The Architect

by Jerome Richard

  "Even if it turns out that we cannot determine the name of that pioneering miner, the house would still have historic value as having been the kind of abode of such a one whose vision and determination helped turn our once modest town into the metropolis of the Northwest. After all, buildings can have sociological meanings even without specific historical information. People need an attachment to the past for their mental health."

  A dozen or so people who had been passing through the park stopped to listen, attracted by the signs that read Save Our Seattle carried by two members of the Association of Historical Preservationists. A murmur rippled through the small crowd. Snyder heard it. He stopped speaking. People were asking each other: "What is he talking about?"

  "I'll tell you what I'm talking about," Snyder yelled. "I am talking about the sanity of people whose mental health is anchored to the past. I'm not talking about the here-today-gone-tomorrow people, the just-passing-through people, the have-a-nice-day people. I am talking about people who have a sense of place. Demolishing a neighborhood can be traumatic for people who are familiar with those buildings." His voice rising, Snyder yelled, "Destroying an historic building or neighborhood in the name of urban renewal can negatively impact the psychological well-being of people like me!"

  Some people began to boo which only made Snyder yell louder.

  "I happen to like old, run-down neighborhoods. They have a sense of character. Look around you. You call this a park? You call this a neighborhood? Let that ego-maniac Jones tear down the old neighborhood south of Lake Union and this is what you'll get." His hand swept out, indicating the shopping mall, the bland store-fronts, and the little park in which he was standing. "So what if those buildings in south Lake Union are not very old. So what if nothing more historic than the beginning of one man's journey to the Far North to search for gold is the only thing that happened there. History is just a small part of historic preservation. There are sociological, environmental, and economic reasons to preserve that neighborhood."

  In the end he was speaking to the two people with Save Our Seattle signs, and a woman with a small boy tugging at her hand. The people with the signs applauded. One of them began to circulate a petition attached to a clipboard. The woman signed it. He then went off in search of other signers.

  26

  Arlene heard the familiar jingle for the used car commercial and wondered what she had been watching. She turned the television off. It was after midnight and Jones had not shown up. He had called in the afternoon to ask if she would be home. Now she had spent the last hour wondering how she had come to this, sitting alone in front of a television set on a Saturday night waiting for a man she loved but who did not love her.

  Arlene Berman, forty-two years old, was married when she was twenty-one and divorced at twenty-six after her husband left her for a twenty-two year old back-up singer. The only contact she had with him was a monthly alimony check. When that was no longer enough to cover her expenses, she got a part-time job at the Seattle Art Museum where she did illustrations for brochures. That's where she met Jones. She was standing in front of Portrait of Anne Page, an 1887 painting by Dennis Miller Bunker, and she was considering it for a brochure on Museum Portraits when someone behind her said, "She looks like you."

  Anne Page, according to the artist, had a strong, spoon-shaped face, brown hair and eyes, and a serene look of self-confidence. Arlene turned and saw a tall man with a mane of white hair looking over her shoulder at the painting with a gaze so intense he might have had x-ray vision.

  "How do you know?" she said. "You're standing behind me."

  "I saw you earlier in the gift shop."

  With that, he did look at her and she felt a little queasy. Arlene never thought of herself as beautiful and certainly not self-confident. She patted her hair which indeed was arranged very much like Ann Page's hairdo.

  "I work here," she said, wondering immediately why she said that. "But not in the gift shop. I must have been checking the brochures. I design them." She wished she had one with her to show him.

  "Would you have dinner with me this evening?" His voice was deep and he made no attempt to keep it down. A woman farther down the gallery was watching, but turned away when he looked at her.

  "This is rather sudden," Arlene said.

  "All right."

  He walked away to the next room and then slowly approached her again.

  "Would…you…have…dinner…with…me..tonight?"

  Arlene laughed. The other woman in the gallery laughed too.

  "Yes," she said, wondering if that made her sound too easy. "What time?"

  "Seven o'clock?"

  "There's a nice restaurant here in the Museum. How about there?" She would feel safe there.

  "Excellent. Shall I meet you there or come to where you live?"

  Does he know where I live? She felt just a little bit scared. "There,” she said. “I have to get back to work now."

  It was a rainy evening. She took a bus back to the museum and got there exactly at seven. He was not yet there and she realized for the first time that she did not know his name and so could not ask if he had reserved a table. She took a seat at the bar, ordered a martini, and turned to face the entrance, hoping this was not some cruel joke, or a date she only imagined.

  She finished her drink and got up to leave when she saw him hurrying down the street under a huge black umbrella. He saw her as soon as entered the restaurant, waved, and spoke to the maitre de rather longer than she thought it should take to secure a table, and then motioned for her to join him at a table for two by the window.

  "Sorry I'm late," he said. "I was working on a church."

  "Oh, are you a minister?" Her voice gave away her disappointment.

  "No, on a church, not in one. I'm an architect. By the way, the name is Jones. Templeton Jones. The church committee has lots of ideas, but they are not all compatible. I told them I was in no hurry. That was probably a mistake."

