by Jayne Joso
Tom jumped a little as Gaia came back in.
“Sorry Tom, still rather jittery, hey? Just sit yourself down, I’ll pour some of this and you tell me what you want.”
“Wh-what?”
Gaia had seen that bemused expression before, it made her smile.
“Do wh-at?” he asked again nervously.
She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand, gee that was cute, he thought. Um…
“OK, don’t try to speak, here, drink this,” she passed him a glass of whiskey.
“Thanks, you’re super kind.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Think back to when I fainted on you that time…” he already had, he remembered it exactly. It had been a very big deal to him. Carrying the widow to her place; taking the keys from her pocket; taking off some of her things, though careful not to remove too many, as that would have been improper; placing her on the bed; having her drink some water; smoothing those beautiful loose curls from her face… letting her rest up some, then returning later to check she was OK, and fumbling to make his very first real coffee, hell that wasn’t so difficult after all – and though connected to Charles’ passing away, this had settled itself as a beautiful memory.
“So what do you want?” Gaia’s words slightly startled him.
“Uh… oh, oh yeah, music, music. Don’t know what’s wrong with my head, a little giddy I guess. You got a great collection here.”
“That’s only the start of it, the rest is up in the other units.”
Tom felt a slight tingling sensation, something he wasn’t accustomed to around other women, women who weren’t Cara, Cara or the voluptuous Fluffy-Cream-Fairy in the cake commercial, she was real sexy. Great hips, beautiful bosoms, super lips. He felt himself colour, he sank the whiskey and looked across at the bottle to distract his too-darn-dirty-mind. He started to wish he was a Catholic, hell, even a heathen needs to confess from time to time. Gaia ain’t even my type, ain’t even got that much flesh on her bones, and biggest of all, she’s a wid-ow! What’s happening to me?
“So have you decided? We must have just about anything and everything.”
“Gui-tar, wonder if you have any Wes Mont-gom-ery?”
“Oh, I’m sure we do, let’s have a look. And let me get you another whiskey, looks as though it’s putting the colour back in your cheeks.”
“No kidding.” He blushed again, now afraid of his own thoughts and losing control of the words circling his brain. He clutched at the refilled whiskey tumbler, some weight in those glasses, and that was some measure of whiskey, fine stuff too.
As the Wes Montgomery found its way from hidden speakers, Tom felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck and a desperate cold shiver. Then he began to sweat.
“What is it, what’s wrong?” cooed Gaia softly, moving close to him.
“My, my gui.. my gui-tar, my guitar, oh,” he sobbed into her breast.
“Dear dear me, is it about your baby, is it Perry, is it an anniversary?” Was the woman deaf? Through a mix of emotions, comprising: grief at the destruction of the other love, grief and pain at the mention and loss of baby Perry, and then saturated in guilt that his main concern and sadness right now related to a musical instrument and not his child, he let out a pained, “It’s my GUITAR!”
Gaia pulled back, she brushed away the fresh tears that lay on the surface of her sweater, “Your guitar,” she turned the music off, “I don’t understand?”
“Well it’s the guitar, which also means it’s about Perry too, and…”
“Why don’t you tell me the whole story, do you think that might help, hey?” she passed him some kitchen towel to mop up his tears.
He told her the whole story, even about buying Poochi the pit bull in the first place, and how they were gonna form a band, how long and hard he’d had to save up to buy a decent gui-tar, and then the losses, first Perry, then Poochi, and finally his other love. What he didn’t tell her was the part that involved Cara – oh he mentioned her, but only as a fantasy Super-Mom character. Loyalty, it’s practically a disease in some people. In any case, if he’d been totally frank, he’d have to tell her who really bought the pyjamas, explain ‘why’, explain ‘how’, explain about opening her mail! Shit! It was never ending! Them Catholics had it good. I ain’t never gonna be able to get the whole-entire thing off my chest. Not ever. He explained the demolished guitar as an accident involving a reversing mail van. He was short of time, it was all he could think of, half cut with whiskey and thinking on his butt, so to speak. And it left him feeling even more guilty. His chest felt tight, thank heaven for whiskey, he drank down another in one huge gulp.
By now, Gaia was also close to tears, she needed to smoke, Tom didn’t mind though he didn’t like cigarettes himself. They both drank down another hefty shot of whiskey each, and brought their emotions to a comfortable state of warm inebriated numbness. “Tickles your lips does this whiskey, good stuff,” said Tom.
“Yes, I don’t know where I’d have been without it, well that and the kindness of a few, very special people.” She smiled at him.
“Me?” he sounded alarmed, as though he’d been found out.
“Yes, you, what’s so hard to believe about that?” He shrugged his shoulders still a little uncertain. “Yes, my kind mailman, I think I ought to say ‘friend’ by now, a friend who once rescued me from passing out in the street, and, who secretly – because maybe you think I don’t notice – checks to make sure I’m still alive from time to time. I am very grateful to you, yes… to you… and to a certain pen-friend, a woman who has become an inspiration to me, a role model and more… and then I am also grateful to a certain Italian…”
“Alessandro! Oh he’s great…” Tom forgot himself.
