The West Loop

James lived on the eleventh floor of a building in the West Loop. His apartment was spacious, and modern, with large window panels and a sleek mid-tonal wooden decor. The kitchen sat behind a table overlooking downtown Chicago, made to look puny by the engulfing teak. He donned a crisp white apron and had begun to slice figs behind a counter. After a while, he sandwiched the slices between layers of salt, mint, and sugar, stitched together with lemon juice. Heaving a sigh, he washed his hands, gingerly lifted the needle from the McCoy Tyner record that had been playing on his turntable, and readied himself for sleep.

When the knock came at the door, James sat up coolly in his night robe and met his guest with a silent kiss. Predictably, it was Channel 131 GAW News Chief Weather Reporter Shannon Stella, whom he had been seeing under similar impromptu circumstances for a few months after she had grown estranged from her partner. Her lips echoed her blue blazer, white blouse, and matching skirt in epitomizing corporate fatigue, though her eyes did not sag. In fact, they were uniquely wide and impassioned. They stood in the hallway for a moment, staring into one another, before crossing the wide entryway and turning left through the sitting area to reach the kitchen.

Shannon tossed off her high heels gracefully and took her seat at the small round dining table. James pulled the figs from the fridge, washed away the encrusted minerals, pulled out a small frying pan, and set them to sear. They became gorgeously caramelized and laden with butter. He plated them with crumbled goat’s cheese, chopped walnuts, and a sprig of mint. Eyes to the table, he put the dish in front of Shannon. She broke a smile and thanked him warmly, sincerity lining her face; his fatigue finally cracked and he returned the expression. As she ate James grabbed a morsel of fig for himself.

In the late morning, he rose from the couch hazily and flicked on the television set in the living room. It was already programmed to 131, and Shannon was debriefing the weather across the city: yesterday’s storms would gradually die away, and a cloud cover would hide most of the sun. Precipitation would start in the evening, but only at a light sprinkle. James tried to recall the previous night’s events, strolling the halls with a mug of coffee in his right hand. Shannon had coaxed him to sleep, ostensibly, and slipped out. He always worried about her. Rest fell outside of her devoted schedule, which peaked at the temporal extremes of the day, and she didn’t much enjoy heading home, anyway, for she went home to nothing at all. An empty apartment in a building of mostly offices, it seemed to her a sea of expensive silken curtains and office workers hurling themselves into the trash bins at their desks before stifling sobs. Shannon was drawn to James’ stoicism, indeed, but also to his salient lifestyle.

But it wasn’t what it seemed, and she was viewing it from a deluded perspective. James had hated his rural upbringing and moved to Chicago the second the battered, cobweb-laden grandmother clock ushered in his eighteenth birthday with a few emphatic dings. For years, he cleaned a small church alongside a Belarusian man in his seventies in exchange for outskirt housing and food. James was forced to scrounge the city for supplementary odd jobs until he was taken under the wing of an ailing entrepreneur and placed in a starting position at his corporation. The company waned alongside him.

The church James had worked at had closed recently, and he knew the sort of serenity and meaning it had brought him was now eternally out of reach. Tucked between an ophthalmologist and a law firm, the dark green building was much taller than it was laterally consumptive, and the round windows were partially covered by white-dyed crosses of wood. Modernity had slowly ushered itself in; the sun refused to leave the pews alone. James swept the aisle and dusted the nave till their rustic glimmer returned.

Suddenly, the power cut. James was left staring at a blank television set in the dark, a piercing ring burrowing into the deepest crevices of his mind. His mug sustained a single crack as it toppled onto the hardwood. Coffee leached into the floorboards and tainted his woollen slippers. Unmoving, James found himself thoughtless as his brain, from thalamus to ganglia, froze and emptied itself, until after thirty seconds the windows shattered simultaneously and the sound was allowed more space within which to reverberate. Even so the ordeal had left him gasping for air and in need of a seat. His apartment, despite its expansiveness, was notably lacking in sedentary spaces in the hopes of preserving an open sensation. The need for such a measure, though, faded when all of Chicago’s air was allowed an entrance. Having crawled his way to the couch, he picked up the corded phone on the neighboring table and dialed the police. First, though, he had to speak to the front desk. Building policy.

“This is the front desk, how may I help you?”

“I’d like to place a call to the Chicago PD,” he replied, keeping his patience.

“Putting you through, sir.”

“Chicago Police Department.” The operator had a slightly husky voice, and sounded vaguely sick.

