He sat by the large window in the living room, looking out over the marina – and the raging Pacific beyond. A small boat, an open cockpit fishing boat, was pounding through heavy swell, beating it's way against strong winds towards the T-shaped breakwater that protected the marina entrance, and as he watched the scene unfolding below the apparent anxiety of the skipper down there was almost too easy to understand. That poor yellow-slickered man was in the thick of it now, struggling to keep his little boat from being swamped by steep following seas that rolled under his boat on their way to the rocky breakwater. He watched as the skipper struggled anew as the boat yawed atop a truly monstrous wave – then slewing backwards, down into the next trough.
Terrence Carpenter watched the man in the boat from the safety of his living room, safe in the house he had first designed in his mind forty years ago. His house, his refuge from the storms of life, embodied all that he cared about in architecture, and this house – where he had lived and worked incessantly since1980 – had become an extension of his soul. Now he watched as the little boat rounded "the T" and slipped into Marina del Rey – into the safe embrace of calm water – from the equally safe embrace of the island sanctuary he had built along this hillside. He felt a certain sense of relief as the boat motored into the marina, because from bitter experience he knew how treacherous and unforgiving the sea could be. He watched as the little boat disappeared from view, and only then did he relax.
Carpenter turned and looked at his house with pride, as he always did. Today the rooms felt like a cocoon, all safe and warm, protecting him from the coming storm. He stood there, taking in the reddish-gray brick and varnished redwood walls, the deep gray slate floor, the massive fireplace – all the visible hallmarks of one who'd studied Wright's style of architecture for decades. His house had become his calling card, and then his reason for being, for more than thirty years he had called this place home, and to this day, several times a month people in fact, knocked on his door, asked him about his house, and many asked him to design them something "just like this". And he did too, so many times over the years he had almost lost count, but his vision and the legacy he built around the integrity of his belief in that vision had sustained him. And quite comfortably, he said to himself as he smiled.
He turned and looked to the monstrosity beyond the trees outside his kitchen window, a huge slab of cheap beige stucco, torn screens and corroded aluminum windows, an eyesore of an apartment building that had popped up a year after he'd finished building his house, an aesthetic affront that had kept him up nights for years. His office, and more importantly, his drafting table, was on the other side of the house and looked out over the Palos Verdes peninsula, and his office had become his sanctuary, that one space where he spent most of his life. He looked at the beige monster and sighed, as always angry when he laid eyes on ugly architecture – if only because such buildings represented an unnecessarily lazy, and intellectually compromise approach to life.
It was growing almost preternaturally dark outside now; he stopped where he stood, looked out over the water and his almost heart stopped. A sinewy rope of white water coiled up into a gray-green wall of cloud – a waterspout! – and he almost gasped aloud as the writhing snake danced it's way north towards Malibu. Savage gusts whipped the water now, and Palos Verdes disappeared behind streaking walls of rain. He stepped out onto the terrace and smelled the air – pure, cool ozone covered his flesh and he closed his eyes, slipped into memories of that distant day, and another storm too desperate to forget.
+++++
Amila Sirri dashed inside her apartment just as the first ragged gusts tore into the palms that lined the street; from her open door she turned and watched them sway in the wind, then – after one huge frond tore away and landed on the walkway leading away to her patio – she hopped inside and slammed the door behind her. With her hack against the door she sighed, glad this day was over.
The bus ride home had been interminable, the air conditioning barely able to keep up with the knotting press of hot sweating bodies, and she had found herself wishing for the hundredth time that day she might soon be able to afford an automobile. Life would be so much better, she thought, so much easier – with even a little Toyota or Nissan. If only...but no. Things were still just too tight. Money didn't go very far in this city.
She hung up her white lab coat in the closet by the front door and walked into the little living room where her only child, her daughter "Suki" sat studying.
Suki was all that was left of that other world, that life before this one. Her daughter was all that remained of the life they'd both been forced to flee, when beautiful Sarajevo had crumbled under storms of constant shelling and aerial bombardment. She shuddered still when she recalled how crossing the street had meant exposing yourself to random sniper fire, and you had to cross many streets just to fetch enough water to drink. Her soul mate, her husband, had fallen not a meter from her, a sniper's bullet shattering the left side of his face, blood and bone spraying everywhere as they'd carried little Suki home from the hospital. Four days old, her father's last smile disappeared as her eyes opened for the first time, and as her father's eyes closed – forever. Amila's world had turned dark that day, for Suki would never know a father's love. Their desperate flight to Germany, then America, was an echo of that day, a moment in time that had left both survivors bitter, their lives empty, devoid of all love save one for the other.
And that love had always been enough for them both.
"And how was your school today?" Amila asked her daughter.
"Good. We're going to be doing some cool projects next month!"
"This is good. You are happy still?"
"Very much. Why?"
"There is so much in the news these days. So much hate. Sometimes I wonder..."
"It's no worse now than when we got here, Mom. Sometimes people's hatred is palpable, other days it's not there."
"But still, no one suspects...?"
"No, Mama! What is there to suspect? You need to relax!"
They had arrived in America weeks after the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001, and Amila had been wise enough, or perhaps simply paranoid enough, to understand that affirming their Islamic faith in America would be tantamount to suicide. On their immigration forms she put down that they were Catholic, and though they did not practice any religion these days, she and Suki had seen enough in America to understand that the simple act of acknowledging any sort of Islamic backgrounds could mean certain ruin. This was not a problem for either to understand: they had both just escaped Milosevic's campaigns of ethnic cleansing on their desperate flight to Germany, and Amila had witnessed more than her fair share of Islamophobia both in Germany and upon their arrival in California. To this day she feared being exposed, yet some days she wasn't sure her fear was reasonable.
Still, she considered herself lucky to have survived the civil war. She was from the former Yugoslavia after all, with all it's complexities of ethnicity and history, and while Amila had been born near Rabac, on the Istrian Peninsula – and not all that far from Italy – she held no illusions. She comforted herself that she looked as "European" as anyone from Italy might, or perhaps even the South of France, but she hadn't understood the true import of her looks until she arrived in the United States, where everyone seemed to think Muslims were either Arab or African. She and Suki were as "white" as anyone from Iowa, and Amila's honey colored blond hair looked anything but Muslim to the people she worked with.
Her husband Viktor had been another matter entirely. His features were more classically slavic, and he'd had thick brown hair and the deepest brown eyes she'd ever seen. Suki had inherited his looks, which Amila loved – if only because when she looked at her daughter she felt Viktor was still, somehow, with them both, but Suki's differences worried her.