“Yes, Alessandro Cannizzaro, how do you know?”
“I…”
Gaia, solved the mystery, “You’d notice his name on my mail, of course! And it’s quite a name isn’t it?” She gently swirled her hand, as though writing the letters in the air, Ale-ssan-dro Can-ni-zza-ro!”
“Oh yes, yes! That’s ju-st what I…” Tom stuttered, “and yeah… it’s real impressive.” Phew. Whiskey was good like that, it could leave things very unsharp. Tom had once speculated that maybe that was why it doesn’t mix so well with driving or aircraft
piloting – airline pilot, another of Tom’s fantasises.
Gaia was full of compassion for Tom, he was really quite special, and he and Cara, she supposed, probably made quite a couple. – Poor sweet lovers… all they’d been through… losing their baby like that, the dreams of starting a band. Losing the guitar itself wasn’t what mattered to Tom, of course it wasn’t, it was what it represented, what it would remind him of. The guitar being destroyed… well, that was just a little extra un-needed pain. A pain that was cue to deeper kinds of pain. The loss of a child, and the dreams that went along. Life was mean at times. Far too mean to some.
Gaia wasn’t sure what she could do to help, but help she most certainly would. She would set aside some serious time to consider just exactly what she might do in order to help, really help, this man and the family he clearly adored. Wanting a whole stack of kids, and wanting to start a band, no, that shouldn’t be too much to ask of life. Charles would also be pleased if she helped Tom; and when she’d decided just how to do this, it would be in memory of Tom and Cara’s baby, Perry, and in memory of her husband:
The Architect of the Age, Charles Ore.
Perfect.
Chapter Eighteen
The Spaniard
Carlos Santillana, good architect, good husband – fertile too, the offspring that counted five, now ran to seven – twins! Good lover; good Catholic, it all added up. Oh Fabiola Santillana had her complaints, but then, who doesn’t? And Fabiola’s were fairly minor, mostly about Carlos not paying enough attention to his health, to his dig
estive system; working away from home for long stretches of time – that number of kids made for a lot of work! But when Carlos eventually received a letter from Mrs Ore, and she realised he was invited to design a house for another woman, well that was to become a sizeable complaint. It mattered little to the indomitable Fabiola that the house was for The Architect’s Widow, The Architect of the Age’s widow, so what!
“Architect’s widow! I am an architect’s widow! Sometimes I don’t see you for months when you are off gallivanting, overseeing this, managing that! Carlos Santillana! I married you, I suffered you, I made babies for you, and you, what did you do, ah? You spent all your life, and my life, designing and building for others, and all the time I have to live in this old tumbling down thing! This… this hovel!”
Carlos responded in his usual tender-hearted fashion, “Oh don’t say hovel, it’s our home. Oh Fabi, I thought you liked it.”
“And I always… I always thought, oh one day my sweet Carlos will surprise me and bring me to a beautiful place where he has built me a wonderful home, but no! Not you! You build for someone else. That’s fine… refugees, places troubled by war, people who had their churches bombed, of course! Great! Fine! But now, suddenly, you want to build for someone else’s wife! Someone else’s ‘too rich’ wife!”
“It’s a very important project, invited architects only, only four, I am one of only four, Fabi!”
“Everyone thinks you are oh so kind Carlos, but when you are so busy and so eager to compete with the memory and reputation of a dead man!… Have you stopped to think what kind of a man that makes you? I know you liked Mr Charles Ore, I know you respected him, admired him, but I also know that a part of you competes with him, even now, even though he’s dead! No no no! Don’t try to tell me I’m wrong. I know you, we made all these kids together, remember? ‘Sensual’ they call you, yes… in the bed! But sens-i-tive, you almost make me swear, sensitive, you are not. Do I have to bash you in the head to give you sense? Don’t you dare build that woman a house. You build a house for me!”
There was nothing for it, this was going to call for a lot more loving… perhaps a new child would come. That might at least be part of the answer. The thing was, when Fabiola was pregnant, she was… she was gentle, gentle all the time. Serene. She was like that, most of the time when not pregnant, but periodically she could throw a wobbly, and the best way forward was to give her reason again to coo, to nurture, to be gentle. He was an architect, she was a mother, and best that they be provided with as much opportunity as possible to indulge in, develop, and flourish in what they were each most talented. Fabiola would agree, but there was still no escaping the question of why Carlos couldn’t design a house for her… if he was to design one for anybody! Um, he would have to think about this one. Clearly, Fabiola had always applauded Carlos’ architectural work; she supported him through his crises of confidence – albeit that these were few and far between; and they had lived in the same falling-down house since they were married, he’d just assumed she adored it as much as he did. Assumptions, he mused, not a good thing in a healthy marriage, he’d have to work something out. Fabiola was probably right (she usually was). He shouldn’t build for another woman before building for his own. There was a lot of work ahead.
After much deliberation, Carlos decided to run two house design projects and he would conduct them, simultaneously! He would delegate further responsibilities in various other projects to his team, and free up more of his own precious time to work on the new
house designs himself. These designs were to become truly
exceptional. – Finally, there was a way forward! Besides, he missed the days when his practice was smaller, when the cut and thrust meant eat or die, and not meetings with financiers and investment analysts. Keep it simple! That way a man can still see what he has, still smell the air for what it is.