  "Arlene Berman."

  "I know. I asked at the office after we met this afternoon."

  The maitre de brought over a bottle of sparkling wine, and as they raised their glasses, Jones said, "To you, Arlene."

  She liked the way he said her name. He stretched out the second syllable just a bit and his voice dropped, making the name sound warm and sexy.

  He described some of the buildings he had created; she showed him a brochure she had designed. He told her he was married but separated; she mentioned that she was divorced. He said he didn't like to cook; she said she was a good cook and he would have to come to dinner sometime, and felt tricked into saying it.

  After dinner he called a taxi. On the way back to her place she wrestled with whether or not to invite him in, deciding just as they pulled up to her condo that she would ask him in but would definitely not sleep with him that night. At the front door he said good night and kissed her cheek even as her eyes were closed and her lips puckered.

  26

  The members of the City Council took their seats at the long, curved podium and looked out at the half dozen people in the audience. "Is this on?" council president Mittingale asked, tapping the microphone. She then called the meeting to order.

  “I was downtown yesterday," councilmember Wellington said, "and there was some kind of rally about saving Seattle. What was that about?"

  "We're here to discuss the budget," the council president said. She was a middle-aged woman of some breadth, a former school teacher who won her seat on the council three terms earlier when her opponent was arrested on a DUI a week before the election. Sensing, as always, that her re-election was in jeopardy, she did not like interruptions. "I move to adopt."

  "I was only asking what the rally was about," Wellington persisted. "If our city is in some kind of danger, we ought to know."

  "It was in the paper," the president said. "Is there a second?"

  "Wait a second," councilmember Stigpen said. "Wellington here has a point. If our city is in danger, s
houldn't we be discussing it?"

  A man in the third row put down his newspaper and shouted, "We better discuss it before it's too late!"

  Another man stood up and said, "What about the budget?"

  The council president banged her gavel and called for order.

  Wellington raised his hand. The council president looked the other way, but Stigpen pulled at her sleeve and told her that Wellington wanted to say something. With a sigh that could have extinguished a small fire, she called on Wellington.

  "I move we suspend the agenda and discuss this danger to the city."

  "Second," the man with the newspaper said.

  "You are out of order," the president shouted over the noise of her hammering gavel.

  "I'll second it," Stigpen said.

  The president sighed again and called for discussion. Councilmember Murnoff, a former newspaperman, began to describe Jones' proposal, but he was interrupted by Constance Abernathy, the council secretary, who waved a sheaf of papers in the air.

  "That's the proposal the Planning Committee referred to the City Council. I meant to give it to the President, but I was so busy what with answering queries from council members and showing visitors around City Hall and—"

  "That's enough," the council president said, reaching over the podium for the papers. She glanced through them, then went back and started reading again from the beginning. The other council members leaned towards her and waited for her to speak.

  "I think this is the proposal that crazy architect made that started a riot in Pioneer Square," she said. "He wants to build a huge boulevard between downtown and Lake Union."

  "Do you know what that would cost?" exclaimed councilmember Herbst who was serving his sixth term in office and always ran on a platform of saving the city money.

  “It would make downtown more attractive,” Mittingale said, adding that she was just thinking out loud.

  Several council members began speaking at once. Finally, a motion was made and passed to refer the matter back to the Planning Committee.

  As the council adjourned, a man in the audience shouted, "I came to hear about the budget."

  27

  When Marge entered the office at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, the lights were already on. She stood in the doorway and looked around. The office did not seem to have been burgled so she went in and soon found Jones asleep at his desk, the calico cat purring softly beside him. She tiptoed back to the reception area and put the coffee on.

  “I heard you,” Jones shouted. “Bring me a coffee as soon as it’s ready.”

  When she returned to his office with the coffee, she noticed a large sheet of butcher paper pinned to the wall next to his desk.

  “What do you think?” Jones asked.

  She put the coffee down and looked closer at the drawing. Hand-drawn with a soft black pencil were a large oval with indications of trees and a small pond in the middle and tables, chairs, and buildings along the side. A large boulevard led into the oval, and a smaller avenue led out of it at the other end.

  “I haven’t decided which buildings to put where yet,” Jones said, “but there will definitely be a technology museum and an art museum, a café and coffee shop, a restaurant, perhaps a small specialty clothing store, and a stage for summer concerts. Marge glanced back at him. “The city already has an art museum,” she said.

  “Have you seen it? An art museum should be a work of art.”

  “What about the new convention center?” Marge asked.

  Jones studied his sketch and then pointed to a spot off to the side of the oval.

  “Perhaps here,” he said, making a little cross on the spot. “We don’t want thousands of people in funny hats tramping through the civic center.”

  Marge studied the sketch. “Is this instead of your boulevard?”

  “It’s in addition to it. It’s something this city needs, a grand civic center!”

  “Oh,” Marge said.

  The telephone rang and she left to answer it, but Jones seemed not to notice. “I would like to add a small branch library or an out-of-town newspaper and magazine stand. Perhaps a kiosk in the middle of the oval.”

