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hallways that sliced great hunks of space for no apparent reason, the long,

rectangular sausages of rooms doomed to darkness. Jesus, he thought, they’d have

flunked me for this in the first term. After which, he proceeded with his work

swiftly, easily, expertly--and happily.

Before lunchtime. Keating had made friends in the room, not any definite

friends, but a vague soil spread and ready from which friendship would spring.

He had smiled at his neighbors and winked in understanding over nothing at all.

He had used each trip to the water cooler to caress those he passed with the

soft, cheering glow of his eyes, the brilliant eyes that seemed to pick each man

in turn out of the room, out of the universe, as the most important specimen of

humanity and as Keating’s dearest friend. There goes--there seemed to be left in

his wake--a smart boy and a hell of a good fellow.

Keating noticed that a tall blond youth at the next table was doing the

elevation of an office building. Keating leaned with chummy respect against the

boy’s shoulder and looked at the laurel garlands entwined about fluted columns

three floors high.

"Pretty good for the old man," said Keating with admiration.

"Who?" asked the boy.

"Why, Francon," said Keating.

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"Francon hell," said the boy placidly. "He hasn’t designed a doghouse in eight

years." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, at a glass door behind them.

"Him."

"What?" asked Keating, turning.

"Him," said the boy. "Stengel. He does all these things."

Behind the glass door Keating saw a pair of bony shoulders above the edge of a

desk, a small, triangular head bent intently, and two blank pools of light in

the round frames of glasses.

It was late in the afternoon when a presence seemed to have passed beyond the

closed door, and Keating learned from the rustle of whispers around him that Guy

Francon had arrived and had risen to his office on the floor above. Half an hour

later the glass door opened and Stengel came out, a huge piece of cardboard

dangling between his fingers.

"Hey, you," he said, his glasses stopping on Keating’s face. "You doing the

plans for this?" He swung the cardboard forward. "Take this up to the boss for

the okay. Try to listen to what he’ll say and try to look intelligent. Neither

of which matters anyway."

He was short and his arms seemed to hang down to his ankles; arms swinging like

ropes in the long sleeves, with big, efficient hands. Keating’s eyes froze,

darkening, for one-tenth of a second, gathered in a tight stare at the blank

lenses. Then Keating smiled and said pleasantly:

"Yes, sir."

He carried the cardboard on the tips of his ten fingers, up the crimson-plushed

stairway to Guy Francon’s office. The cardboard displayed a water-color

perspective of a gray granite mansion with three tiers of dormers, five

balconies, four bays, twelve columns, one flagpole and two lions at the

entrance. In the corner, neatly printed by hand, stood: "Residence of Mr. and

Mrs. James S. Whattles. Francon & Heyer, Architects." Keating whistled softly:

James S. Whattles was the multimillionaire manufacturer of shaving lotions.

Guy Francon’s office was polished. No, thought Keating, not polished, but

shellacked; no, not shellacked, but liquid with mirrors melted and poured over

every object. He saw splinters of his own reflection let loose like a swarm of

butterflies, following him across the room, on the Chippendale cabinets, on the

Jacobean chairs, on the Louis XV mantelpiece. He had time to note a genuine

Roman statue in a corner, sepia photographs of the Parthenon, of Rheims

Cathedral, of Versailles and of the Frink National Bank Building with the

eternal torch.

He saw his own legs approaching him in the side of the massive mahogany desk.

Guy Francon sat behind the desk. Guy Francon’s face was yellow and his cheeks

sagged. He looked at Keating for an instant as if he had never seen him before,

then remembered and smiled expansively.

"Well, well, well, Kittredge, my boy, here we are, all set and at home! So glad

to see you. Sit down, boy, sit down, what have you got there? Well, there’s no

hurry, no hurry at all. Sit down. How do you like it here?"

"I’m afraid, sir, that I’m a little too happy," said Keating, with an expression

of frank, boyish helplessness. "I thought I could be businesslike on my first

job, but starting in a place like this...I guess it knocked me out a

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little....I’ll get over it, sir," he promised.

