Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Rye, the man he’d met the week before and Charlie’s partner, opened the door.
“Did I hear Charlie right on the phone? You could do a chainsaw carving of a cat out of a tree trunk??”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve never done a cat before, so I can’t guarantee the realism. Cats are kind of smooth curves and, well, it’s a chainsaw. But, yeah, basically.”
“I am so damn glad you moved here,” Rye said sincerely.
Chapter Six
Zachary
Zachary was behind. It was September 1st. Usually by this time, he’d have his armatures created, his lighting scheme signed off on by Wes, his best friend, and be spending a satisfying Saturday night in his studio, movies playing, ideas firing, as he painted, papier-mâchéd, et cetera. He had a concept, but not the time to bring it to life.
Instead, he was hunched over his drafting table long after he should’ve been done with work for the day, scrubbing out lines with an already overworked eraser. This project was a disaster, and it was his fault. Darcy, his closest collaborator/competition at work, had told him from the beginning that the partners weren’t going to respond well to something this innovative. That they were looking for clean, obvious design. And Zachary knew she was right.
But there was something in him that had pushed. Had whispered that this time was the time. The time to show them that he was so much more than box stores and condominiums. More than simple and functional. That he, Zachary Glass, was visionary.
The design he pitched had been lovely and interesting and, as the partners had immediately told him, expensive. And that was what it all boiled down to: innovation was worth less than the money they’d have to spend to make it a reality. It was so damned depressing Zachary could scream.
There had been a time when architecture was art. When the shapes of the spaces people moved through spoke of vision, of the future. Pushed boundaries. Asked questions. Made people pay attention to the world around them.
Even Zachary wasn’t so egotistical as to imagine himself creating the next Notre Dame, the next Mosque of Samarra. But even Mrs. Lundy’s house had vision. McTeague had sparked controversy in the fifties and sixties. It was ugly, to Zachary and to many others, but who cared?! It was visionary! It changed the way people thought about their own living spaces—insisted they confront the concept of home as much as his designs themselves. And it laid the groundwork for what would become industrialism later on.
Zachary sighed and allowed himself ten minutes to feel sorry for himself. He texted Wes: My bosses are visionless hacks. I am deeply misunderstood. Cry for me, Argentina.
Your bosses ARE visionless hacks, Wes replied. They weren’t into the gator?
Seeing it in text, it had perhaps been a mistake to call the development Gator. But the Florida mall had four anchor points, a curving tail of a movie theater, and second stories on one half that made its head and chest rear up from the water of the parking lots that surrounded it. Not that you could tell that with a casual glance, but concepts mattered!
Well, not now, since the design would never see the light of day.
You need to be somewhere that lets you have more freedom, Wes wrote.
This made complete sense coming from Wes, who worked on his own, for himself, and only cared about the results. But Zachary liked structure. He liked order, and predictability, and having other people tell him he was doing a good job. He liked the competition of vying for the next project with his coworkers. Besides, unlike Wes, Zachary didn’t have a large savings account to fall back on.
Nope, Zachary would just take the next three minutes, now, and finish feeling sorry for himself, and then he’d redo the design the way the partners wanted. The Gator would stay in the swamp and he’d produce a safe, boring, cheap building full of ninety-degree angles, ceilings the height of premanufactured beams, and no windows so that shoppers couldn’t be reminded that there was a world outside the mall.
With a self-indulgent sigh and head full of numbers, Zachary slid a fresh sheet of paper onto the table and began to design Florida’s most boring mall. And if something inside him died a little every time he abandoned one of his own designs like this, well. That was life, wasn’t it.
* * *
Bram Larkspur had to be stopped.
Zachary had woken up Sunday morning, exhausted from his redesign the night before, but excited to spend the day on his Halloween decorations. Even though he was behind by his own standards, he was still light-years ahead of everyone but Mrs. Lundy (fortunately though regrettably not a threat).
But when he looked out the window, his heart skipped a beat and his stomach clenched. Sprawling across Bram Larkspur’s front yard was a-a-a beast. A terrifying and glorious dragon creature with a tail that curled to a wicked point and a body that rose eight or nine feet tall. The head then dipped down, like it could peer at anyone who passed. It seemed to be carved out of five different tree stumps of varying heights and sizes that fit artfully together.