Keating bent over his task at once, his eyes fixed, his throat rigid. He saw nothing but the pearly shimmer of the paper before him. The steady lines he drew surprised him, for he felt certain that his hand was jerking an inch back and forth across the sheet. He followed the lines, not knowing where they led or why. He knew only that the plan was someone’s tremendous achievement which he could neither question nor equal. He wondered why he had ever thought of himself as a potential architect.
Much later, he noticed the wrinkles of a gray smock sticking to a pair of shoulder blades over the next table. He glanced about him, cautiously at first, then with curiosity, then with pleasure, then with contempt. When he reached this last, Peter Keating became himself again and felt love for mankind. He noticed sallow cheeks, a funny nose, a wart on a receding chin, a stomach squashed against the edge of a table. He loved these sights. What these could do, he could do better. He smiled. Peter Keating needed his fellow men.
When he glanced at his plans again, he noticed the flaws glaring at him from the masterpiece. It was the floor of a private residence, and he noted the twisted hallways that sliced great hunks of space for no apparent reason, the long, rectangular sausages of rooms doomed to darkness. Jesus, he thought, they’d have flunked me for this in the first term. After which, he proceeded with his work swiftly, easily, expertly–and happily.
Before lunchtime. Keating had made friends in the room, not any definite friends, but a vague soil spread and ready from which friendship would spring. He had smiled at his neighbors and winked in understanding over nothing at all. He had used each trip to the water cooler to caress those he passed with the soft, cheering glow of his eyes, the brilliant eyes that seemed to pick each man in turn out of the room, out of the universe, as the most important specimen of humanity and as Keating’s dearest friend. There goes–there seemed to be left in his wake–a smart boy and a hell of a good fellow.
Keating noticed that a tall blond youth at the next table was doing the elevation of an office building. Keating leaned with chummy respect against the boy’s shoulder and looked at the laurel garlands entwined about fluted columns three floors high.
“Pretty good for the old man,” said Keating with admiration.
“Who?” asked the boy.
“Why, Francon,” said Keating.
“Francon hell,” said the boy placidly. “He hasn’t designed a doghouse in eight years.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, at a glass door behind them. “Him.”
“What?” asked Keating, turning.
“Him,” said the boy. “Stengel. He does all these things.”
Behind the glass door Keating saw a pair of bony shoulders above the edge of a desk, a small, triangular head bent intently, and two blank pools of light in the round frames of glasses.
It was late in the afternoon when a presence seemed to have passed beyond the closed door, and Keating learned from the rustle of whispers around him that Guy Francon had arrived and had risen to his office on the floor above. Half an hour later the glass door opened and Stengel came out, a huge piece of cardboard dangling between his fingers.
“Hey, you,” he said, his glasses stopping on Keating’s face. “You doing the plans for this?” He swung the cardboard forward. “Take this up to the boss for the okay. Try to listen to what he’ll say and try to look intelligent. Neither of which matters anyway.”
He was short and his arms seemed to hang down to his ankles; arms swinging like ropes in the long sleeves, with big, efficient hands. Keating’s eyes froze, darkening, for one-tenth of a second, gathered in a tight stare at the blank lenses. Then Keating smiled and said pleasantly:
“Yes, sir.”
He carried the cardboard on the tips of his ten fingers, up the crimson-plushed stairway to Guy Francon’s office. The cardboard displayed a water-color perspective of a gray granite mansion with three tiers of dormers, five balconies, four bays, twelve columns, one flagpole and two lions at the entrance. In the corner, neatly printed by hand, stood: “Residence of Mr. and Mrs. James S. Whattles. Francon & Heyer, Architects.” Keating whistled softly: James S. Whattles was the multimillionaire manufacturer of shaving lotions.
Guy Francon’s office was polished. No, thought Keating, not polished, but shellacked; no, not shellacked, but liquid with mirrors melted and poured over every object. He saw splinters of his own reflection let loose like a swarm of butterflies, following him across the room, on the Chippendale cabinets, on the Jacobean chairs, on the Louis XV mantelpiece. He had time to note a genuine Roman statue in a corner, sepia photographs of the Parthenon, of Rheims Cathedral, of Versailles and of the Frink National Bank Building with the eternal torch.
He saw his own legs approaching him in the side of the massive mahogany desk. Guy Francon sat behind the desk. Guy Francon’s face was yellow and his cheeks sagged. He looked at Keating for an instant as if he had never seen him before, then remembered and smiled expansively.
“Well, well, well, Kittredge, my boy, here we are, all set and at home! So glad to see you. Sit down, boy, sit down, what have you got there? Well, there’s no hurry, no hurry at all. Sit down. How do you like it here?”
“I’m afraid, sir, that I’m a little too happy,” said Keating, with an expression of frank, boyish helplessness. “I thought I could be businesslike on my first job, but starting in a place like this…I guess it knocked me out a little….I’ll get over it, sir,” he promised.
“Of course,” said Guy Francon. “It might be a bit overwhelming for a boy, just a bit. But don’t you worry. I’m sure you’ll make good.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Of course you will. What’s this they sent me?” Francon extended his hand to the drawing, but his fingers came to rest limply on his forehead instead. “It’s so annoying, this headache….No, no, nothing serious–” he smiled at Keating’s prompt concern–“just a little mal de tête. One works so hard.”
“Is there anything I can get for you, sir?”
“No, no, thank you. It’s not anything you can get for me, it’s if only you could take something away from me.” He winked. “The champagne. Entre nous, that champagne of theirs wasn’t worth a damn last night. I’ve never cared for champagne anyway. Let me tell you, Kittredge, it’s very important to know about wines, for instance when you’ll take a client out to dinner and will want to be sure of the proper thing to order. Now I’ll tell you a professional secret. Take quail, for instance. Now most people would order Burgundy with it. What do you do? You call for Clos Vougeot 1904. See? Adds that certain touch. Correct, but original. One must always be original….Who sent you up, by the way?”
“Mr. Stengel, sir.”
“Oh, Stengel.” The tone in which he pronounced the name clicked like a shutter in Keating’s mind: it was a permission to be stored away for future use. “Too grand to bring his own stuff up, eh? Mind you, he’s a great designer, the best designer in New York City, but he’s just getting to be a bit too grand lately. He thinks he’s the only one doing any work around here, just because he smudges at a board all day long. You’ll learn, my boy, when you’ve been in the business longer, that the real work of an office is done beyond its walls. Take last night, for instance. Banquet of the Clarion Real Estate Association. Two hundred guests–dinner and champagne–oh, yes, champagne!” He wrinkled his nose fastidiously, in self-mockery. “A few words to say informally in a little after-dinner speech–you know, nothing blatant, no vulgar sales talk–only a few well-chosen thoughts on the responsibility of realtors to society, on the importance of selecting architects who are competent, respected and well established. You know, a few bright little slogans that will stick in the mind.”
“Yes, sir, like ‘Choose the builder of your home as carefully as you choose the bride to inhabit it.'”
“Not bad. Not bad at all, Kittredge. Mind if I jot it down?”
“My name is Keating, sir,” said Keating firmly. “You are very welcome to the idea. I’m happy if it appeals to you.”
“Keating, of course! Why, of course, Keating,” said Francon with a disarming smile. “Dear me, one meets so many people. How did you say it? Choose the builder…it was very well put.”
He made Keating repeat it and wrote it down on a pad, picking a pencil from an array before him, new, many-colored pencils, sharpened to a professional needle point, ready, unused.