Carlos needed time to think, to re-engage with his ideas, to freshly acquaint himself with his own creative thoughts, and to find further inspiration. After several days of wondrous love-making, and in a suitably philosophical state, he set off – alone – for the sea.
Along the seacoast, wet sand underfoot, light wave edges rippling over toes, cooled ankles, Carlos Santillana is blissfully lost in thought. He follows the fringes of tide as they embroider the dark sand, he skips over an ambitious wave, smiling warmly as it retreats. There’s a dog in the distance, exhausted with running again and again for a stick. The thrower, a child, hair blown by the wind, cheeks reddened. Carlos doesn’t know the child but waves in his direction. Waves and waves. The sea, the hands. The child puts up a hand, waves back and calls something, perhaps a ‘hello’, but is too far away, and the wind takes all.
Carlos likes to view the world from the ground, up. He gathers up smooth and shapely pebbles, collecting them in his pockets. He moves further inland, laying down on the sand, and now the wind cannot touch him. Now the waves look different. Now, he is closer. Now, he can see. Architecture, for Carlos, is all about how one sees, from what position, in what direction, to what depth, in what detail, with what sensitivity. As a boy he was always most comfortable at ground level, not afraid of heights, not entirely resistant to tree climbing or scaling walls like other children, but purely on a point of preference would choose the floor as pole position. He didn’t quite know why, that’s just the way it was, instinctively, being close to the earth, to its rhythms, its pulse, felt right.
He imagined himself in an interview, for this was his private trick for recovering the essence of his own philosophy – and in no time at all he found himself completely absorbed, enraptured even, by his own reply to the imaginary journalist.
For me, working from the ground is very important. As an architect, I think it is very important to consider your sight line, your line of vision, for each person this is different by degree, and it will have a huge effect on the finished architecture. Ralph Coover, for example, and in contrast to myself, always looks from high above, it’s obvious to me because of the resulting architecture, and I admire it much. He creates those marvellous huge great buildings, ‘landmarks’ they are called, when actually it would be much more appropriate to call them sky-marks or even space-marks for they cut into… and delineate the upper space far more than they mark out the land. There is no right or wrong about these matters, they merely differ. Me, well I have a special feeling for the floor, sitting down, lying down, always close to the heart of the world, and I try to listen to it, like a mother listening to the small child she carries inside her. And when we are born, our first environmental relationship is with the floor, we explore at ground level, we crawl before we walk, and so meet the space higher up only later on. For me, keeping in touch with the earth, the human condition, with the basic senses, with simplicity… this instructs all my work, but maybe I just never developed very far as a human being, and only someone like Coover or even Cannizzaro, yes, maybe from the womb they came out walking! Or flying even! They are more advanced perhaps, and perhaps so their architecture! But of course, I don’t believe that last part at all, not at all!
He purrs with laughter. The purr becomes a contented roar.
Atmospheric conditions, wind loads, variations in temperature, the relationship of the architecture to its foundations and to the earth, quite literally, I almost think of my architecture as something organic, like a child growing in the womb, leaving the womb, but somehow always attached. Yes, my architecture is something like that, growing out of the landscape, out of the soil, the rock, the sand. The sand.
He shivers now, the light is fading, a shadow moves over him like a sundial, it is the child smiling. The boy.
It’s been a long time since Carlos’ last interview, he’s been too busy, but he quite relishes them, and thinks now, that he must indeed accept the next good invitation to talk about his work, his thoughts now clearer. The boy is still standing over him. “Are you dead?”
�
�No, can’t you see my eyes moving?”
“I can now, but just now you looked straight out, like a dead man.”
“What a relief for you!” Carlos gets up, smiles and dusts off the sand that’s gathered over him, “Can’t have been very nice thinking you’d seen a corpse!”
“That’s OK, I like dead stuff.”
Carlos laughs and pats the boy on the shoulder.
Chapter Nineteen
The Competition
For the first time in her life Gaia was up against a truly substantial challenge, and this all of her own making. The results would likely shape the rest of her life, and influence, if not change, the lives of several others. She wasn’t entirely aware how far-reaching the consequences might be – but that was doubtless a good thing, for had she been, she would unquestionably have given up, lacking the necessary level of self-belief, the natural coward resurfacing.
Back in the US, Ralph Coover had plenty to say on the subject of what lies ahead, “Yup, that’s the beauty of the future, few can foresee it or read it, whatever that’s supposed to mean. The future, well, it just plain happens!” He prided himself on living in the present, “Seems logical is all, in this god-forsaken land,” and the only churches or temples he was interested in were those erected in the Architect’s Name, usually his. But then Bigger and Better was by now pretty much his catchphrase, and like a laughing baboon he added, “Hell, if I could see into the future and had any idea of just how much I could get away with, then shit, I’d just have to push it and get away with a shit-load more!” Ultimately Ralph was far more easily seduced by power than by women, “And thank goodness it’s that way,” he hollered, “ain’t enough space for two insatiable bedroom-types, eh Zandro?”