This Book Does Not Exist (19 page)

“I wanted to hang out with you,” she says.

Not knowing how to respond, I ask if she works here.

“I do work here, yes, and I was
kinda
hoping you’d ask me out.”

Fully taken aback, I stumble into asking her name.

“Katie,” she says. “What’s yours?”

Instead of telling her my name, I ask, “Have you seen my friend, Kirsten? The girl that was sitting here with me
?”

She shakes her head no. “Sorry. You guys are just friends?”

“Yeah.”

“That ‘yeah’ sounds complicated.”

“She’s helping me try to find someone else.”

Katie wants to know
who
. I don’t answer. She starts to drift. To keep her attention, I ask, “Will you help me try to find the girl who was here? Maybe look in the women’s restroom? I don’t
know where she went, and it feels like she should’ve been back by now
.”

“Will you ask me out if I do?”

After I say I will – even though I don’t think I mean it – she looks excited.

When she stands up, I can’t take my eyes off her.

“I’ll take a walk around,” she says. “See you soon.”

Katie goes towards the restrooms. I head in the opposite direction, to the front of the restaurant, with the notion that maybe Kirsten is outside having a cigarette. I can’t remember if she smokes or not.

Hurrying, I push open
the glass doors. Outside, the sun is bright, so bright that I have to shield my eyes. I step onto the sidewalk. Gradually, my pupils adjust to the sunlight…

Something has changed.

The parking lot isn’t a parking lot anymore.

I spin around.

The Olive Garden is gone
.

I’m standing on top of a skyscraper.

The other world got me.

I listen to myself breathe and think of the word “calm.”
My thoughts slow.
The shock of the transformation wanes. I don’t panic. Altogether, this is a positive development.

I am alone on top of a massive building,
near the center of the roof. The surface is flat. A white metal fence borders the perimeter. I get the impression this is some sort of observation deck.

Inside the bathroom, I remembered the World Trade Center.

I pace towards the fence, absorbing the skyline. It definitely belongs to New York City, and I am extremely high up, above everything else and near the water at the southern most part of Manhattan… Yes, I’ve had this view before. I stood on top of the World Trade Center once, and I am certain that is where I am now even though it was leveled by two jetliners on September 11, 2001.

I stop heading for the fence and start looking for a way down. I open the first door I see, which leads into a stairwell. I burst down the steps. The stairwell feels like a mausoleum. A shriek from somewhere down below reverberates against the walls. I think of a haunted house. I want out, but I need to be patient and let the incident develop.

I curl away from the steps at the next landing and arrive at a door with the number 97 on it. When I start to turn the handle, a swell of other options comes to me. Anything could be behind this door. Maybe I should keep running. Maybe I should try to hide until the other world bleeds away. The debate locks me in place until I tell myself to just open the fucking door.

I do.

What I find is a bland office space. No one is here. The space is large but tepid. It’s neatly ordered with cubicles and desks and supplies that could be in millions of other offices in hundreds of thousands of other buildings around the country.

I notice a clock on the wall. The time is 8:25 – in the morning, I assume, based on the height of the sun outside. This is likely why the office is empty. Work probably doesn’t start until nine.

In a cubicle near me, there is a Page-A-Day desk calendar for the comic strip
Boondocks
. The cartoon depicts the conscious-minded Huey sitting in front of a computer, telling his little brother Riley he’s having trouble writing because he is serene and optimistic. The next
panel contains no action or words, and in the one that follows Huey’s tranquil thoughts evaporate
. “Whew!” he says to his brother. “Glad that’s over with.”

“September 10, 2001” is typeset above the comic strip.

Depending on when the owner of the calendar tears away the pages, today is either September 10
^th
or September 11
^th
, 2001.

It is now 8:26 in the morning, and I am inside the World Trade Center.

I consider this, and only this, until a man with an unflappable demeanor and a lackadaisical gait says, “Well, here we are. Back together again.”

It is
Geppetto
, of course.

“I have so many quest-”

He cuts me off.

“You’ve made progress without me. This is how it has to be. I can help sporadically, offering advice, setting up specific scenarios, that sort of thing, but for this to work you have to figure things out on your own.” He checks his watch. “Walk with me. We have a few minutes.”

He turns towards the stairwell.

“Today’s September 11
^th
, right?”

“Today is September 11
^th
,” he says, as he holds open the stairwell door.

I want to know if we’re going up or down.

He nods.

“What does that mean?”

He nods again.

I tell him that doesn’t qualify as a response.

“Yes, it does. I reacted to your question with a nod. That’s the definition of a response. Now come on, you’re wasting time.”

For better or for worse, I go with him.

Geppetto
leads me up the stairwell.

On the way,
I tell him what Kirsten said about the makeup of the other world. “I understand what
the Door
is doing.”

