by Deen Ferrell
Antonio stopped talking and glanced in the direction of Willoughby’s stare. He stepped protectively in front of the barber chair, moving toward the window. The man slipped back into the shadows. Willoughby watched for a moment and then spoke.
“He photographed us—well, the symbol first, and then us. Is that normal for this time of night?”
Antonio turned back toward the barber chair. His countenance had darkened. “A strange time to be photographing—it is after dark.”
Willoughby could no longer see the bulky man. He had probably slipped away down the alley and disappeared. Antonio, too, was searching the shadows. Though he shuffled back to the barber chair and returned to the haircut, he seemed to have difficulty pulling his attention away from the incident. “You say he photographed the symbol?”
“Yes; and that’s not all. A moment ago—it was like everything froze for a few seconds.”
He decided not to go into details about the floating numbers or the man’s face that appeared and then vanished.
“Froze?”
“Yeah,” Willoughby said thoughtfully. “There was no sound, no motion—well, almost no motion. Just for a few seconds. It was weird.”
Antonio bit his lower lip. He raised the scissors. “I did not notice anything.”
“You were frozen,” Willoughby said, almost under his breath.
Antonio didn’t respond. He resumed his steady clipping. Willoughby went over the experience in his mind again. Had it been real? He thought about the symbol and how the bluish flares seemed to be coming from it. He knew very little about Antonio’s strange symbol, even though it had been the source of many of his questions to his barber friend. He knew it had been mounted two days before the shop opened. It was formed by the numbers “313”, with the last 3 carved into the stone facing backwards. A spiral of right triangles swirled just above the numbers. Antonio had said it was his calling card—his declaration to the world that this shop would not be just a humble barbershop, but a place of adventure, of mystery. Now, the sense of mystery had become real. He claimed to have forgotten where he got it from, joking that he may well have bought it on eBay. Willoughby became suddenly convinced that there were things about this symbol that his friend was not telling him.
What?
2
Wasted Space
The hum of electric clippers interrupted Willoughby’s thoughts. Antonio trimmed his sideburns, then gave the antique barber chair a quick swivel and pushed down his head, shaving the fuzz on his neck and touching up his neckline. After a long moment, he flicked the clippers off. With a wild flourish of clicks and a few whisks of his soft brush, the cut was finished. Antonio lowered the barber chair, unclipped the white barber smock, and whirled it away, glaring with pride as clumps of stray hair flew in every direction. He took a bow.
“It is finished—a masterpiece, if I must say so!” He seemed to have suddenly regained his bravado. “You will be happy to know that I have swept precisely 910,656 hairs from my checkerboard floor this very year—that is an average of roughly 100,000 hairs per haircut, but tonight I cut at least 200,000—”
Willoughby frowned. “101,184.”
“What?”
“Your average is 101,184, and I doubt I have 200,000 hairs on my head.”
Antonio stared at him, pursing his lip. He raised a single finger. “Alright, great hair counter, but tonight, I have a most curious proposition for you. Tonight, I ask you to use that magnificent gift, the one that helped you solve the most magnificent Riemann Hypothesis.”
Willoughby cocked an eye. His friend knew better than to speak openly of his solving the famous puzzle. Only a handful of people knew about it. The world in general wouldn’t know until he turned 21. That’s when his solution to the Riemann Hypothesis would be released. It was the “deal” his parents had brokered with the academic community. Academia was anxious to laud the young man’s achievement for their own purposes, but wasn’t overjoyed by the prospect of admitting that a twelve-year-old boy had solved a puzzle that hundreds of famous mathematicians had spent their lives chasing. His mom and step-father also got what they wanted. They believed they were protecting their son, allowing him a “normal” childhood, whatever that was. Willoughby, alone, despised the deal.
He sucked in a quick breath. How had the psychologist described him? She had said he was brilliant and restless, and the deal didn’t do much to help him on either account. He got a mere pittance in allowance, skimmed off the top of the million dollars in prize money he had won by solving the puzzle. He also got free tuition at a fancy private school, an investment from the academic community. He hated the school. The only positive thing about the snooty school was that he got a personal limousine and driver to ferry him between the school and his father’s office every day—a gift from the website that had sponsored the million- dollar contest.
On a day when he felt that he might jump off a cliff if he didn’t tell someone, he had told Antonio. The barber had merely taken the revelation in stride. Other than a bit of teasing about being a mathematical genius, his friend knew better than to speak of it. Now, he was not only referencing the Riemann solution, but he was asking for some sort of assistance. Could this night get any stranger?
The barber finished folding his cloth smock and headed toward the small entry that led to a back room. “I have need for the observations of your most extraordinary mind. Wait—I will return shortly.” He held up his finger again, letting it trail through the air as he disappeared into the darkness.
Willoughby slid down from the barber chair, shaking hair from beneath his collar. The street outside was deathly quiet. He stepped over and picked up the article about the girl. She was pretty, he had to admit that, but there was something more. What was it? He felt a pang of irritation that he hadn’t gotten more information from Antonio. Glancing quickly over the article, he carefully folded the clipping and crammed it into his pocket. Glaring up at the window, he had a vivid memory of the man he had seen wink in and out of existence. Could he have imagined such a face?
