By mid February his absence was proving an embarrassment to the US campaign. Trimble decided to confront him at his office.
“Where is Jones?” she shouted, barging into the office on a Monday morning in hopes of ambushing him.
Marge recognized her from appearances on television, but decided to play naïve.
“And you are...?” she said, the lilt in her voice expressing infuriating innocence.
“Who am I?” For a moment she seemed to forget. “I am Elizabeth Trimble. City Council member. Chair of the Planning Committee. Co-designer of the Civic Oval! Where is he?”
“Mr. Jones is not in right now.”
Trimble’s face turned red. She raised her hands as if invoking heaven’s help.
“This is important. We need him. US needs him. It’s his damn project.” She leaned over Marge’s desk and demanded to know when Jones would be in.
“He didn’t say,” Marge calmly replied. “He is on vacation. Would you like to speak to his assistant, Mr. Grenninger?”
“ON VACATION? WHERE?”
“He didn’t say.”
Trimble left the office, flapping her arms like a bird desperate to take flight.
36
With the referendum trailing slightly in the polls at the end of March, the US campaign set up a temporary tower at Westlake Park with a searchlight on top, the beam almost reaching the Space Needle. Angry public reaction caused them to dismantle it the next week. NOT handed out postcards with a picture of downtown Seattle taken in the early Fifties. The photo was labeled the Good Old Days, and the slogan on the other side of the card proclaimed: “GOD says NOT to the civic oval.”
So many people called Templeton Jones, AIA asking for the architect that Marge changed the answering machine message to say that he was on vacation, but she could not keep people from barging into the office demanding to see him. A reporter for the local alternative paper ignored her and went through the office looking for him. Finally she told the staff to take a leave and she would call them when Jones returned. If he returns, she thought as she locked the door.
On April 1 Trimble and Syd Snyder debated the proposed civic oval on a local television channel. She showed the video of the oval with the animated little girl playing in the sand box and extolled the fresh look it would give Seattle, bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city. Snyder said downtown was already crowded and building the oval would be too expensive. Trimble countered that if costs exceeded estimates the city could always sell naming rights to the site. Polls continued to show a close vote with a large number of undecided.
A fine drizzle enveloped the city on election day. With all voting now done by mail, only the pro and con rallies at the site of the proposed oval stirred any excitement. Police had to keep the two groups apart. By evening the drizzle had turned into a steady rain. Trimble and Snyder shook hands. “I’ll bet Jones, wherever he is, is looking forward to the result,” Snyder said.
“I’ll bet he is,” Trimble replied.
On the afternoon of the election in Seattle, Templeton Jones was sitting at a café in the Plaza San Martín in Lima, Peru. Two empty café solo cups were on the table. He waved away the waiter who asked if he wanted another and continued to draw on the sketch pad he held on his lap. Jones was making revisions to his proposed capitol building. He wanted to add slanted windows with solar panels in the upper half and contemplated how to reconcile them with the classical style of the present government buildings.
At the next table a woman had turned away from the sun. He glanced at her occasionally and several times their eyes met. Her straight, shoulder length hair was licorice black and her face intimated a certain nobility, whether conquistador or Inca he could not decide. When it was apparent that whomever she was waiting for would not arrive, he leaned over and asked, “¿Habla inglés?”
“Sí,” she replied.
He pulled his table a little closer to hers and introduced himself. Her name was Julia Cisneros and she owned a travel agency in Lima. They talked about Peru and he showed her his sketch. Julia was impressed. She had been to the United States and wondered if she had seen other buildings he had designed.
“Can I buy you dinner?” he asked.
She said yes.
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