The Architect Read online

  The Architect

  Jerome Richard

  The following is a work of fiction. It s not an accurate portrayal of the city of Seattle. Neither is it inaccurate. The same goes for the story’s characters. Any resemblance to real people living and/or dead is purely coincidental.

  © 2014 Jerome Richard

  Smashwords edition

  The Architect

  Chapter 34

  “Has anyone seen Templeton Jones?”

  It was the first day of spring. The sun wiped away winter’s tears and the city looked forward to a new season. Yet, something was amiss. An odd buzz ran through downtown like an out-of tune violin string.

  It began shortly after nine o’clock in the office of Templeton Jones, AIA when his assistant, Freddy Grenninger, asked Marge the receptionist if Jones had returned yet. Freddy had made a rough sketch for the new arts complex they were going to propose and was anxious to get his boss’ reaction. “Have you heard from Templeton?”

  The receptionist shook her head. “And the vote is in two weeks.”

  “Where could he have gone?” Grenninger wondered.A UPS man put his package on the receptionist’s desk and said Jones might be in the café downstairs because it was very crowded when he passed, so Freddy went there. Not seeing his boss, he yelled in the general direction of the cashier, “Has anyone seen Templeton Jones?”

  A reporter for The Times heard him and when he got back to his office asked if anyone had heard anything about Templeton Jones lately. By mid-afternoon, Marge called his home number to see if he was there, but got only the answering machine:

  I'm not available right now. Please leave a message and I will return your call one way or another. Wait for the beep.

  Oddly, there was no beep.

  "Try his girlfriend," Grenninger suggested.

  "Which one?"

  "Berman."

  Arlene Berman took a taxi to the office and was yelling, “Is he dead?” before she even opened the door.

  “We don’t think so,” Marge said reassuringly.

  “Oh, God, it’s my fault,” Arlene said, slumping into the nearest chair.

  Freddy tried to reassure her. “He’s just taking some time off, maybe scouting the site for the new arts center,” he said. “Or he could be visiting that new convention center in Guatemala.”

  Don’t worry,” the receptionist said. “He always comes back.”

  Arlene accepted a tissue from Marge and blotted her eyes. As she left, she said, “Don’t tell the bastard I was here.”

  The phone rang. It was a reporter from the newspaper wanting to know what Jones was up to.

  Freddy said, “Tell him-- Tell him, the usual. Just scouting a location.”

  “What about the civic oval?” the reporter said. “Isn’t he going to campaign?”

  By late afternoon, rumors circulated like bills at the end of the month. Someone at a rival firm wanted to know if it was true he had retired. A former client heard Jones was on his way to Cambodia to design a new temple. A disc jockey called to ask if it were true that Jones was starting his own rock band. And a reporter from a New York paper sent an urgent e-mail asking confirmation that Jones was dead.

  1

  Templeton Jones had a way of suddenly being someplace, as if a wind brought him, or some previously invisible conglomeration of molecules unexpectedly assembled themselves and began to reflect light. Even his presence in Seattle was not generally known until he secured the commission for the biggest office building in town, beating out much more established architectural firms.

  “Who is this Jones?” Bob Crohn asked. He was the president of Mitkin Crohn Phillips & Associates, the city’s largest architectural firm, and he had called a staff meeting as soon as he heard about Jones’ commission. “Has anyone met him?”

  “I have,” answered Beverly Krim, one of the junior architects. “He was at the reception following the lecture on urban planning last month. If you were a woman you would remember him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  "He is tall with a shock of curly white hair that makes him look as if he is walking around with his head in a cloud. His hair must be prematurely white because his face is young, almost a baby face with wide brown eyes and a ski-jump nose. Hmm. Maybe he dies his hair. Does anyone dye their hair white? His lips are full. And he wore a blue pin-striped suit with a handkerchief in the pocket. Very dapper.”

  “You sound as if you’re in love. Did you talk to him?”

  Crohn, Phillips, and half the people in the office crowded around her.

  “We chatted a little. He has an accent, Boston perhaps, or English, as if he lived there when he was little. It’s quite charming. He asked me what I thought about downtown Seattle and I told him that I found it rather dull. He agreed and said some day he would change it. Just like that. As if he already had the commission.”

  Crohn looked about the conference room. His first idea was to send a woman, perhaps the student from the local architecture school who was interning, but he thought about the way Beverly Krim spoke about Jones and he decided to play it safe.

  “You,” he said, pointing at Roger Snodgrass, an apprentice who had only been with the firm for three weeks. “Go to this Jones’s office and see what’s going on.”

  “Now?”

  “No, yesterday,” Crohn said, ending the meeting.

  The office of Templeton Jones, AIA., was on the top floor of a sad looking building in the Pioneer Square section of the city. It looked as if it might once have been a small apartment house that was converted to offices when no more families could be found willing to live there. If he is going to change the city, Snodgrass thought as he entered the single elevator, he should start with his own office.