We reach the top of the stairs. As
Geppetto
walks out onto the roof of the South Tower, taking me back to where I started, he explains, “What I can convey to you – since you’re willing to admit as much now – is that yes,
the Door
has been manipulating your memories and then deforming them with your imagination.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“You kind of sensed it, didn’t you? It’s not terribly important, anyway, to really understand the mechanics. I wouldn’t have rushed to confirm them now, but what you did with Kirsten – getting to her, seeing her, talking to her – was admirable, and she wasn’t terribly illuminating. I blame her nerves. You came up while she went through her incidents. My colleague Amelia told me that. Something about that time you met… You had a lasting impact on her.
The Door
molds people – you know this from the brochure – but no one is flawless
,
 
nor
should they be. Amelia said Kirsten
can
lose focus sometimes. She’s a free spirit. I want to make sure what she told you
was
clear. You earned as much.
The Door
won’t give you anything unless you earn it.”

“I went to close
the Door
, but your world created the movie set. Why stop me?”

“I don’t know that it stopped you so much as you walked away. Be honest with yourself. What do you think would have happened after you closed
the Door
? You weren’t going to quit thinking about Naomi. Not given the state you’re in. You might have held out for a couple hours, even a few days, but it wouldn’t have changed the fact that she still exists – out there and inside your head.”

“Kirsten said she had to destroy
the Door
. Is that-“

“Don’t you want to find Naomi? Don’t you want to know why she never got on the plane? Don’t you want to understand why you lost her in the first place? If you destroy
the Door
before you reach her you’ll never know the answers to these questions.”

I think about the prospect of never seeing Naomi again, of never knowing what went wrong, of living with this gap for the rest of my life
. Geppetto is suggesting there is only one alternative: leave
the Door
alone, keep searching for her,
continue
combating the other world until I find her. Who knows how long it will take or if I’ll survive. I should walk away. I should force myself to get over her. But something is deeply wrong inside of me.

Using different words, I admit as much to
Geppetto
.

“Which is why, ultimately, you’re here,” he says. “But first things first, you have to handle this incident. Hopefully, it will allow you to understand something you didn’t understand before. Speaking of which, you have… Oh, about nineteen minutes until the other tower…”

He trails off.

I look over the edge of the roof in a worthless attempt to appraise how much time it might take to reach the bottom of the building through the stairwell. The view
is awe-inspiring. My smallness in relation to the immensity of the Twin Towers and the entirety of New York City is daunting. I’m a fragment in comparison to these structures, most of which will outlast
me and my love for Naomi
.
The Door
has made huge things happen to little me, and if they have all led purposely to this moment, they have succeeded in making me grasp just how incredibly small I am.

“Can I stop the tower from falling? I can’t, right? It’s like Dallas. Like JFK…”

Geppetto looks at his watch. “The plane is going to hit the North Tower in sixteen minutes. You have more than enough time to make it to the bottom. But it’s more complicated than that, as I’m sure you could have guessed. Naomi and Katie, the hostess from the restaurant, have wandered into this tower.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Naomi knows you’re here. I’ve been waiting for her to show up. That’s why we’ve been talking endlessly. Didn’t you wonder? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hearing the sound of my voice.”

“She wants to talk to me.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. She might just want to see you from a distance, see if there’s still a spark. Or she could be planning to make your escape more difficult. The last I heard, she and Katie are on the 99
^th
and 90
^th
floors – but I don’t know which one is where. Obviously, you need to get out of this building as quickly as you can, but if you’d like to encounter either woman, I urge you to trust your instincts, and I think you’ll end up running into whichever one you most desire.”

Geppetto walks over to the edge of the roof, which is safety-proofed with an extra ledge and barbed wire to eliminate jumpers.

“Have you thought about what it’d be like to be up here when the plane hits?”

In my imagination, a plane rockets across the sky beneath me… And then there is a blitzkrieg of metal at the speed of sound, an explosion of heat and jet fuel… I see myself getting knocked off the tower. I watch myself fall to the ground, albeit incompletely, because
Geppetto
interrupts.

“You could always try this.”

He leaps off the tower, somehow clearing the barbed wire and the ledge.

I lose sight of him entirely.

But I do see a plane coming.

I thought I had fifteen minutes.

I don’t.

When the plane hits the opposite tower everything is as I imagined.

Except for the sound. I didn’t think of the sound.

The
rupture of flames and breadth of destruction is terrifying and stunning, simultaneously a fantasy and a nightmare. The thought of people dying hits me as I’m driven backwards by the force of the collision and the heat from the burning jet fuel. My spine smashes into the stairwell door. The metal bludgeons the back of my head. I’m thankful. The door saved me from falling off the roof.