"Of course," said Guy Francon. "It might be a bit overwhelming for a boy, just a

bit. But don’t you worry. I’m sure you’ll make good."

"I’ll do my best, sir."

"Of course you will. What’s this they sent me?" Francon extended his hand to the

drawing, but his fingers came to rest limply on his forehead instead. "It’s so

annoying, this headache....No, no, nothing serious--" he smiled at Keating’s

prompt concern--"just a little mal de tête. One works so hard."

"Is there anything I can get for you, sir?"

"No, no, thank you. It’s not anything you can get for me, it’s if only you could

take something away from me." He winked. "The champagne. Entre nous, that

champagne of theirs wasn’t worth a damn last night. I’ve never cared for

champagne anyway. Let me tell you, Kittredge, it’s very important to know about

wines, for instance when you’ll take a client out to dinner and will want to be

sure of the proper thing to order. Now I’ll tell you a professional secret. Take

quail, for instance. Now most people would order Burgundy with it. What do you

do? You call for Clos Vougeot 1904. See? Adds that certain touch. Correct, but

original. One must always be original....Who sent you up, by the way?"

"Mr. Stengel, sir."

"Oh, Stengel." The tone in which he pronounced the name clicked like a shutter

in Keating’s mind: it was a permission to be stored away for future use. "Too

grand to bring his own stuff up, eh? Mind you, he’s a great designer, the best

designer in New York City, but he’s just getting to be a bit too grand lately.

He thinks he’s the only one doing any work around here, just because he smudges

at a board all day long. You’ll learn, my boy, when you’ve been in the business

longer, that the real work of an office is done beyond its walls. Take last

night, for instance. Banquet of the Clarion Real Estate Association. Two hundred

guests--dinner and champagne--oh, yes, champagne!" He wrinkled his nose

fastidiously, in self-mockery. "A few words to say informally in a little

after-dinner speech--you know, nothing blatant, no vulgar sales talk--only a few

well-chosen thoughts on the responsibility of realtors to society, on the

importance of selecting architects who are competent, respected and well

established. You know, a few bright little slogans that will stick in the mind."

"Yes, sir, like ’Choose the builder of your home as carefully as you choose the

bride to inhabit it.’"

"Not bad. Not bad at all, Kittredge. Mind if I jot it down?"

"My name is Keating, sir," said Keating firmly. "You are very welcome to the

idea. I’m happy if it appeals to you."

"Keating, of course! Why, of course, Keating," said Francon with a disarming

smile. "Dear me, one meets so many people. How did you say it? Choose the

builder...it was very well put."

He made Keating repeat it and wrote it down on a pad, picking a pencil from an

array before him, new, many-colored pencils, sharpened to a professional needle

point, ready, unused.

Then he pushed he pad aside, sighed, patted the smooth waves of his hair and

said wearily:

30

"Well, all right, I suppose I’ll have to look at the thing."

Keating extended the drawing respectfully. Francon leaned back, held the

cardboard out at arm’s length and looked at it. He closed his left eye, then his

right eye, then moved the cardboard an inch farther. Keating expected wildly to

see him turn the drawing upside down. But Francon just held it and Keating knew

suddenly that he had long since stopped seeing it. Francon was studying it for

his, Keating’s, benefit; and then Keating felt light, light as air, and he saw

the road to his future, clear and open.

"Hm...yes," Francon was saying, rubbing his chin with the tips of two soft

fingers. "Hm...yes..."

He turned to Keating.

"Not bad," said Francon. "Not bad at all....Well...perhaps...it would have been

more distinguished, you know, but...well, the drawing is done so neatly....What

do you think, Keating?"

Keating thought that four of the windows faced four mammoth granite columns. But

he looked at Francon’s fingers playing with a petunia-mauve necktie, and decided

not to mention it. He said instead:

"If I may make a suggestion, sir, it seems to me that the cartouches between the

fourth and fifth floors are somewhat too modest for so imposing a building. It

would appear that an ornamented stringcourse would be so much more appropriate."

