Glenn Beck - The Overton Window

“Noah?”

“I was starting to worry you’d forgotten I was here.”

Molly took a deep breath and seemed to collect herself for a moment. “I need to ask you something.”

“Okay”

“If we hired you, your company, what would you tell us to do?”

He frowned a bit. “You mean if you and your mom hired us?”

“It’s more than just the two of us, you know that. A lot more.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What is it you want to accomplish again?”

“We want to save the country.”

“Oh. Okay. Is that all?”

“That’s where we start, isn’t it? With a clear objective.”

“That’s right.”

“So?”

“Okay. Let me think for a minute.”

Molly had become deadly serious; this wasn’t party talk. She didn’t take her eyes from his as she waited.

“I guess,” he said, “I’d begin by sitting down with all these different groups and trying to focus everyone on the things they agree on-the fundamentals. A platform, you know? Make it easy for people to understand what you’re about. Propose some real answers.”

“Give me an example.”

“I don’t know-start with the tax code, since your mom is so passionate about that. How about a set of specific spending cuts and a thirteen percent flat tax to start with? Get that ridiculous sixty-seven-thousand-page tax code down to four or five bullet points, and show exactly what effects it’ll have on trade, and employment, and the debt, and the future of the country. And I’m winging it here, but how about real immigration reform? The kind of policies that welcome people who want to come here for the right reasons, and succeed.

“Get the fear out of those big questions, and talk about a brighter future, you know? In our business we call it the elevator pitch: how you’d explain your whole outlook, features, and benefits if you had only a ten-floor elevator ride during which to get it across to a stranger. So start with a platform. At least that way they can start to speak with one voice occasionally. You have no political power otherwise.”

“And what next?”

He held up his hands. “Slow down for a minute.”

“No. What next?”

“Do you see that you’re maybe putting me on the spot a little here?” Noah tried to take a sip of his coffee, but it burned him. It was still much too hot to drink. “And what did you mean, save the country, by the way? Save it from what?”

She looked at him evenly. “You know what.”

“Oh, come on now, Molly. Please tell me you’re not really one of those people, I know you’re not-”

“I know there was a meeting at the office yesterday afternoon,” she said, lowering her voice but not her intensity. “I saw the guest list on the catering order. I know who was there. I know you were in it. And I think I know what it was about.”

“Okay, yes, big surprise, there was a meeting, but I wasn’t there for all of it. And do you want to know something else? I don’t even know what it was all about, so how could you?”

“Then let’s both find out.”

“What?”

“Prove me wrong. Let’s go right now and find out.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. We’ll go to the office right now, and you’ll show me that I’ve got nothing to worry about. If that’s the case then that’ll be the end of it.”

“You’re not listening to me, I said I can’t-”

“You would if you knew how important it was.”

“No, I wouldn’t. There are a lot of things I’d do for you, but I can’t do that.”

“When are you going to grow up, Noah? I know you’re not who your father is, but then the next question is, Who are you? It sounds to me like you knew the answer to that when you were in the fifth grade, but you’ve forgotten now that it’s time to be a man.”

“I am a man, Molly, but I’m not going to risk everything for nothing.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Her voice was tight and there were sudden tears in her eyes. “Do you never want to see me again? Because that’s what this means.”

Now they were starting to attract the attention of those nearby.

“That is so incredibly unfair. Did you even hear what you just said? I can’t believe you’d put me in a position like that.”

But he’d lost her already. She got up as he was speaking, turned from him without a word, and walked straight out the door.

Noah watched her through the glass and let himself hope for a few seconds that she’d have a change of heart and turn back into his waiting arms so all could be forgiven. But, just like falling in love with someone you’ve known only for a single day, those things really happened only in the movies.

She was going to leave him sitting there. She wasn’t coming back. By the time he’d decided what he had to do, Molly had all but disappeared into the river of weekend tourists and theatergoers flowing through the heart of Times Square.

“You must be out of your mind,” Noah said, under his breath. He was addressing himself directly.

Molly was right behind him, holding tight to his hand as he led her through the aisles and racks of designer skirts and blouses toward the store’s back rooms.

“You’re doing the right thing,” she whispered.

He’d elected to avoid the main lobby entrance at 500 Fifth Avenue; too many cameras there, not to mention the sign-in desk that would make a record of the weekend visit. A private elevator led to Arthur Gardner’s suite of offices on the twenty-first floor, and that was the way they’d be going in.

The elevator had originally been an auxiliary freight lift, largely unused until its luxury conversion when Doyle & Merchant established their New York offices here in the 1960s. There was only one wrinkle in the layout: the ground-floor entrance to this elevator had to be located on the next-door tenant’s property, which was currently a multilevel, tourist-trendy clothing store.

The employees of this shop were aware that well-dressed strangers might occasionally be seen entering and leaving through their employees-only swinging doors in the back. D &M paid the tenant a monthly fee for the easement, and executive assistants occasionally escorted the firm’s more reclusive clients into the agency by this odd, private route. The idea of a semisecret entrance added an extra bit of intrigue to the visit for some.

During normal business hours the protocol was simply to raise your company ID above your head and quietly proceed to the rear of the store, as the floor manager knowingly waved you on. Since an encoded swipe card and a restricted key were required to operate the elevator, no further checks were really necessary.

This was Saturday night, however, and the two of them were dressed more like college students than business executives. Consequently they received a good deal of extra scrutiny as they passed through, and the store’s rent-a-cop tracked their progress from a discreet distance, all the way down the back hallway and inside the elevator car. So much for keeping a low profile.

Noah swiped his card and the doors closed, then he inserted the stubby cylindrical key and turned the elevator’s panel switch to Enable. There was no vertical line of buttons to choose the floor with; this thing went only two places: all the way up and back down again. With the click of relays and a deep ascending hum the car set into motion.

He was silently watching the wall above the doors where the advancing floor numbers should have been when Molly stepped up to him, close.

“Thank you, Noah.”

“I’m not really speaking to you right now.”

She touched his chest and put a hand on his shoulder; he looked down into her eyes.