  Marge’s voice penetrated his thoughts.

  “It’s a Ms. Millicent Mondelay,” she yelled. “Do you want to talk to her?”

  With his eyes still on the diagram, Jones picked up his desk phone.

  “What can I do for you Ms. Mondelay?”

  She wanted to know more about his proposed boulevard. “I want to do a feature article,” she breathed into the receiver. Then she repeated, “A feature article. Not just about the boulevard, but about you, Templeton Jones, your background, your training, your dreams,” she said, managing to give dreams two syllables.

  “Have we met?” Jones asked. Something about the way she spoke sounded familiar.

  “You don’t remember? After your lecture? We had a drink and talked.” No one else I’ve met, she thought, has ever forgotten me. Somehow, that made Jones all the more intriguing.

  A hazy picture of a woman with hair blond to within half an inch of her scalp whose good looks were being propped up by make-up and, probably, Botox injections appeared to him. Then his eyes wandered to where a framed article about his proposal for a new boulevard hung on the wall.

  “Mondelay, did you say?”

  “Millie.”

  Jones stood up to take a closer look at the article.

  “You wrote an article that said my proposed boulevard was bizarre.”

  “I meant bizarre in a good way,” she tried. “You know, different, interesting. Anyway, I would love to learn more about it. Can we get together?”

  I love a liar, Jones thought. He checked his calendar. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Oh, how about coffee late this afternoon. I know a nice little coffee shop near my place.” She gave him the address.

  Jones worked some more on his civic center and then handed it to Freddy Grenninger to create a power point presentation. After lunch he studied an announcement for a competition to design a new capitol building in Peru and then saw it was time to meet Ms. Mondelay.

  As she began asking him questions about his career, it all came back to him. “Haven’t we done this once before? I seem to remember a bar, a jazz trio, and you asking me these same questions.”

  “Mimosas,” Millicent said.

  “What?”

  “I had too many mimosas and could not read my notes the next day.” She could not even remember if she took notes, but it didn’t matter, she had been thinking about him ever since.

  “Well, then, let’s stick to coffee this time,” he said, thinking perhaps a mimosa or two would speed things up. “I’ll meet you at four.”

  It was one of those bright, early December afternoons with a breeze blowing in from the bay. She was sitting at an outdoor table when he arrived. A light green jacket, the color of her eyes, was open, showing a darker green blouse with a deep V-shaped cut half way to her navel. Jones sat opposite her and after placing his order proceeded to give her the condensed version of his life. He described growing up in a small town in North Dakota and coming to New York on a scholarship to Columbia where he was overwhelmed by the beautiful (and not so beautiful) buildings he saw and switched his ambition from poetry to architecture. Millicent took notes at a furious pace, knowing she would not be able to read most of them but certain that she could remember every word.

  At the table behind Millicent a young college student pecked away at her laptop. He could see her face only when she lifted it above the screen; when she did their eyes met until she ducked back to her computer. Only her canary yellow hair showed, but he could put the rest of her lollipop face and blue eyes to it as he began to describe his vision of a new Seattle.

  Millicent’s own eyes widened as she listened. She stopped taking notes and regarded Jones with awe. This was revolutionary!

  Jones stopped talking. It was premature, he decided, to talk about his city center oval
. One more look at the student as she looked up from the laptop and then quickly down again and Jones said: “That’s enough. Let’s go.”

  “I do want to hear more about your new Seattle,” she said. “What will happen to the old Seattle?” Her pen wavered in her hand.

  “Well, that’s as far as I have thought it out. Let’s go.”

  He was up most of the night and felt he deserved the rest of the day off. Besides, a little afternoon delight sounded appealing. He was beginning to picture her lying on her bed, a little bit drunk, her arms flung over her head as she welcomed him.

  “Go? Go where?”

  “Your place.”

  She did not like the feeling of being rushed. In a small act of rebellion she took her time putting her notebook and pen back in her tote. Jones got up and stood behind her as if he would pull the chair out from under her if she did not hurry.

  “All right.” On the way to her condo She wondered if she had the makings of a cocktail. Gin, bourbon, scotch, some wine, she could not remember what kind, or whether there was vermouth to make a martini.

  “Please excuse the mess,” she said just before she unlocked the door. She had spent the time since he agreed to meet her picking up newspapers and magazines, emptying coffee cups and plates of half-eaten pastries. While she examined the contents of her liquor cabinet, Jones went directly to the cd player and put on a Leonard Cohen disc.

  “Martini, Manhattan, or Mimosa?” Millicent asked. “I specialize in M cocktails because those are my initials too. How about a Mimosa?”

  “I’ll take Manhattan.”

  He shrugged when she merely said okay and went about mixing the drinks. The walls of her living room were papered to resemble a birch forest. The coffee table sat on a faux bearskin rug in front of a leather couch. The thick carpet depicted wildflowers. A painting of a mountain range hung on one wall and one of a meadow with geese rising on another. She saw him examining the room as she brought the drinks.

  “I like nature,” she said.