“Well,” said Keating, “I couldn’t quite work it to ask her to lunch, but she’s coming to Mawson’s exhibition with me day after tomorrow. Now what?”
He sat on the floor, his head resting against the edge of a couch, his bare feet stretched out, a pair of Guy Francon’s chartreuse pyjamas floating loosely about his limbs.
Through the open door of the bathroom he saw Francon standing at the washstand, his stomach pressed to its shining edge, brushing his teeth.
“That’s splendid,” said Francon, munching through a thick foam of toothpaste. “That’ll do just as well. Don’t you see?”
“No.”
“Lord, Pete, I explained it to you yesterday before we started. Mrs. Dunlop’s husband’s planning to build a home for her.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Keating weakly, brushing the matted black curls off his face. “Oh, yeah…I remember now…Jesus, Guy, I got a head on me!…”
He remembered vaguely the party to which Francon had taken him the night before, he remembered the caviar in a hollow iceberg, the black net evening gown and the pretty face of Mrs. Dunlop, but he could not remember how he had come to end up in Francon’s apartment. He shrugged; he had attended many parties with Francon in the past year and had often been brought here like this.
“It’s not a very large house,” Francon was saying, holding the toothbrush in his mouth; it made a lump on his cheek and its green handle stuck out. “Fifty thousand or so, I understand. They’re small fry anyway. But Mrs. Dunlop’s brother-in-law is Quimby–you know, the big real estate fellow. Won’t hurt to get a little wedge into that family, won’t hurt at all. You’re to see where that commission ends up, Pete. Can I count on you, Pete?”
“Sure,” said Keating, his head drooping. “You can always count on me, Guy….”
He sat still, watching his bare toes and thinking of Stengel, Francon’s designer. He did not want to think, but his mind leaped to Stengel automatically, as it always did, because Stengel represented his next step.
Stengel was impregnable to friendship. For two years, Keating’s attempts had broken against the ice of Stengel’s glasses. What Stengel thought of him was whispered in the drafting rooms, but few dared to repeat it save in quotes; Stengel said it aloud, even though he knew that the corrections his sketches bore, when they returned to him from Francon’s office, were made by Keating’s hand. But Stengel had a vulnerable point: he had been planning for some time to leave Francon and open an office of his own. He had selected a partner, a young architect of no talent but of great inherited wealth. Stengel was waiting only for a chance. Keating had thought about this a great deal He could think of nothing else. He thought of it again, sitting there on the floor of Francon’s bedroom.
Two days later, when he escorted Mrs. Dunlop through the gallery exhibiting the paintings of one Frederic Mawson, his course of action was set. He piloted her through the sparse crowd, his fingers closing over her elbow once in a while, letting her catch his eyes directed at her young face more often than at the paintings.
“Yes,” he said as she stared obediently at a landscape featuring an auto dump and tried to compose her face into the look of admiration expected of her; “magnificent work. Note the colors, Mrs. Dunlop….They say this fellow Mawson had a terribly hard time. It’s an old story–trying to get recognition. Old and heartbreaking. It’s the same in all the arts. My own profession included.”
“Oh, indeed?” said Mrs. Dunlop, who quite seemed to prefer architecture at the moment.
“Now this,” said Keating, stopping before the depiction of an old hag picking at her bare toes on a street curb, “this is art as a social document. It takes a person of courage to appreciate this.”
“It’s simply wonderful,” said Mrs. Dunlop.
“Ah, yes, courage. It’s a rare quality….They say Mawson was starving in a garret when Mrs. Stuyvesant discovered him. It’s glorious to be able to help young talent on its way.”
“It must be wonderful,” agreed Mrs. Dunlop.
“If I were rich,” said Keating wistfully, “I’d make it my hobby: to arrange an exhibition for a new artist, to finance the concert of a new pianist, to have a house built by a new architect….”
“Do you know, Mr. Keating?–my husband and I are planning to build a little home on Long Island.”
“Oh, are you? How very charming of you, Mrs. Dunlop, to confess such a thing to me. You’re so young, if you’ll forgive my saying this. Don’t you know that you run the danger of my becoming a nuisance and trying to interest you in my firm? Or are you safe and have chosen an architect already?”
