Jimmy Gowan had worked like a mule for fifteen years, saving money for a business of his own. People voiced indignant objections to his choice of architect; Jimmy uttered no word of explanation or self-defense; he said politely: “Maybe so, folks, maybe so,” and proceeded to have Roark build his station.
The station opened on a day in late December. It stood on the edge of the Boston Post Road, two small structures of glass and concrete forming a semicircle among the trees: the cylinder of the office and the long, low oval of the diner, with the gasoline pumps as the colonnade of a forecourt between them. It was a study in circles; there were no angles and no straight lines; it looked like shapes caught in a flow, held still at the moment of being poured, at the precise moment when they formed a harmony that seemed too perfect to be intentional. It looked like a cluster of bubbles hanging low over the ground, not quite touching it, to be swept aside in an instant on a wind of speed; it looked gay, with the hard, bracing gaiety of efficiency, like a powerful airplane engine.
Roark stayed at the station on the day of its opening. He drank coffee in a clean, white mug, at the counter of the diner, and he watched the cars stopping at the door. He left late at night. He looked back once, driving down the long, empty road. The lights of the station winked, flowing away from him. There it stood, at the crossing of two roads, and cars would be streaming past it day and night, cars coming from cities in which there was no room for buildings such as this, going to cities in which there would be no buildings such as this. He turned his face to the road before him, and he kept his eyes off the mirror which still held, glittering softly, dots of light that moved away far behind him….
He drove back to months of idleness. He sat in his office each morning, because he knew that he had to sit there, looking at a door that never opened, his fingers forgotten on a telephone that never rang. The ash trays he emptied each day, before leaving, contained nothing but the stubs of his own cigarettes.
“What are you doing about it, Howard?” Austen Heller asked him at dinner one evening.
“Nothing.”
“But you must.”
“There’s nothing I can do.”
“You must learn how to handle people.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know how. I was born without some one particular sense.”
“It’s something one acquires.”
“I have no organ to acquire it with. I don’t know whether it’s something I lack, or something extra I have that stops me. Besides, I don’t like people who have to be handled.”
“But you can’t sit still and do nothing now. You’ve got to go after commissions.”
“What can I tell people in order to get commissions? I can only show my work. If they don’t hear that, they won’t hear anything I say. I’m nothing to them, but my work–my work is all we have in common. And I have no desire to tell them anything else.”
“Then what are you going to do? You’re not worried?”
“No. I expected it. I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“My kind of people.”
“What kind is that?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I do know, but I can’t explain it. I’ve often wished I could. There must be some one principle to cover it, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Honesty?”
“Yes…no, only partly. Guy Francon is an honest man, but it isn’t that. Courage? Ralston Holcombe has courage, in his own manner….I don’t know. I’m not that vague on other things. But I can tell my kind of people by their faces. By something in their faces. There will be thousands passing by your house and by the gas station. If out of those thousands, one stops and sees it–that’s all I need.”
“Then you do need other people, after all, don’t you, Howard?”
“Of course. What are you laughing at?”
“I’ve always thought that you were the most anti-social animal I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”
“I need people to give me work. I’m not building mausoleums. Do you suppose I should need them in some other way? In a closer, more personal way?”
“You don’t need anyone in a very personal way.”
“No.”
“You’re not even boasting about it.”
“Should I?”
You can’t. You’re too arrogant to boast.”
“Is that what I am?”
“Don’t you know what you are?”
“No. Not as far as you’re seeing me, or anyone else.”
Heller sat silently, his wrist describing circles with a cigarette. Then Heller laughed, and said:
“That was typical.”
“What?”
“That you didn’t ask me to tell you what you are as I see you. Anybody else would have.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t indifference. You’re one of the few friends I want to keep. I just didn’t think of asking.”
“I know you didn’t. That’s the point. You’re a self-centered monster, Howard. The more monstrous because you’re utterly innocent about it.”
“That’s true.”
“You should show a little concern when you admit that.”
“Why?”
“You know, there’s a thing that stumps me. You’re the coldest man I know. And I can’t understand why–knowing that you’re actually a fiend in your quiet sort of way–why I always feel, when I see you, that you’re the most life-giving person I’ve ever met.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just that.”
The weeks went by, and Roark walked to his office each day, sat at his desk for eight hours, and read a great deal. At five o’clock, he walked home. He had moved to a better room, near the office; he spent little; he had enough money for a long time to come.
On a morning in February the telephone rang in his office. A brisk, emphatic feminine voice asked for an appointment with Mr. Roark, the architect. That afternoon, a brisk, small, dark-skinned woman entered the office; she wore a mink coat and exotic earrings that tinkled when she moved her head. She moved her head a great deal, in sharp little birdlike jerks. She was Mrs. Wayne Wilmot of Long Island and she wished to build a country house. She had selected Mr. Roark to build it, she explained, because he had designed the home of Austen Heller. She adored Austen Heller; he was, she stated, an oracle to all those pretending just the tiniest bit to the title of progressive intellectual, she thought–“don’t you?”–and she followed Heller like a zealot, “yes, literally, like a zealot.” Mr. Roark was very young, wasn’t he?–but she didn’t mind that, she was very liberal and glad to help youth. She wanted a large house, she had two children, she believed in expressing their individuality–“don’t you?”–and each had to have a separate nursery, she had to have a library–“I read to distraction”–a music room, a conservatory–“we grow lilies-of-the-valley, my friends tell me it’s my flower”–a den for her husband, who trusted her implicitly and let her plan the house–“because I’m so good at it, if I weren’t a woman I’m sure I’d be an architect”–servants’ rooms and all that, and a three-car garage. After an hour and a half of details and explanations, she said:
“And of course, as to the style of the house, it will be English Tudor. I adore English Tudor.”
He looked at her. He asked slowly:
“Have you seen Austen Heller’s house?”
“No, though I did want to see it, but how could I?–I’ve never met Mr. Heller, I’m only his fan, just that, a plain, ordinary fan, what is he like in person?–you must tell me, I’m dying to hear it–no, I haven’t seen his house, it’s somewhere up in Maine, isn’t it?”
Roark took photographs out of the desk drawer and handed them to her.
“This,” he said, “is the Heller house.”
She looked at the photographs, her glance like water skimming off their glossy surfaces, and threw them down on the desk.
“Very interesting,” she said. “Most unusual. Quite stunning. But, of course, that’s not what I want. That kind of a house wouldn’t express my personality. My friends tell me I have the Elizabethan personality.”
Quietly, patiently, he tried to explain to her why she should not build a Tudor house. She interrupted him in the middle of a sentence.
“Look here, Mr. Roark, you’re not trying to teach me something, are you? I’m quite sure that I have good taste, and I know a great deal about architecture, I’ve taken a special course at the club. My friends tell me that I know more than many architects. I’ve quite made up my mind that I shall have an English Tudor house. I do not care to argue about it.”
“You’ll have to go to some other architect, Mrs. Wilmot.”
She stared at him incredulously.