  There were three offices on the fifth floor. The Jones firm’s name was on one of them; the others were blank. Snodgrass opened the door with the name and found himself barely two feet from a desk behind which sat a gray-haired lady petting a calico cat. She welcomed him.

  Snodgrass looked around, expecting cubicles with working architects. There was a young man at a desk off to one side and lots of shelves full of books. Looking over the receptionist’s shoulder, he could glimpse the waterfront through the window. Doors at either end of the room apparently led to other offices.

  “Can I help you?” the gray-haired lady asked. The cat looked up as if curious about what he would say.

  “Is Mr. Jones here?”

  “He stepped out.”

  “When will he return?”

  “Oh, one never quite knows that. He just shows up. Can I help you?”

  Snodgrass was busy examining the room. On the rear wall, flanking the windows, were pictures of buildings presumably designed by Jones. A house with five gables fit for a country estate, what appeared to be a library all glass and brick and unfamiliar, an office building that cantilevered out over a small park, and a tower of some sort that disappeared off the top of the picture. On other walls were the usual books. To his right, next to a chair where a visitor might wait for Jones to show up, there were copies of Architectural Record and National Geographic. The young man pecking away at a computer keyboard paid him no attention and Snodgrass could not see the screen.

  “How long has Mr. Jones been here?”

  “Three years,” the receptionist said. “He was in the east before that. Are you here about a house?”

  “Well,” Snodgrass said, feeling behind him for the door handle, “I’m shopping around. Just trying to get acquainted. Thank you.”

  The receptionist asked if he would like to make an appointment, but Snodgrass demurred, mumbling that he would return at a better time.

  Back at Mitkin Crohn Phillips people gathered around Snodgrass, waiting for Crohn t
o come out of his office.

  “Well?” Crohn said.

  Snodgrass described Jones’ office, including the receptionist, the buildings in the pictures on the wall, and the magazines on the little table. He concluded with what seemed to him to be the only solid bit of information he had gleaned.

  “He’s been in Seattle two years. He was in the east before that.”

  “The east?” Crohn said. “You mean New York or the Far East?”

  Snodgrass looked at his shoes. “Gee, I didn’t think to ask. I just assumed she meant like New York.”

  “Swell! So this guy just snuck into town and began snatching up lucrative commissions. All right, folks, back to wor

  2

  Tuesday morning started out full of sunshine, but Jones had been in Seattle long enough to know that March was repertory weather season and conditions could change any number of times before night so he put on his raincoat and stuck his collapsible hat in the pocket before he patted the receptionist on her shoulder and said, “I’m going out, Marge.”

  “I can see that,” she said. “Where?”

  He closed the door behind him as she added, “When will you be back?”

  It was a call from Arlene Berman that took him away from the office. He met her his second week in town as he toured the Seattle Art Museum. When she called it often meant that she was lonely, but there was something in her voice this morning that suggested something else. Jones did not want to think about it. He stopped at Starbucks for a double tall skinny latte and a croissant and then took a cab to her condominium in the First Hill neighborhood.

  Arlene was still wearing her robe, a green, silky garment that came down to mid-thigh; no pajama was visible below that. Her chestnut hair cascaded half-way down her back and she stared at him with eyes the color of almonds.

  “I have something to show you,” she said.

  For a moment he thought she was going to fling open her robe, but he put that thought away, knowing it would come later, and watched as she retreated to the bathroom and came back with a little stick in her hand. The tip was pink.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said softly.

  “But you said you were on the pill.”

  “I stopped last month.”

  “Without telling me?” He sat down on the couch and ran his long fingers through his mane of white hair. “Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted a child.”

  “You wanted me!” He stood up, ready to leave.

  “Yes,” she said. “I wanted a family.”

  “You could have asked me. I’m not ready for that.”

  She sat down and stared at her stomach.

  Jones kneeled beside her and put his hand over her womb, rubbing gently as if a genie might be inside.

  “Oh, no. You will make a good mother.”

  Arlene put her hand on his. “And will you be its father?”

  “You mean, will I marry you? You know I can’t. There’s Sarah.”

  Sarah was his wife whom he left back east more than a dozen years ago. He told Arlene about her after the first time they slept together. “Just so you know,” he said. He explained that neither he nor Sarah were inclined to get a divorce (“Or perhaps we’re just too lazy.”) but that it didn’t matter because he would not be marrying again in any case.

  “There’s Sarah, but there is also Arlene. We could just live together, the three of us.”

  “You shouldn’t have sprung this on me. Look, I will continue to see you and I will support the child.”

  “And will you love me?”

  She began to weep. Jones took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and patted her cheeks. I should have stuck to buildings, he thought. He put his arm around Arlene. “I do love you in my fashion.”

  “Why don’t I tell you to get the hell out?”

  “Because my fashion is better than anyone else’s.”

  “You bastard.” But she said it softly and laughed a little.