Antonio swept back into the room holding a long paper tube. He screwed off the end and tapped out a bundle of rolled papers. “I need your help with a most curious puzzle, my friend.”
Willoughby watched him carry the papers over to an open bit of counter and begin spreading them out flat. He moved closer. They seemed to be architectural designs of some kind.
“I must let you in on a most private secret. I do not earn my living cutting hair.”
Willoughby felt a grin flash across his face. “Really? I would never have guessed.”
Antonio barely seemed to be listening. “I am what you might call a chaser of mystery.”
“What kind of mystery?”
“I chase mysteries that need to be solved. I am paid great sums of money to see things that others cannot see. This brings me to the curious symbol outside my door. You have seen first-hand that others have begun to take an interest in it. I need to find out why, my friend. Will you help me?”
“How?”
“That does not matter. Look at these drawings. They are architectural blueprints of another building designed by the same man who designed the Corner Barber. The initial construction was by the same construction company who built the shop.”
“’O’ something? They were the guys with the white coveralls.”
“You saw them?”
Willoughby nodded. Antonio nodded as if digesting this bit of information before pulling attention back to the blueprints. “Do you notice anything odd about this building?”
Willoughby studied the drawings. “This looks like the Certus Grove building.” He remembered the name because his step-father, Klaas, had been called in to do some final engineering work on the building. Klaas worked as a civil engineer for a large firm. He had pointed the building out to Willoughby when they passed it on their commute home
from work. The Certus Grove was one of the tallest buildings in a newly renovated section of Georgetown.
Willoughby noticed that Antonio seemed to be studying him as he looked over the blueprints. He glanced back down at the plans. “Is there something I’m supposed to be looking for?”
Antonio tapped his finger on the counter. “To the casual observer, these are just building plans. If you look closer, though, you may find that there are links between the symbol, the building, and even the mysterious girl with the violin.” He ran a finger along the blueprints. “Listen to me, Willoughby. You must concentrate. You must focus. The architect who designed the Corner Barber and the Certus Grove is a reclusive man rumored to know secrets of great worth. Do you note any…peculiarities in the plans?”
Willoughby’s eyes narrowed. He scoured the pages for a long moment until his eyes fell onto the street view of the building’s front. “Well,” he began; “the windows on the top row appear to be designed as a series of golden rectangles.”
“Yes,” encouraged Antonio, “the same as the window of my humble shop.”
Willoughby looked. He hadn’t noticed before, but Antonio’s front window was in the dimensions of a golden rectangle. A golden rectangle had side-lengths that follow the golden ratio (one-to-phi, or 1 to 1.618). The Greeks often worked the rectangles into their architecture. They believed that the golden ratio was divine. Willoughby thought of the spiral of golden triangles carved above Antonio’s door.
“What else?” Antonio encouraged.
“Well,” Willoughby looked back over the blueprints, “each floor is consistent in height except the top floor. As you can see, the windows on the top floor are taller by at least three feet than the lower floor windows—a fact obscured by the elongated window trim and these decorative window shades.” His finger came to rest on a scribbled number that measured the space between the sill and the scalloped edges of the shade. His eyes narrowed on the number.
“Look at the number scribbled here. 1.618 is the numeric representation of Phi. The ancient Greeks were crazy about it. It forms the basis of the golden ratio. Some Greek architects believed that shapes and angles based on the golden ratio could create doorways, inviting the Gods from their places beyond time.”
Antonio smiled, nodding. “Yes. I, too, noted the space between the top of the windows and the edge of the roof. I visited the building, thinking the space might be explained by a sunken roof, or high ceilings. That is not the case. What’s more, I could find no access to the space above the ceiling of the top floor. I stopped a janitor, and he assured me there was no storage space above the ceiling. He showed me the one access, which led to the roof. It is in the top of the stairwell next to a blank wall the size of a whole floor.”
Willoughby squinted at the drawing. “What are you getting at?”
“Don’t you see? This is an architect who decries wasted space! Look for yourself…every inch of space in the building is utilized in some way. Except here.” Antonio pointed back to the space above the top floor. “Here, we seem to be missing an entire floor. So, tell me—why the wasted space?”
Willoughby cocked his head and looked back down at the papers. He curiously thumbed from one page to the next. Antonio was right. There seemed to be at least 10, maybe12, feet of unused space at the top of the building. “I don’t know,” he finally shrugged. “Maybe it’s for insulation or heating and air ducts.”
“Ten feet of insulation? The air ducts are in the floor—I checked. You do not find this odd?”
Willoughby shrugged. “Well, yeah, but, he seems to be enamored with the golden ratio. Maybe the ratio of wasted space ties in somehow. The symbol above your door also has a spiral of golden or right triangles.”
“Yes, speaking of the symbol…” Antonio pulled out a black and white photograph of a section of decorative stonework. At its center, Willoughby noted the same symbol as the one over the door to the Corner Barber.
“I photographed this with a high zoom lens. It is a section of stonework along the roof, invisible to the naked eye from the ground. So I ask you; why waste the space in the building? And why the same symbol, with the numbers 313, and the last 3 turned backward, just like the symbol outside my door?”
