Dr. Len Chesney wondered what it was worth, to send someone into a den of sexual depravity, expecting them to remain professional and get their job done without succumbing to their own yearnings. He examined the woman across the desk from him. Catrina Balieu was the most beautiful member of his staff. He hoped this meant she had her choice of lovers in New York, so she wouldn't be lured into Andreas Toscano's sex trap in the Nevada desert.
It was a story he wished he could disregard, but as publisher and editor of America's most respected architectural journal, Chesney knew Toscano's work had to be addressed. He had a growing stack of mail from subscribers wanting to know when the magazine would review Toscano's experimental community, and it was obvious the day
American Architect and Designer
published the feature, every newspaper and broadcast station in the country would be quoting his publication. You can't buy publicity like that at any price. All the gossip rags had already done splashy features on the world's most unorthodox architect, so it was silly to think
American Architect and Designer
could continue ignoring Andreas Toscano, regardless of Chesney's personal distaste for the man and his nonsensical designs.
Catrina had always been the most logical choice for the assignment. Her impeccable academic credentials would give the story a stamp of authority, and the magazine's critique of Toscano's so called
Sensory Schemas
would be especially searing if written by such a desirable woman. Toscano wanted people to believe he was creating a sexual Utopia. Who better to break that image than the most desirable architectural journalist in the industry? Though she was only twenty-six, Catrina Balieu's beauty was already legendary within the fashionable social circles in which she worked. Her thick tresses of almost raven hair flowed over her shoulders in stormy waves, complimenting her traffic stopping countenance before plunging down to brush the satiny cleavage of her generous bosom. Catrina knew how to package her assets too, in attire from New York's finest salons and boutiques. Combined with her turbocharged intellect and uncompromising wit, it all resulted in a charismatic feminine persona that turned heads and fixed gazes in every room she entered. If you were anyone of consequence in America's architectural profession, or within those elite social cliques who are the connoisseurs and consumers of sophisticated art and design, then your home had probably either been visited by Catrina Balieu and featured in
American Architect and Designer
under her byline, or you were waiting for her to arrive so you could claim to have done the same.
Catrina's outstanding attractiveness, however, was the exact reason Len Chesney had avoided giving her the assignment. He knew Toscano's taste in women only too well. The architectural heretic liked them elegant, well bred and thoughtfully nurtured; smart and well educated women whose decency he could defile with his contemptible lust. Whenever Chesney thought of men like Andreas Toscano, he could not help think of his own dear daughter, once a celebrated debutante, a bright young woman not unlike Catrina Balieu, with an equally brilliant future ahead of her. Then she married that man; that hedonistic philanderer who abused her with his selfish lust until it drove her into the arms of an even worse wastrel. Now she lived in a trailer on five acres in Laurel Canyon outside Los Angeles, sharing her new husband's unchecked taste for alcohol which they both used in copious quantities to wash down their Valium and Prozac.
Dr. Chesney felt he had lost his only daughter to an inferior social caste. It made him bitter and angry. It had transformed his once tolerant, liberal intellect into a pressure cooker of rigidly conservative moral values, and it caused him to view anyone who promoted hedonism as nothing less than a dangerous predator. Andreas Toscano was just such a man.
That's why Chesney had avoided sending his top feature writer on this assignment. He wanted to avoid exposing her to Toscano's evil temptations, so he tried two freelancers with the task first. Neither of them had offered any expertise in writing about architecture. One was an iconoclastic paparazzo hired through an agency specialising in puritanical show biz gossip, while the other was a timid young woman from Salt Lake City, whose experience ran more to columns about kitchen table arts and crafts than the complexities of structural design. Sending such people to write about any architect's work was a veiled insult, but Dr. Len Chesney was convinced it was even more than Andreas Toscano deserved.
"We've sent two freelancers on this assignment before you," the editor admitted. "The first delivered us nothing we could use. The other sent us an invoice for expenses, with a terse note saying the story we're looking for doesn't exist. I'll entertain a two thousand dollar bonus if you deliver the goods for us, Catrina."
Catrina was surprised. As a staff writer with impressive qualifications in art and engineering, her wages were already four times the going rate for most trade journal writers. The idea that Dr. Chesney would pay even more was almost embarrassing.
"That's very kind of you, Len, but what am I missing? How difficult can it be to fly to Nevada, spend a day or two interviewing an architect and taking pictures of his project, then fly back with the story? We've been through this routine countless times."
"Andreas Toscano is no ordinary man, Catrina. Few architects achieve his level of fame. Those who do become famous are usually known only to other members of their profession, and perhaps to its rather exclusive cross section of patrons. You know how it works. Just stop the first ten people you see on the street and ask them who Frank Lloyd Wright was. At least five will tell you he was Orville's brother."
She smiled graciously, but couldn't help wondering why her employer was so vociferous in his resentment of Toscano's success. "We both know that's sadly true," Catrina conceded, "but isn't that why a greater public interest in architecture is a positive thing? Isn't Toscano at least causing millions of people to pause and contemplate the way architecture shapes their lives?"
Dr. Chesney's intense expression softened, replaced by a thoughtful squint over the rim of his spectacles, the facial gesture Catrina was more used to seeing when he gave due consideration to lofty issues of art and engineering. He rocked back in his plush leather executive chair and seemed to begin forming his words with greater care.
"We must be fair, of course," he said, "and give the devil his dues. If Andreas Toscano's charisma and flamboyancy is really encouraging ordinary people to give more thought to the aesthetic quality of their lives, we must acknowledge it. My concern is that historically when architects have reached this level of popular approval, it's too often had tragic consequences. Adolf Hitler wanted people to believe his Third Reich would last a thousand years, so he appointed Albert Speer to design convincingly sturdy edifices. Millions of misguided people were seduced by Speer's imposing edifices at Nuremberg, even though they were nothing more than a grand backdrop for a mad dictator's dramatic speeches. Andreas Toscano isn't trying to promote fascism, Catrina, but he is promoting a way of life based on extraordinary lewdness and depravity. As the country's main journal of architecture and design, we must obviously question the wisdom of such a radical departure from the moral dignity of our society, and question the motivations of the man behind it all. Like Speer before him, Toscano is the darling of the privileged classes. The Hollywood crowd fawns over him, and being associated with all that glittering razzamatazz causes millions of less privileged types to support his ideas too.
"Let's face it," Dr. Chesney concluded, maintaining full eye contact to make his final point, "depravity isn't unknown in Tinsel Town, but the architecture of licentiousness may not suit the family of a Kentucky coal miner or a New York cab driver. We have to remember that for better or worse Andreas Toscano has become a pop icon more than an architect. He's trying to sell his twisted philosophy to everyone, and for most people it would be a disaster."
