An old joke retold. Shuttlepilot inspired this farrago, but you can blame me for all of
it.
"Mother-
fucker
!" The pencil slammed into the glass panel of the office wall, point-first. It fell, rapidly joining its brethren on the floor. No problem, Kali had a lot more pencils.
Although all her work was done on the computer, she still ordered pencils by the carton from--who else but W. B. Mason? His pencils had the most satisfying "thunk". And they were great to throw at walls.
Kalliope Scoulides, A.I.A., was baffled, bewitched and beshat. Aside from two trips to piss, one at two p.m. to pick up the tuna and tomato on rye toast with extra pepper and Coke Zero from the delivery guy at the front desk, and one for coffee at four, she had been working from six a.m. until now, 6:15 p.m. And nothing, nichts, nada, nihil, rien du fucking tout.
Schor was their one last hope. He was the client who could rescue the firm. His upfront advance brought their rent current when the landlord was threatening eviction, and made it just possible to file the payroll taxes before the penalties hit. There was a progress payment due next week that would let them meet payroll.
And maybe, just maybe, if they could get past the last Building Department's objections and actually file the plans and pull some permits, the partners could draw again, and Jim Moore could pay the private schools tuitions for his two kids and get his wife off his back. And Frank Merrill could keep his mother in the nursing home for another year, while he prayed she would de and end both their miseries.
And Kali could pay the mortgage and taxes on her parents' home in Queens for two more years, as her father slipped deeper into the shadows and her mother gasped out what was left of her life after two packs a day for fifty years. The smell of tobacco still sickened her, and Schor fuckin' stunk of cigars.
Schor wanted the solarium, the (you should pardon the expression) Winter Garden. The Department of Buildings wanted to enforce the zoning resolution. The irresistible force had met the immovable object--and Kalliope was caught in the middle.
The setback had to be open. If you enclosed it, it became part of the building bulk, it impacted the sky plane, it violated the zoning.
Schor didn't give a shit. That was Schor's usual condition. He was president of the Anti-Defecation League--he didn't give a shit.
"I'm fuckin' sellin' amenideez! That's what sells this crap, amenideez!" He made it sound like something out of Aeschylus, but he meant "amenities". "A hapottiment is walls, floors, windows, shit, whatever" (he meant "apartment"; he needed his own translator), "but amenideez, that's different, yuh know whud'm sayin?"
He had dominated the launch meeting. And every meeting since. It was easy; he had construction money when no one else could get a dime. He was the one developer who wasn't sitting on a bunch of half-built sites with office space or apartments no one wanted, and the construction loans in default beyond possibility of cure. In short, he was the ideal client, if you didn't mind his homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, sexual harassment, and the constant stench of yesterday's cigars.
"That hapottiment, the fortieth floor, that's where my profit is. Sixty million bucks, an' I got a Russian lined up. If Putin don't kill the sonofabitch, or lock up his ass, I got a palace to sell him. But I gotta have the fuckin' amenideez! Geddit?! So, like Nike says, just fuckin' do it!"
Kalliope drew the short straw, of course. The most junior partner, the one with her name on front door one line below the real partners. But the real partners made sure she had pencils, W. B. Mason's, with his mustachioed face on every box. She threw another one, and screamed again.
She remembered yesterday's videoconference. "What the fuck you mean, it can't be closed! It's gotta be closed! What's he gonna do in the winter or when it rains an' shit? Sit inside? No, inside is just a hapottiment, walls and floors and shit. He needs the Winter Garden, to entertain, show off to his friends! He needs amenideez! I need amenideez! An' you better make it happen!"
But the Building Department remained singularly unmoved by the anonymous Russian's need for "amenideez". Their other objections were quickly disposed of, just the Department's Plan Examiners justifying their existence. But their flat-footed heels were dug in deep on the fortieth floor; keep it open or fuggedaboutit.
Kalliope cursed again, and threw another pencil. There was quite a pile of broken pointed pencils on the floor. Fifteen years out of Cornell, with a degree in architecture and a heart filled with hope. Good summer jobs, good recommendations from professors and employers. Made partner in only seven years at Skidow, Corning and Merrill.
Skidow and Corning were lucky; they were dead. The magazines and the textbooks embalmed their masterpieces, even as they looked more dated every year, Parthenons that should have been blown up like their Athenian counterpart.
"Fuck, gotta piss again," she thought. "Maybe inspiration will strike me on the pot."
All that struck her was the emptiness of the still-uncleaned ladies' room, and the fact that the hand-dryer was on the fritzerino again.
She dried her hands as best she could with toilet paper that disintegrated like her dreams; no marriage, no kids, no home of her own, just watch her parents fade out and then go join them.
She went back to her office, and picked up her late night reading: the Chinese takeout menu from The Delightful Garden. It wasn't; it was a hole in the wall, but it was close to the office, stayed open late, and the food wasn't really too bad. And the building security let their guys in without cross-examining them, which was OK because they didn't speak much English anyway. The again, neither did building security. They grunted a lot.
