Catie Disabato - The Ghost Network

Berliner checked in with Kraus during his weekly prison visits. She agreed with Berliner that The Ghost Network seemed like an exercise in futility. She encouraged him to keep fighting with Molly, and to explore other avenues without her when she was out of town. Molly’s rising fame troubled Kraus. She worried about the conflicts in being both a Situationist and a pop star.

In the meantime, Molly Metropolis prepared for war with the dancers. She bought the building on Armitage and Racine and replaced the New Situationists’ security door with a newer, thicker, more secure model. aaShe tried to get Berliner to reengage with The Ghost Network. He wouldn’t, so she spent hours alone with her giant composite map.

On Molly Metropolis’s final day in Chicago, Berliner was baffled by her mood. Over breakfast in her Peninsula Hotel suite, instead of arguing about The Ghost Network, she told Berliner tour stories of broken animatronic costumes and dancers’ lovers’ quarrels. Then she impulsively suggested visiting the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). Berliner asked to join her at the museum, expecting her to say no. As she’d grown in popularity, her SDFC handlers had become more wary about Molly appearing in public with a “known terrorist.” Instead of refusing, Molly embraced Berliner and told him she was so happy he asked to come along.

She roused the rest of her friends and security entourage and drove her little convertible to the museum. She walked through the galleries wistfully, brushing her fingers across the molding on the doorframe as if savoring the texture. She signed autographs without a hint of exhaustion or annoyance. She wore a black veil, a neon purple shirt, and a pair of neon orange pumps by shoe designers DSquared2, with a white wooden heel carved into letters. Her left shoe said EAT and her right shoe said POP.

Berliner blended in with the rest of her small entourage; even with all the scrutiny the museum trip eventually received, no publication or gossip blog reported that Molly Metropolis had been gallivanting around with a member of the New Situationists just before her disappearance. According to Berliner, Molly Metropolis loved the silence and stillness of museums. She loved looking at a piece of art hung or placed against an unscuffed white wall. She loved installation pieces, because they felt truly ephemeral, unable to be captured or copied. She once told Berliner that she treated her naked body like the white walls of an art museum and her clothing like the art hung on those walls.

In that way, Molly lived in opposition to the Situationists, who abhorred the stiffness of museums’ “climate-controlled art” and expelled all their artists for being artists. The art world, Debord argued, participated in a capitalist system that treated art like commodities and sold them for money; art museums were big players in the Society of the Spectacle. The artists with the most recognizable or trendy “names” would fetch the highest prices regardless of the quality or emotional significance of the art they produced. All creation of art was tainted by this system, Debord insisted. Art was complacent, as were the artists.

Debord had once wanted to infiltrate the art world, but soured on the idea of changing the system because he never had the power to do so; Molly, at the apex of her career, had the power to change popular culture. Top 40 radio didn’t play singles that sounded like her synth-infused tracks before Molly released “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas).” Now, despite her disappearance (or perhaps partially because of it), Molly’s sound remains en vogue . bbIf Debord had been her judge, Molly would’ve been ejected from the Situationist International.

Berliner and Molly were both delirious from the power she wielded as a cultural force. Imagine spending years following the path of men and women you deeply admired, only to realize you were coming close to eclipsing them. Imagine lifting your heroes onto your shoulders; imagine how powerful and strong you would feel.

After the museum visit, Berliner remembers Molly hugging him, a goodbye hug he recognized in hindsight. She lied to Berliner, telling him she needed to go have a phone meeting with a Swedish producer named Michael M. about tracks for her new album. She left in her car, alone. Berliner was probably the last of her friends to see her before she was gone.

After Molly Metropolis disappeared, Berliner sunk into the underground rooms of the Urban Planning Committee’s headquarters, as he had done after the subway bombings. He tried to figure out if Molly had left of her own volition and, if so, where she had gone. Berliner was terrified that Ali, Peaches, and their New Society had abducted her. He went as far as searching the New Society’s headquarters.

All the threads intersected in the anxious days right after Molly’s disappearance. Ali and Peaches immediately ransacked Molly’s abandoned hotel room — they knew Molly had found something, and believed the key to finding it themselves was in her notebook. They didn’t find the notes, but they did leave the mess Nix and Taer found when they packed Molly’s belongings several days later. At the same time, Berliner suspected Davis was involved with the New Society and wanted to test his theory, so when Nix and Taer contacted Berliner about the notebook, Berliner told Davis they had called. Berliner and Davis discussed Nix and Taer over drinks in a trendy bar called the Violet Hour. They speculated that Nix had wanted to keep it as a memento of her time with Molly. Then Berliner excused himself to use the bathroom and hid behind an adjacent accent wall. He overheard Davis call Ali to relay the whereabouts of the notebook. Betrayed, Berliner abruptly cut ties with Davis. He left the bar without saying goodbye, immediately canceled his iPhone plan and switched to a burner cell phone, and retreated to the New Situationist headquarters. He decided not to meet Taer and Nix.

While Berliner retreated and Taer and Nix waited for him at Redfish, Peaches sent Casares to break into Taer’s apartment. Casares was skinny, earnest, and gullible. Besides a slightly cleft lip, he was attractive and wore a sleeve of faded tattoos well. Casares excelled at intricate, difficult tasks, like picking locks, and he was the most loyal of all Ali and Peaches’s followers. Tasked with finding Molly’s notebook at any cost, Casares waited for Taer, Nix, and Taer’s roommate to leave the apartment, and easily broke through Taer’s ancient lock.

Inside the apartment, Casares couldn’t find anything pertaining to Molly, so he left. Peaches and Ali devised a new plan; they decided the easiest way to find Berliner was to let Nix and Taer do the searching for them. Then they could focus their own efforts on reconstructing The Ghost Network, without having to split focus. Ali figured they’d have to give Taer the tool the New Society had in their possession, so she gave Casares the sketchpad and gun they had taken from Berliner. Later that evening, Casares broke into Taer’s apartment again, got his head smacked, and purposely dropped the gun and the sketchpad to frame Berliner. cc

When Taer and Nix visited Michigan, Davis surreptitiously texted Ali to ask what she should say to them. Ali and Peaches suspected Berliner was hiding out in the Urban Planning Committee’s main headquarters. They knew if they found the right building, they would have both Berliner and The Ghost Network. The dancers told Davis to help Taer and Nix look for it, whatever way she could, hoping that Metro’s former assistant could figure out Berliner’s map for them. They waited for Taer and Nix to find their way through the snow.

* I’m not 100 percent certain where Cyrus gathered the information on these events. Kraus gave him some secondhand information, Berliner told him a few relevant stories — and when I asked Berliner to read these pages, he said they were basically right. But I can’t confirm his original source. — CD