Darla led them to the top of the City Hall. The marble staircase split into two and thinned out as they approached the second floor. The view from the top floor was as spectacular as the second landing. They spent some time staring down at the reflecting floor, fully grasping how beautiful and almost perfect the view looked.

“It is beautiful,” Penelope said. “But at the same time, it feels artificial. As if the architect was trying too hard. It is like when you eat a sickly sweet fruit that has been on the vine for too long. It is beautiful but overdone.” Simon did not agree. He thought it was beautiful without reservation.

“There are things that are just beautiful,” Simon said, interjecting to disagree with Penelope. He really did believe what he was saying. Simon loved good architecture, and the lobby was the epitome of that. It was classical in a very real sense, but that did not take away from what it brought to the environment. The loveliness of the outsides brought in and tamed, but still controlled, its beauty sucked out and repurposed.

“I believe Penelope has it right,” Darla said. “At least that was what the rest of the town thought. When you first see it, it is beautiful. But as they studied it, as the days past and they returned to look at what the outsiders had wrought, they began to doubt it. At first it was the vocal few, the ones who thought the outsiders could never create anything beautiful. Even when they saw it, their hearts were already turned against it, and there was no way that they could like it. They were immediately against it, immediately knowing that the outsiders had failed and they were right.”

“What happened to the outsiders?” Charles asked, seemingly understanding more of the story than Simon could gather.

“They were kicked out of town,” Darla said. “We were bringing them in to build for us, and if they did a good job, we would provide housing for them. Our school district is known throughout the area, and they wanted to send their kids to it.”

“They would not have had as much luck as they think,” Simon said, thinking back to his own childhood in those schools.

“These naysayers,” Charles said, still trying to bring the story around to the points in which he was interested. “What did they do? What were their special abilities? Man, I sound like I am talking about superheroes or something. Are you guys superheroes? Have I found the superman of Nietzsche?”

“You are not too far off,” Darla said. “The people in town are not superheroes in the way the caped heroes of comic books are superheroes. Our ability is much more limited. We are each good, very good I should say, at one thing. Some have maintained that this one thing we are good at we are as good as anyone in the world. I am not so sure. While our artists are wonderful, they never seem to create more than what has already been created. One of the reasons we built the City Hall was to show just this point. Our artists would never have been able to build this—at the least, they would never have had the ability to design this. They could take what has already been done and perfect it in a way. But that perfection was still limited by what was done. The next step, the original step, they would not have been able to do that.

“So when we built this building,” Darla continued. “We wanted to find someone who would take it to the next step. Who would imbue it with originality, and still tie it into the past.”

“This is a lot to tell about one story,” Simon said, realizing that they were still not at the top of the stairs. Darla had slowed as if reluctant to get to the top, scared that when she got there, she would not have anything else to say, nothing else to point to and talk about. She would run out of words and her stories—and this story—would ground to a halt.

But even as it looked like at her rate of climb she would never reach the top, she did. Darla reached over the last step, hesitating a moment as if not sure what would happen and if what would happen would be interesting enough for her to finish telling the story.

Charles and Penelope followed Darla over the last step, unconcerned by the struggle Darla and Simon had to make it over the staircase.

“It is as beautiful up here as down there,” Charles said, admiring the view and taking copious notes.

“Yes,” Simon said, pushing them along. “Darla, you brought us up here for a reason. Now show us what you wanted to show us. I am getting sick of the delay.”

“There was background I had to tell you before we proceeded,” Darla said. “None of what I was going to show you would make any sense without the background. Now, follow me.”

Darla walked around the staircase. Much of the lobby below was covered by the third floor flooring. It was part of what made the reflection so spectacular. There were two ceilings: the center one that was above the second floor on which the overly large chandelier with its thousands of crystal parts hanged, and the second floor ceiling, where the stepped version of the two ceilings came together to form the interesting look of the reflection.

Unlike the lobby, the second floor was more practical, with offices lining the hallways across the hallway that overlooked the lower floor. A marble fence lined the second floor and provided a place to overlook the lobby and see the reflecting floor. From up here, Simon was able to see where a grand piano had been placed in the corner of the lobby, providing a ballroom like environment for the first floor.

“It is this way,” Darla said. Simon walked ahead of her, trying to pull Darla and the rest along with him to get where they were going faster. He was sick of hanging back, waiting for them to catch up and to get somewhere.

“This is where the city council’s offices were,” Darla said.

“They no longer work here?” Charles asked.

“The city council was dissolved around the time the city fell apart.”

Simon began to see the truth of Darla’s statement as he passed the first office. Inside the office, the desk was overturned and papers were scattered on the ground. The computer was smashed with the screen having a large cup holder in its center.

“What happened in here?” Simon asked, as Penelope and Charles crowded in close.