“No, I’m not safe at all,” said Mrs. Dunlop prettily, “and I wouldn’t mind the danger really. I’ve thought a great deal about the firm of Francon & Heyer in these last few days. And I’ve heard they are so terribly good.”
“Why, thank you, Mrs. Dunlop.”
“Mr. Francon is a great architect.”
“Oh, yes.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Nothing really.”
“No, what’s the matter?”
“Do you really want me to tell you?”
“Why, certainly.”
“Well, you see, Guy Francon–it’s only a name. He would have nothing to do with your house. It’s one of those professional secrets that I shouldn’t divulge, but I don’t know what it is about you that makes me want to be honest. All the best buildings in our office are designed by Mr. Stengel.”
“Who?”
“Claude Stengel. You’ve never heard the name, but you will, when someone has the courage to discover him. You see, he does all the work, he’s the real genius behind the scenes, but Francon puts his signature on it and gets all the credit. That’s the way it’s done everywhere.”
“But why does Mr. Stengel stand for it?”
“What can he do? No one will give him a start. You know how most people are, they stick to the beaten path, they pay three times the price for the same thing, just to have the trademark. Courage, Mrs. Dunlop, they lack courage. Stengel is a great artist, but there are so few discerning people to see it. He’s ready to go on his own, if only he could find some outstanding person like Mrs. Stuyvesant to give him a chance.”
“Really?” said Mrs. Dunlop. “How very interesting! Tell me more about it.”
He told her a great deal more about it. By the time they had finished the inspection of the works of Frederic Mawson, Mrs. Dunlop was shaking Keating’s hand and saying:
“It’s so kind, so very unusually kind of you. Are you sure that it won’t embarrass you with your office if you arrange for me to meet Mr. Stengel? I didn’t quite dare to suggest it and it was so kind of you not to be angry at me. It’s so unselfish of you and more than anyone else would have done in your position.”
When Keating approached Stengel with the suggestion of a proposed luncheon, the man listened to him without a word. Then he jerked his head and snapped:
“What’s in it for you?”
Before Keating could answer, Stengel threw his head back suddenly.
“Oh,” said Stengel. “Oh, I see.”
Then he leaned forward, his mouth drawn thin in contempt:
“Okay. I’ll go to that lunch.”
When Stengel left the firm of Francon & Heyer to open his own office and proceed with the construction of the Dunlop house, his first commission, Guy Francon smashed a ruler against the edge of his desk and roared to Keating:
“The bastard! The abysmal bastard! After all I’ve done for him.”
“What did you expect?” said Keating, sprawled in a low armchair before him. “Such is life.”
“But what beats me is how did that little skunk ever hear of it? To snatch it right from under our nose!”
“Well, I’ve never trusted him anyway.” Keating shrugged. “Human nature…”
The bitterness in his voice was sincere. He had received no gratitude from Stengel. Stengel’s parting remark to him had been only: “You’re a worse bastard than I thought you were. Good luck. You’ll be a great architect some day.”
Thus Keating achieved the position of chief designer for Francon & Heyer.
Francon celebrated the occasion with a modest little orgy at one of the quieter and costlier restaurants. “In a coupla years,” he kept repeating, “in a coupla years you’ll see things happenin’. Pete….You’re a good boy and I like you and I’ll do things for you….Haven’t I done things for you?…You’re going places, Pete…in a coupla years….”
“Your tie’s crooked, Guy,” said Keating dryly, “and you’re spilling brandy all over your vest….”
Facing his first task of designing, Keating thought of Tim Davis, of Stengel, of many others who had wanted it, had struggled for it, had tried, had been beaten–by him. It was a triumphant feeling. It was a tangible affirmation of his greatness. Then he found himself suddenly in his glass-enclosed office, looking down at a blank sheet of paper–alone. Something rolled in his throat down to his stomach, cold and empty, his old feeling of the dropping hole. He leaned against the table, closing his eyes. It had never been quite real to him before that this was the thing actually expected of him–to fill a sheet of paper, to create something on a sheet of paper.