Willoughby’s face clouded. It was true that the architect was obviously fascinated with Greek tradition, but he couldn’t think of anything in Greek tradition that could explain the number 313, or the backward 3, or the choice to leave an entire floor of wasted space.
Antonio carefully rolled the blueprints back up. “There is a logical answer, my friend, I am sure of it. Perhaps a mathematical mind such as yours could see things that I could not. I wonder—could there be a secret entrance to the hidden space? If there is, the clues would most likely be mathematical. I want you to go to the Certus Grove building for yourself.”
“Myself? My parents would—”
“Find a way to convince them, my friend. I need your help.” Antonio seemed earnest. He handed Willoughby the blueprints and then glanced at the magazine stack. “We did not finish our conversation about Ms. Senoya.” A smile cracked his face. “She is close friends with the architect of my shop and the Certus Grove building.”
Willoughby nodded vaguely, feeling a bit guilty about grabbing the clipping. His eyes focused on the shop’s single wall clock and he panicked: “Ah! I’m late—Mom’s picking me up tonight—Klaas has to work late again.” He grabbed the blueprints and shoved them into his backpack. “I’ll do my best. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.” He flung his backpack over his shoulder. He was halfway to the door when he realized he had not even thanked his friend for the haircut. “Thanks for the buzz—don’t work too hard!” he shouted over his shoulder.
“Buzz? Out with you!” Antonio boomed; “I have other clients fighting to get in!” He made a shooing motion with his arm and then moved toward the window.
Willoughby slammed through the door, once again rolling his eyes. He waved once more before hurrying away, down the sidewalk. At the end of the block, he glanced back. His barber friend was still there, still watching him intently, silhouetted in the glow of the barbershop window with the strange symbol brightly lit overhead.
3
Streetlight Meeting
Willoughby frowned as he turned down Lamont Street. The air had gotten colder and the slap of his sneakers against the sidewalk was deafening in the quiet. As a young boy, he had dreamed of becoming a Shaolin Priest, able to walk on rice paper without leaving a trail, but right now, he felt like a strutting rhinoceros, sure that his footfalls were betraying him for blocks in every direction. He slowed, straining to pull his muscles back under control. He wasn’t exactly Olympic material, but he could hold his own in soccer and basketball. He hated the stereotype of the skinny math whiz with zits and thick glasses. He liked to push the envelope. He liked to think of himself as a renaissance man, able to dodge any stereotype. He, he… he was getting caught up in visions of grandeur again. What was wrong with him tonight?
Glancing at his watch, he quickened the pace. Persistent thoughts of Antonio, among other things, nagged at him. What was his friend after? He had implied that a mystery in the Certus Grove building might be connected to the mystery of the symbol over his door. Hadn’t he claimed earlier that he bought the symbol on eBay? So, which version of the story was true? Why was he so interested in the seemingly hidden space above the Certus Grove? There had to be more than just hidden space in that attic. What?
He felt a pang of caution. He also felt something else: adrenaline, exhilaration. His pulse always quickened when there was a puzzle that needed solving. He wasn’t about to walk away.
He moved into a slow jog. Mom would probably be drumming her fingers on the steering wheel by now. On a good day, he might slide by with only an irritated look. On a bad day—well, just suffice it to say that he might end up out in the yard with his pure-bred Husky, Snowball.
>
As he sucked in another breath, about to push into a leisurely sprint, he noted someone standing under a streetlight ahead. He froze. The figure seemed familiar. His stomach did flip-flops. As he ducked behind the metal backing of a covered bus stop, he sneaked a quick glance around the corner of the bus stop. It was him—the man with the trench coat buttoned up to his neck! He recognized the thin, gaunt face and dark eyes. The man appeared to be actually flesh and blood. He stood tall, like a sentinel under the streetlight.
Willoughby eased away from the corner, trying to calm the sudden panic that welled up inside him. He stared at the man’s reflection in a shop window. Could the man see him as well? He didn’t think so. He noted a cab parked in a no-parking zone a few feet away, its engine idling quietly. Though it was parked expertly against the curb, he could see no driver. Had the tall man driven the taxi? Why would he leave the motor running?
Willoughby squinted to make out a red glow through the rolled-down window of the taxi. It was the fare meter. It took a long, straight glimpse at the taxi to read the current fare—$6.65. As Willoughby watched, the meter clicked to $6.66. For the third time that day, a shiver tingled up his spine. What an odd number sequence to see at that moment, one that was often associated with evil. He glanced up at the reflection of the man again. The tall figure stood unnaturally still. He seemed to be focused on something further down the street.
Willoughby pushed up against the cold steel of the bus stop, trying to meld with the shadows. This was the man he had seen earlier. It was the same eyes, the same wispy hair, the same trench-coat buttoned up to the neck. That could mean only one thing—his experience at the Corner Barber earlier had been real! He had seen a tear open out of thin air and then disappear again. What was it? Some sort of high-tech transport device? What had it been looking for at Antonio’s shop? Perhaps his perceptions had been somehow manipulated. Why? What were the glowing number strings about?