“There’s a strange noise coming from somewhere in my apartment, and the windows have all shattered. It’s…stifling.” He shared his address.

“Very well.” The operator didn’t really know what to do, considering this seemed like more of a mechanical issue than anything, but supposed that it was ultimately worth eliminating the possibility of any intentionality at play. However, she started to get a sinking feeling when a similar call was placed moments later by a resident of Hyde Park. Before long, a detective was assigned to the case.

James had gone out onto the street. As had his neighbors. He took the opportunity to take an eggs benedict at the end of the block with his friend on the floor above, whom he seldom got the opportunity to meet with under normal circumstances. The restaurant looked a little too colloquial and cheery considering its urban surrounds and the hazy weather, but James felt rather at home. His English muffin had been toasted nicely, and even in a windfall of hollandaise sauce and egg yolk, it remained resistant to sogginess. Bever, his friend, pressed anxiously for details regarding the radiant beam of noise that had polluted the halls and muffled the churning of the building’s novel machinery. He struggled futilely to make himself appear more lighthearted.

Bever was a mechanic, and had been the one who installed much of the equipment in the apartment below. Days later, the detective roused him near midnight after James’ testimony. The sound was driving all the tenants to the brink of insanity, including Bever’s short-tempered cat, who had been clawing at the door for days. James walked in soon after, undisturbed. He closed the door softly behind him, skillfully evading the striped cat.

The detective looked at James, a shaky statement on his lips. He emitted a high-pitched gulping grunt and quickly aborted, losing confidence. Instead, Bever was presented with his large hand. “Hello. I’m the detective.” He forced a smile and then took a deep breath. “You may be unaware that the phenomenon plaguing your companion’s apartment is one of two similar cases in the city. It seems there was an issue with the onboarded air purification system. Mr. Parsons was under the impression that you were the one who installed it for him.”

Bever couldn’t understand the detective’s stress. “Yes. I installed it - what’s the matter?”

“That’s the thing,” the detective went on, “we don’t know. To ascertain exactly what the problem is, and to shut off the noise, we’d have to burrow through Mr. Parsons’ kitchen wall.” He looked out the window and picked his tooth with his thumbnail. Not exactly the most desirable of options. “Where did you find that air purifier? It’s from the same company as the other one that went berserk, but we couldn’t find it in any of our databases. And regarding the other instance - did you install any more of these machines?”

Bever shook his head. This had been the only one. He had seen a reputable street advert for it during his search, and, due to its comparatively sensible price, decided to take the plunge. “I vaguely remember that the organization was Belgian.”

The detective turned for a second. That would explain why it wasn’t showing up in domestic records, he thought. On his way back to the precinct, he admired the deep night, car engines muted like the soft croon of his father’s voice. He put in a request at the Records desk and glided to his one-bedroom, a belabored ghost.

James was roused again the next day. He thought it was Shannon; he had not prepared any food. But instead, as he opened his oak door by the round handle, the detective invited himself in apologetically, wearing an understated navy sweater. He had bowed his head so as to appear shorter than his host. “They traced the air purifier to an illegal scamming and biohacking corporation in Antwerp. The device is entirely at the behest of the headquarters and has been since its purchase. It was also never intended to purify air, and never did any such thing. I have temporarily resigned myself from the case, as there is nothing for me to do at the moment. However, I may be reinvited depending on the will of the Belgian Royal Police in pursuing the people behind this organization’s face.” James nodded. He didn’t really know what to say. “Oh,” the detective remembered, turning back from the door after just having risen, “a contingent from the PD will be coming to extract the machine later today. You won’t need the earplugs anymore. And get some sleep.” He disappeared, a transient, supercelestial being, who seemed barely to fall victim to human conditions like sleep, touch, and relation. It was as if he did so to keep himself remotely entertained.

James never saw the detective again. He was informed, though, when he finally rolled around to the precinct, that the case had gone cold.

Upon finding out about James’ albeit innocuous ties to this suspicious organization, Shannon decided finally that her conception of him had been wrong. He was ironed out, in part, and contributed to, in part, by a fallacy and a scam. Even something as irrelevant as a system embedded within one’s wall seemed to Shannon a part of the possessor. That arose enough justification in her that he was incomplete, and therefore not someone who could bring meaning to her. Little did she understand, almost everyone leans against the pillars of evil once in a while without realizing. She herself did, indirectly, with her outsourced curtains and occasional glaring condescension. James never saw her again, either.