and their finances were completely, visually separate.
“Here, hand it over,” Emily said, reaching for the room-service menu. Food would ground her. “I’ll call down and order.” She scanned the list of entrées as she walked from the bedroom to the living room, where she’d be able to talk on the phone without waking the boy. It was a miracle that he hadn’t roused already. “Oh God, these people love their hollandaise,” she said.
Nate groaned in assent from the bedroom. “Get wine!” he said, just loud enough to hear through the open doorway. “A bottle of wine.”
“Yes, sir!” Emily said. And as she picked up the phone to dial for room service, she noticed on the small desk the slim volume of Newport’s phone book. This was something else she’d loved during her corporate-travel days: the phone books in every room, each one like an old-fashioned gateway into an unexplored city. The Viking’s volume appeared new. Its perfectly aligned pages were as crisp and virgin as Nate’s dollar bills, and a pen lay in the open crease, making the scene appear like a still-life, a tableauwhose stylist had briefly stepped away to serve tea. She focused on the open pages that arched up off the table where they met the book’s spine. The pages were turned, she saw, to the BEs. It was as if, while Emily had been laying Trevor down to sleep and counting out their cash, Nate, who’d lagged behind in this living room, had passed the time by looking up his own last name.
PART II
Saturday
CHAPTER 5
The Drive from Chicago
T HE ONLY THING THAT lay ahead of George Bedecker was time. Not building plans or competitions or commissions. All that remained was the simple act of endurance, a steady plod until his allotment of days was up. George took comfort in the fact that he could see his own end in sight. He would watch himself suffer in solitude until his body and mind finally gave out. He would not be taken by surprise.
He sat hunched on the edge of the bed, its quilt rough to the touch. Through the motel room’s venetian blinds, the early-morning sun glowed in harsh, parallel strips. George hated venetians. He cringed at the way today’s homeowners rushed to buy houses with sweeping views and then installed blinds that sliced the panoramas to pieces. He designed his own structures with built-in, unobtrusive shade systems. It was the ultimate goal: to build a residence so airtight in its design that future inhabitants would in no way be able to mar it with their own attempts at furnishings, at hardware, at window dressing.
George stood and moved away from the bed. The sun was upearly today. Or, no, that wasn’t possible. George was simply used to rising earlier, well before daylight. It was almost 8:00 a.m. It was time to get on the road. He had one more day and a half of driving to go.
He wasn’t a fast driver. Even as a young man he’d been cautious. Even back then he preferred for someone else to sit behind the wheel, an assistant or a contractor, whoever was in the car. And driving fast wasn’t necessary now. He didn’t have anyone on his tail. Architecture was a field covered not by investigative reporters but solely by critics. An architect, in the press, was observed after the fact and from afar, judged from a distance beyond human scale but still close enough to throw stones.
George had been in the business for more than forty years and had a reputation, of sorts. He’d received international accolades for both the Glasgow Conservatory and his residential works and had fended off his share of hurled rocks, but his status as a master of the field remained in debate. He was no Philip Johnson, certainly, and no Mies van der Rohe, but, to be frank, Johnson hadn’t been Johnson for most of his life. After his peak, Johnson sank and devalued himself. He’d spent these later years building monochromatic skyscrapers and juggling styles the way croupiers shuffle cards. Was this something to aspire to?
“Here, hand it over,” Emily said, reaching for the room-service menu. Food would ground her. “I’ll call down and order.” She scanned the list of entrées as she walked from the bedroom to the living room, where she’d be able to talk on the phone without waking the boy. It was a miracle that he hadn’t roused already. “Oh God, these people love their hollandaise,” she said.
Nate groaned in assent from the bedroom. “Get wine!” he said, just loud enough to hear through the open doorway. “A bottle of wine.”
“Yes, sir!” Emily said. And as she picked up the phone to dial for room service, she noticed on the small desk the slim volume of Newport’s phone book. This was something else she’d loved during her corporate-travel days: the phone books in every room, each one like an old-fashioned gateway into an unexplored city. The Viking’s volume appeared new. Its perfectly aligned pages were as crisp and virgin as Nate’s dollar bills, and a pen lay in the open crease, making the scene appear like a still-life, a tableauwhose stylist had briefly stepped away to serve tea. She focused on the open pages that arched up off the table where they met the book’s spine. The pages were turned, she saw, to the BEs. It was as if, while Emily had been laying Trevor down to sleep and counting out their cash, Nate, who’d lagged behind in this living room, had passed the time by looking up his own last name.
PART II
Saturday
CHAPTER 5
The Drive from Chicago
T HE ONLY THING THAT lay ahead of George Bedecker was time. Not building plans or competitions or commissions. All that remained was the simple act of endurance, a steady plod until his allotment of days was up. George took comfort in the fact that he could see his own end in sight. He would watch himself suffer in solitude until his body and mind finally gave out. He would not be taken by surprise.
He sat hunched on the edge of the bed, its quilt rough to the touch. Through the motel room’s venetian blinds, the early-morning sun glowed in harsh, parallel strips. George hated venetians. He cringed at the way today’s homeowners rushed to buy houses with sweeping views and then installed blinds that sliced the panoramas to pieces. He designed his own structures with built-in, unobtrusive shade systems. It was the ultimate goal: to build a residence so airtight in its design that future inhabitants would in no way be able to mar it with their own attempts at furnishings, at hardware, at window dressing.
George stood and moved away from the bed. The sun was upearly today. Or, no, that wasn’t possible. George was simply used to rising earlier, well before daylight. It was almost 8:00 a.m. It was time to get on the road. He had one more day and a half of driving to go.
He wasn’t a fast driver. Even as a young man he’d been cautious. Even back then he preferred for someone else to sit behind the wheel, an assistant or a contractor, whoever was in the car. And driving fast wasn’t necessary now. He didn’t have anyone on his tail. Architecture was a field covered not by investigative reporters but solely by critics. An architect, in the press, was observed after the fact and from afar, judged from a distance beyond human scale but still close enough to throw stones.
George had been in the business for more than forty years and had a reputation, of sorts. He’d received international accolades for both the Glasgow Conservatory and his residential works and had fended off his share of hurled rocks, but his status as a master of the field remained in debate. He was no Philip Johnson, certainly, and no Mies van der Rohe, but, to be frank, Johnson hadn’t been Johnson for most of his life. After his peak, Johnson sank and devalued himself. He’d spent these later years building monochromatic skyscrapers and juggling styles the way croupiers shuffle cards. Was this something to aspire to?
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