  “That’s the spirit.”

  He lifted her hair and kissed the back of her neck.

  Arlene walked slowly to the bedroom, dropping her bathrobe on the way. Jones admired the hourglass shape of her body and the twin loaves of her ass. He watched her climb into bed before he undressed himself and joined her.

  The noontime bells of St. James Cathedral woke them up. She rolled over to face him and pulled his hand down to her crotch, but Jones said he had to get to work. He was in and out of the shower before she got dressed.

  “Do you want some lunch?” she asked.

  “Not this time. Do you need any money?”

  “Not yet.”

  Jones put on his clothes, kissed Arlene on the cheek, and left.

  3

  The architecture critic for the Seattle Sun stood before Jones’ newest creation, a condominium overlooking Puget Sound. It was called Belissimo and the first thing the critic noticed was that it blocked the view of residents in an older condominium, but that, he wrote in his notes, was the chance you took when you bought space in a building with an empty lot between you and the water.

  Anthony Taller walked around to the side of the building, admiring as he did so the clever use of pre-cast brick facades and arched windows. The balconies with their curved railings had a European flair and even from the street he could see greenery on the roof, suggesting a little park-like atmosphere there. He also liked the variety of levels produced by indenting some vertical stacks and extending the top floor.

  A doorman patrolled the main entrance. Taller asked for permission to go inside the building to look at the courtyard visible through the great glass doors. After showing his press card, he signed a log and went in. He heard the doorman say, “You can’t be too careful these days.”

  In the courtyard, Taller sat on one of the stone benches and admired the simplicity of the fountain, a single jet of water shooting up thirty or forty feet in the air as if reaching for the sky. A watery symbol of man’s ambitions and limitations, he wrote in his notepad.

  The click-clack of a woman’s high-heel shoes against the cement walk pierced his concentration. He looked up and saw Millicent Mondelay, a freelance architecture critic who often wrote for a local magazine. He long believed that she was after his more steady job and that her ambition accounted for the harsh tone of her articles. Still, there was something about her he admired. It wasn’t her looks, he thought, as she took a seat beside him. She was tall and a bit lumpy, as if someone had stuffed her carelessly into her dress. Short, straw-blond hair seemed resigned to lie on top of her head, reaching a few tentacles down towards her green eyes. It was her smile, he thought. It said, life is just a game—enjoy!

  “Hello, Milly. What do you think?” He waved his hand around to indicate the condos.

  She took a camera out of her purse and snapped a picture of the fountain.

  “Jones’ usual tawdry work. What is that,” she asked, pointing at the fountain she had just photographed, “someone pissing at the sky? And what a hodge-podge of design elements. Why can’t he make up his mind? You don’t like it, do you?”

  Taller wondered if she was trying to trap him. She had done that once before, disparaging an office building so vehemently that he reconsidered his own opinion and wrote a critical piece, only to read her article praising it. The building went on to win an architectural prize.

  “Well, I’ve certainly seen worse,” he said. “What do you know about this Jones fellow?”

  “He’s something of a mystery. Came from the east four or five years ago, I understand. He apparently designed some interesting buildings back there, but the rumor I heard was that he couldn’t get any more work because his biggest project didn’t work too well. It was cramped, or hard to service, or something. What do you know about him?”

  “Not much. He’s ambitious. I heard he has talked about completely redoing downtown, but right now he works out of a shoddy office building in Pioneer Square. He’s made a splash here with that church, St. Thomas on
the Hill. Very classical. What’s really interesting is that they say he’s a Jew.”

  “With a name like Jones?”

  “Well, he might have changed it. Anyway, it’s just a rumor. I hate his office building for Compass Insurance, but it does show a large range in style from the church.”

  “You don’t like it because it cut off the view from your newspaper offices.”

  “That too, but the building is just too eccentric for my taste. I heard the people working in it don’t like it either.”

  “It’s his best work. I love the way the multiple joined towers suggest a northwest forest. And if it keeps you guys from gazing out the window instead of working, so much the better.”

  Taller got up to leave. He looked around the courtyard again. The different surfaces which before suggested a European town now seemed arbitrary. The fountain, now that he thought about it, lacked imagination.

  “See you around.”

  Millicent stood up and came close enough for a kiss before she turned and walked away. Her high heels tapped out the cadence of her stride.

  Taller watched her go. You’re not built so well yourself, he thought. Still, he wondered what it would be like to get his hand on that ass.

  4

  One at a time, the four members of the city’s Planning Committee drifted into the meeting room on the third floor of City Hall. Their first order of business was to arrange in order of priority the steps towards building a new convention center. One of the members thought funding should come first; another wanted to begin with a concept of what the building should look like. The dean of the school of architecture, argued for selecting an architect and leaving the design up to him. Or her, corrected the representative from the city council.

  “How can we design a concept if we don’t have a budget?” asked the representative from the Chamber of Commerce?”