She Was An Architect

An old joke retold. Shuttlepilot inspired this farrago, but you can blame me for all ofit.

"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.

She called in the usual: hot and sour soup and General Tso's chicken. Mao Tse-tung couldn't have won until he got the Generals out of the kitchen and onto the battlefield.

She thought she heard the delivery guy, as she deleted yet another flawed design. It wasn't. It was Eadweard.

That's how he spelled it, Eadweard Lyonel Hampson. He said his family was English, and he dropped Anglicisms to prove it. He went "on holiday" (never vacation); he had to visit a friend "in hospital"; his car had a "bonnet" and a "boot", and he kept it in a "garridge". He was also a lecherous pain in the poontang.

"Working late, are we?"

"I am, you're not."

"To the contrary, Kali girl, I am designing the vestibule for Mr. Schor's masterpiece, the fortieth floor."

He came closer to her. Kali suddenly felt weak, and not for lack of food. "God," she thought, "it's happening again. Every time I'm with him I get like this, and I hate the sonofabitch bastard."

She leaned against her desk, knocking over a box of pencils. Eadweard ("Christ, what a phony! His grandfather's name wasn't 'Hampson' for fuck's sake, it was Chlemielowicz and he came from Chelm in fuckin' Poland!") took her face in his left hand and brought her mouth to his. She almost fainted from the fumes of single malt; but his kiss made her knees buckle and her dripping juices almost stained her trouser front.

"You should relax more often, Kali," he said. "A good fuck would really improve your attitude and your work."

"The fuckin' fraud! Jim Moore and I are carrying this worthless goat around on our backs, and I owe him?" she thought. But who brought in Schor? Eadweard, for some unknown reason.

He took her face in his right hand, put his left on her breast, and pulled her to him again. "You should come home with me. I've just installed a jacuzzi with a coozie cleaner that will lay your pipe...and then I will." He kissed her, pulling her nipple through the fabric of shirt and bra, and rolling it in his fingers.

"Please let me finish," she begged, gasping. "I just got an idea."

"Workaholics never do well, my pet. But have it your way...for now. As your MacArthur fellah said, I'll be back."

The delivery guy showed up, she paid him, although her appetite was gone. She sat down at the computer. Her soaked panties made her squirm. She had to work, yet for a moment she imagined him tearing at her clothes, bending her over her desk as the pencils stabbed at her skin, thrusting his cock into her, pounding her painfully until she orgasmed, then withdrawing only to violate her anally, brutally, while she fiercely rubbed her clit with a pencil eraser, and squirted cum onto the carpet.

But back to work. Why must the walls of the apartment be square? Why not round? Why not bow out a window, so? And now it would fit! She quickly saved her plan, forwarded it to Jim, and suddenly hungry, tore into the soup and chicken.

As she finished, Eadweard returned. She stood up, paralyzed, awaiting his onslaught but unable to resist.

He swept the remains of her dinner onto the floor, grabbed her shoulders and pulled her toward him. "Take off your shirt or I'll rip it off you, bitch!" She did, and slipped off her bra. Her full, light olive breasts, their nipples standing proud, fell as he grabbed them.

He put his mouth to her breast and sucked her hard, painfully.

He stood up, releasing her breasts. "Turn around, cunt, I want to fuck you filthy cunt from behind. And then your dirty asshole."

Something in her head stopped her. She reached for his groin. "Open your fly," she said throatily.

He did. She reached in, grabbed his testicles, and squeezed, hard.

He screamed, and as his head went forward, toward her, she head-butted him right over his left eye and threw a really fine right jab into his solar plexus.

He collapsed to the floor, retching, his mouth gaping wide.

"Had enough, bastard?" she asked.

He gasped, "I suppose...a blowjob...is..out of the question?"