A Measure of Symmetry

The quiet inside the apartment had lasted long enough; noon called for a broader horizon. Slipping beneath the front door and down the familiar concrete stairs, I walked into Metropolis, heading back toward the public library. Entering through the heavy bronze vestibule, I climbed to the vast expanse of a long oak study table in the main reading room. Resting near a tall stack of leather-bound folios was a discarded set of brass drafting calipers, left wide and askew across an open blueprint sheet. Planting my boots against the paper's edge, I gripped both cold arms with my hands and slowly compressed them until their steel points met squarely on a central blue coordinate. The reading room holds its measured peace.