“This is where the fight started,” Darla said as she peeked passed Charles, Simon, and Penelope and into the room. “Not in this specific room. It is difficult to know which room the fight started in. But it was in one of this inside offices—the offices that face to the lobby instead of outside.”

“What was the fight?” Charles asked.

“It was between the old members of the council and those that tried to usurp them over the outsiders,” Darla said.

“It became violent?” Charles asked.

“Yes,” Darla said. “It was a strange sort of violence. It started slowly at first, a few verbal arguments, and then escalated from there. Eventually, they were exchanging blows, ruining offices, throwing stuff around. It did not move much beyond the hall. Within a few days, the old council had fled the building, and they have not returned since. At least not in their official capacity.”

“Weren’t you in on the council?” Simon asked. He remembered a few conversations he had with his mother. She had been complaining about Darla. Well, it was not complaining about her, but discussing her family with her. Darla always felt that she married too young. Her husband, who Simon liked but knew that he was not particularly swift about decision making or improving himself as much as Darla seemed to like, was different from Darla in many ways. His mother only heard about his problems from Darla. She never looked beyond those problems to see his strengths or abilities. It was sad that she never was able to see beyond what Darla saw in him. His mother blamed herself for the mistakes she made with Darla when she was young. Simon knew that it was unfair to view life like that: you did the best with what you were given, and in the end there was only so much any one person could do. But that did not stop his mother from being miserable about her decisions.

“Yes,” Darla said to Simon’s question. “I was a member of the council. They respected my ability to organize, and allowed me to run the outsiders project to design and build the City Hall.”

“I thought it was built when you were still a child,” Charles said, poking holes in the very holey and inconsistent story. “Before you and Simon and your mother and sister moved away from Fishs Eddy.”

“Shush,” Darla said. “Let me finish the story without our interruptions. I was put in charge of building the City Hall. I worked with the outsiders, the architects, builders, and engineers, and they did a wonderful job. If it was not for the unforeseeable mistakes that Mr. Whatshisname found, everyone might still be living happily together. But when the outsiders were able to turn around and rebel against the changes, that is when the world changed as we know it.

“Let me show you more.” She led them away from the first office and passed the other offices, showing where the fight had broken out, and where the people had ran to. It was strange walking through the office where it looked like a hurricane had struck. There were papers everywhere, and desks were overturned.

The fight seemed to move from office to office, until they arrived at an oversized wooden door at the end of the hallway, the furthest distance from the stairs leading up from the lobby. It was as if the planners had known to keep the door away from the hallway, to protect it from the madness that was about to break open in the area.

“This is the mayor’s office,” Darla said. “Or at least it used to be the mayor’s office. He has not used it in sometime.”

“Where is he?” Charles asked.

“Dead,” Darla said. It looked like she wanted to say more, but she seemed to think more on it and decided against it. She pushed open the doors. The office was clean. There was nothing on the inside of it.

“This is where the police line should be,” Darla said. “This is where they would have investigated if there was anyone left to investigate. After he was killed, the city government broke down completely. There was nothing left to investigate because there was nobody with any power to investigate.”

The room itself looked very presidential. Simon had seen many images of the oval office from the various television shows and movies that took pleasure in duplicating that office to fill their own dramatic situations. There was a large seal in the middle of the rug of the room. It had three hands held together. The color was indeterminate, not quite Caucasian or Black or Asian, but somewhere in between all three races. It was a strange symbol since it was clear that most of Fishs Eddy was Caucasian, or at least it had been when Simon left. They bred not only differences but also the sameness in many ways in the strange town.

“This is where the final showdown occurred,” Darla said. “It may not look like it, but this was the seat of the final battle where the town council lost, and Fishs Eddy was thrown into the backward place that it is today. It was here that the council, backed by the outsiders, tried to stand up to the insiders, those who wanted no changes and wanted only their own kind to rule the town.”

“This is not a country,” Penelope said, sounding confused by the very confusing and ridiculous sounding story. “Why would anyone want to rule this little town? It does not make any sense.”

“Much I say does not make sense,” Darla agreed. “This may look like a small town, but if the right people were put in power with the wrong idea, then this place would move out and conquer much around it. It is a confusion truth that we have had to live with for a very long time.

Word count: 2,129

Words total: 45,728

Words remaining: 4,212

Two more days and this thing will be complete. The weather in NY was nice today. We met with Steven and Jennifer, and wandered around Brooklyn, before settling in to our first of two Thanksgiving dinners. My sisters and relatives will be joining us tomorrow for a repeat performance, with a new bird playing the starring role. Doolies is watching Heroes as I put the finish touches on today’s entry. I finished most of the words this morning. The last eight hundred words, which I had left until we dropped Steven and Jennifer off at the subway station, were more difficult to push out. I guess when you say nothing, saying more of nothing grows uncomfortable.