word. Beside a modicum of sexually suggestive graffiti art, Holden Clifford had seen his name.

* * * * *

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Holden was not a popular name. He could never seem to find it anywhere else in the world. He had only seen his name in digital script; and yet there it was in all its rare splendor. A piece of his favorite story had been pasted to a most inconsequential wall.
The Catcher in the Rye
. When Holden finally found his name again, his heart leapt. He had never seen a page from that book in person. The printed words were like manna to him and he devoured all two-hundred and seventy-seven with fervor. Each line was sheer delight and he read over them again the instant his studying eyes reached the awkward end. After the second read, Holden knew he had to read it again, but not because he was so overjoyed to finally be reading his favorite story from an actual piece of paper, printed with ink and touched by oily fingers. He had to read it again because something about the page was wrong.

Whatever it was, he couldn’t define the source. It was like seeing a reflection in rippling water. It was right and at the same time it didn’t make sense. Then, in the middle of the third read, it hit him. The entire scene he was reading was new. That was why he needed so badly to read it again. It was new to him. There was something new on the page. He couldn’t tell if it was a phrase or a paragraph or a word or a sentence. No, it wasn’t something that small. It was the majority of it. The majority of the sentences on the wall he had never read before.

One of the overlapping pages was dry and crusted, breaching the excerpt of
The Catcher in the Rye
like a hang nail waiting to be gnawed off. He blew delicately at the overhanging sheet and found enough space between it to know that the page wouldn’t be harmed if it peeled free. A crinkling, crackle; a delicate tear; and he could swiftly see the title along the ridge of the page. There was no question now. He was reading from
The Catcher in the Rye
, page two-hundred and forty-seven.

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 there it was. Or at least, there part of it was.

He was right. The majority of the scene was missing from The Book. He felt the smart of betrayal and didn’t even understand why. There was nothing overtly graphic or politically insensitive or anti-establishment enough to cause alarm to anyone. It didn’t seem important enough to be censored. In fact, he had never heard of such censorship. Censorship itself was extinct. He had been raised in a censor-free environment. The only occasion in which things were removed from society was when they could cause actual damage.

Or at least that was what he had been told.

He looked down at the page and realized that if what he was reading was three pages prior to wherever it had originally been, then more than just the scene from the bar had been removed. If that was right, what had it been? A word on each page? A phrase? Perhaps it was something larger. Maybe an entire character had been removed. There was no telling. The truth was,
The Catcher in the Rye
had been altered and the only reason Holden even caught it was because he had known the story well enough to recognize the difference. The question that remained in his heart, as he knelt on the floor of his decaying apartment in the green glow of The Book, hung heavy in his chest and pulled him down toward the digital screen.

What else had been altered?

* * * * *

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A shrill noise squawked from the invoice pad as Marion stuffed it into the back of her pants before wiping the sleep from her eyes. As the men continued to unload the shipment from the truck, the sound of clinking beer bottles and the perfume of stale alcohol created a dissonance of sensory overload. They so grabbed her attention that she didn’t notice Holden walking up to the truck looking frantic and confused.

“Hi, Hold. What happened to you last night?”

“I need to know where these book pages came from. I…I nee…I need to know. I…you don’t understand. I read the entire book last night. I read the whole thing through because I just couldn’t believe…myself. I just couldn’t believe. So, I read it all the way through. And…I mean…I think I know it by heart enough to notice…if I had the whole book. So, I need to know where the rest of that book is.”

“Hang on, tiger,” Marion responded in a soothing tone, “Why don’t you pick up one of these boxes and help me bring it inside.” Holden’s erratic breathing pulsed with the bobbing of his head as he bent to lift the case of beer and follow her into the darkened bar. She studied his irregular behavior and hollered back to the truck, “I’ll catch up with you guys in a minute.”

Without warning, Holden ran straight to the bathroom. Marion couldn’t help but laugh. What she liked most about Holden was that he was a mystery she just couldn’t seem to solve. He was a different sort of man than she was accustomed to. She could never figure out what he was thinking. Although he was solid and predictable overall, there was a lingering question that always hung behind his eyes - a question she wanted to answer.

Holden glided from the men’s bathroom with a torn scrap of paper and slammed it on the cold metal bar. It had come from the wall. Pieces of other books, torn and bent, bordered the single page. “Thanks for destroying my bar. Books don’t come too cheap these days. Oh wait, there aren’t any more books,” she spat sarcastically, reaching for the page. He swiped it back, blinking frantically. She dropped her hands to her sharply curved hips and bit her tongue. “What’s going on, wack jack? You’re acting crazy.”

“I
am
going
crazy,” he agreed, continuing to blink rapidly. “Do you have a copy of The Book…with you?”

She shrugged absent mindedly and glanced down at the invoice pad the delivery guys were waiting for. “Um…somewhere. Why? I don’t really read, Holden.”

“Listen. I have a feeling that something terrible is going on all around us and I need you to trust me, okay?”

“You’re being a cuckoo bird, but...go ahead.”

“I need you to take your Book and search all the pages in this bar. Every single page. Most of the stories are public domain by now, so it should be free. Go to the corresponding page in The Book and check the writing on the wall. See if things match up. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m telling you that this page here,” Holden lifted the single sheet he had torn from the bathroom wall, “This is from my favorite book…and it’s different.”

“What do you mean it’s different?”

“It’s been edited. The Editors of the Publishing House have deleted things.”

“So? Maybe there was some racism in there.” Marion chuckled to herself and noticed instantly that Holden wasn’t amused. “I doubt this is as big as you’re making it. But even if you’re right, so what? To be honest, I couldn’t care less. So, they deleted some stuff. What’s the big deal?”

“What’s the big deal? Do you understand the implications of editing without approval? If an original printing is different than what we’re reading today, what does that mean? The Book is like…a hundred years old. When did the information change? And why? Who decided that something needed to be altered from the original? And that it was okay to do so…”

“Holden, I care about you. Maybe more than I should. I know it’s not a secret. But you’re not acting like yourself and it’s a little scary. Do you think that maybe you might be getting worked up about something that’s not that important?”

Holden exhaled and looked down at the torn page, realizing that she may be right. There were hundreds of reasons why the story could have been edited over time. What if the original copy of the book had been destroyed at some point and this page was from another draft? Maybe descendants of the author had decided to change some things.

“I guess you could be right. I’m sorry I’ve been acting so…weird. I just…” Holden couldn’t find the right way to explain how finding the inaccuracy had made him feel. “It seemed to make the world…understandable.”

Marion poured them a couple pints before bringing the invoice pad out to the delivery truck. Holden brewed in his thoughts as they sat silently at the bar for a half hour. He still felt a need to understand what had happened. Something was still incomplete and he was almost positive that if he could read the original manuscript, every question he couldn’t put into words would be answered.