"That’s it. I was just going to say it. An ornamented stringcourse....But...but

look, it would mean diminishing the fenestration, wouldn’t it?"

"Yes," said Keating, a faint coating of diffidence over the tone he had used in

discussions with his classmates, "but windows are less important than the

dignity of a building’s facade."

"That’s right. Dignity. We must give our clients dignity above all. Yes,

definitely, an ornamented stringcourse....Only...look, I’ve approved the

preliminary drawings, and Stengel has had this done up so neatly."

"Mr. Stengel will be delighted to change it if you advise him to."

Francon’s eyes held Keating’s for a moment. Then Francon’s lashes dropped and he

picked a piece of lint off his sleeve.

"Of course, of course..." he said vaguely. "But...do you think the stringcourse

is really important?"

"I think," said Keating slowly, "it is more important to make changes you find

necessary than to okay every drawing just as Mr. Stengel designed it."

Because Francon said nothing, but only looked straight at him, because Francon’s

eyes were focused and his hands limp, Keating knew that he had taken a terrible

chance and won; he became frightened by the chance after he knew he had won.

They looked silently across the desk, and both saw that they were two men who

could understand each other.

"We’ll have an ornamented stringcourse," said Francon with calm, genuine

authority. "Leave this here. Tell Stengel that I want to see him."

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He had turned to go. Francon stopped him. Francon’s voice was gay and warm:

"Oh, Keating, by the way, may I make a suggestion? Just between us, no offense

intended, but a burgundy necktie would be so much better than blue with your

gray smock, don’t you think so?"

"Yes, sir," said Keating easily. "Thank you. You’ll see it tomorrow."

He walked out and closed the door softly.

On his way back through the reception room, Keating saw a distinguished,

gray-haired gentleman escorting a lady to the door. The gentleman wore no hat

and obviously belonged to the office; the lady wore a mink cape, and was

obviously a client.

The gentleman was not bowing to the ground, he was not unrolling a carpet, he

was not waving a fan over her head; he was only holding the door for her. It

merely seemed to Keating that the gentleman was doing all of that.

The Frink National Bank Building rose over Lower Manhattan, and its long shadow

moved, as the sun traveled over the sky, like a huge clock hand across grimy

tenements, from the Aquarium to Manhattan Bridge. When the sun was gone, the

torch of Hadrian’s Mausoleum flared up in its stead, and made glowing red smears

on the glass of windows for miles around, on the top stories of buildings high

enough to reflect it. The Frink National Bank Building displayed the entire

history of Roman art in well-chosen specimens; for a long time it had been

considered the best building of the city, because no other structure could boast

a single Classical item which it did not possess. It offered so many columns,

pediments, friezes, tripods, gladiators, urns and volutes that it looked as if

it had not been built of white marble, but squeezed out of a pastry tube. It

was, however, built of white marble. No one knew that but the owners who had

paid for it. It was now of a streaked, blotched, leprous color, neither brown

nor green but the worst tones of both, the color of slow rot, the color of

smoke, gas fumes and acids eating into a delicate stone intended for clean air

and open country. The Frink National Bank Building, however, was a great

success. It had been so great a success that it was the last structure Guy

Francon ever designed; its prestige spared him the bother from then on.

Three blocks east of the Frink National Bank stood the Dana Building. It was

some stories lower and without any prestige whatever. Its lines were hard and

simple, revealing, emphasizing the harmony of the steel skeleton within, as a

body reveals the perfection of its bones. It had no other ornament to offer. It

displayed nothing but the precision of its sharp angles, the modeling of its

planes, the long streaks of its windows like streams of ice running down from

the roof to the pavements. New Yorkers seldom looked at the Dana Building.

Sometimes, a rare country visitor would come upon it unexpectedly in the

moonlight and stop and wonder from what dream that vision had come. But such

visitors were rare. The tenants of the Dana Building said that they would not

exchange it for any structure on earth; they appreciated the light, the air, the

beautiful logic of the plan in their halls and offices. But the tenants of the