A Tangled Web (14 page)

Garth smiled. “All those places in one trip?”

“No, we can't; you're right. But let's think about it. Maybe spring vacation? Or this summer?”

“One of the above. Or October; I have a conference in The Hague. We could keep the kids out of school . . . except that I want some time for the two of us.”

“Oh, so do I. But we can't just go off after I've promised . . .”

“We'll do both. We'll figure it out.” They smiled at each other.
So many plans; so much time for so many wonderful plans.

She was still thinking about that two weeks later as she drove to Chicago: that once she had thought she was only borrowing this family, but now she knew she would have them always. And stay with them, she thought, amused, because she had put off her trip to London again and again and finally had abandoned it for the foreseeable future. She had too much to do here, and London no longer seemed urgent or attractive, especially since Mrs. Thirkell had arrived and had plunged into organizing their house and their family.

The great organizer, she thought, smiling, as she walked into the Koner Building and saw a man leaning against a pillar, waiting for her. “Koner,” he said, and held out his hand. He was short and square, with a flat, pugilist's nose, black eyes constantly darting back and forth, heavy whiskers, and a custom suit and shirt that he wore with dark blue suede shoes. A gold watch chain stretched across his generous paunch.

Sabrina shook hands with him. They had talked on the telephone, but she had never met him, and now they looked at each other for a long moment, to see if they liked what they saw enough to take the next step to working together.

William Koner had bought the abandoned ten-story warehouse in Chicago's Printer's Row neighborhood a few months earlier. It had been renovated once in its long history by Ethan Chatham but then had fallen into disrepair, and Koner had hired Vernon Stern, an architect, to design the renovation, with shops on the ground floor and loft apartments above, and he had asked Sabrina, in a telephone call, to do the interiors. This was the first time Sabrina would meet both of them and walk through the building.

Koner paced, waiting for Stern, anxious to start. Sabrina, wearing faded jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and a tan corduroy blazer, perched on a windowsill littered with paint and plaster chips. “Why do you want me for this job, Mr. Koner? I've never done a building of this size; I haven't worked with loft apartments at all.”

“Right, I know all that.” He pulled out a pipe and stuck it between his teeth. “Madeline Kane took me to the house you're doing in Lake Forest. Good job. Old on the outside, old and new all mixed up on the inside. I liked it. My wife liked it. And Madeline says you're the best.”

“And you'd give me this job because of one home I've designed and Madeline's recommendation?”

“Why not? My first two wives bought a lot from her; they said she knew her stuff. My wife, my current wife, says you've made that shop world class and you've got some kind of deal with a couple of shops in London, so you know Europe, too. I'd say you're ambitious and smart and you've got class; I don't need a wife to tell me that. So why shouldn't you do this job?”

Sabrina laughed. “I think I should.”

They smiled at each other. “And cut out this ‘Mr. Koner' business,” he said. “My friends call me Billy. And I call you Stephanie, unless you have a problem with that.”

“I have no problem with that.”

The door swung open and Vernon Stern arrived. He was tall, blond, tanned, as perfectly handsome as if he had stepped from the pages of a magazine. His hair was carefully tousled, he wore jeans and cowboy boots and a tweed jacket over a purple silk shirt open at the neck; he was impeccably casual. Sabrina found herself smiling. He had designed some of Chicago's most striking buildings, but it seemed that his most loving creation was himself.

His eyes widened when they were introduced, as men's eyes always did when they met her; she barely noticed it anymore. But he also made their handshake last longer than necessary and studied her as if he were evaluating a
painting. “Beautiful,” he said. “It's rare these days to find beauty that hasn't been carved out by a plastic surgeon or layered on with cosmetics. A pleasure to meet you, Stephanie.”

“I admire your buildings,” Sabrina said and slipped her hand from his.

He nodded, still gazing at her, then unhurriedly unrolled the set of plans he carried. Sabrina took out her clipboard and pencil and a steel tape measure and they began to walk through the building. Koner's secretary had arrived and trailed invisibly behind them, taking notes. When they reached the ninth floor, Sabrina stopped at a window. “What an amazing view of the city. We ought to do something spectacular up here. May I see the plans for this floor?”

Stern spread them on the floor and the three of them knelt in the dust and littered plaster to bend over them. “But it's the same as the other floors,” Sabrina said.

“Your job is to make it spectacular,” Koner said.

“What did you have in mind?” Stern asked Sabrina.

She looked again at the vast space. “I was thinking of two apartments instead of four. It's hard to find five- or six-thousand-square-foot apartments in the city.” She looked at the high ceiling. “Or you could get the same size apartments by making them two stories, with a two-story living room, the windows extended all the way, and—maybe a winding staircase? Then you'd get the full impact of the view, and incredible light.”

“Good idea,” Stern said dryly.

Sabrina drew back. “I'm sorry. This is your field, not mine.”

“You'd be good in it. I presented both of those ideas to Billy and he vetoed them.”

“I want the most apartments I can get,” Koner said. “Two thousand square feet is plenty big enough for a city apartment, and there's more money in four on a floor than two.”

“Not necessarily,” Stern said. “We talked, if you recall,
about how much of a premium you could get for larger apartments on the top two floors. In fact, I brought those plans, just in case.” He flipped through the plans to the last few pages.

Sabrina leaned over them. “Oh, I like this; you found a way to combine them. But how would they share a central foyer and elevator?”

“This way.” Stern took out his pencil, and he and Sabrina bent closer to the drawing. “We'd enlarge the foyer here and add an elevator behind the existing one . . .”

She nodded as he talked and sketched in bold, swift lines. After a moment she made a tentative sketch of her own in a corner of the sheet. Stern frowned, changed it, changed it again, then smiled. Their voices were murmurs, their pencils busy. Sabrina forgot everything except the joy of creating a space, envisioning it, and manipulating it with her pencil and her imagination. She followed Stern's lead, but whenever she offered a suggestion, he treated it seriously and once flashed her a smile that made her flush with pride. But then Koner, standing above them, broke in. “I told you: four apartments to a floor.”

“Which is exactly what you'll get if you insist,” Stern said, clipping his words. He stood and slapped dust off the knees of his jeans. “But Stephanie has some fine ideas and I think you should consider them very seriously.”

“You think they're fine because they agree with you.”

Stern grinned. “I inevitably admire people who agree with me.”

Sabrina stood with them, holding the plans. “The Koner Building could get a lot of attention with this design. And Billy Koner would be called a visionary.”

“That doesn't buy groceries,” Koner said.

Sabrina met Stern's eyes and saw an impatience and frustration that matched her own. All designers and architects probably wish they could do without clients, she thought; at least some of the time. “Well, maybe you're
right,” she said at last. “Maybe ordinary apartments sell more easily than dramatic ones.”

“Ordinary is exactly what people want,” Koner said. “They don't want surprises; they want things they're comfortable with.” He watched Sabrina roll up the plans. “I can get three hundred thousand for a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot loft apartment in this neighborhood; it's hot now; young couples like lofts and they like the city.”

“I imagine they're adventurous, too,” Sabrina said casually. “Maybe they like surprises instead of always being comfortable. Maybe they'd choose your building over another one if it was exciting: something that's fun to furnish and to show off to their friends.”

Koner contemplated the empty space. He stood for a long time, his head bent in thought. Sabrina met Stern's eyes, and they waited, willing Koner to change his mind. “Well, maybe,” he said at last. “The right people, if you can find them, pay for prestige. They don't enjoy paying for ordinary. I'll give it some thought; massage some numbers in my office. I'm not promising anything, but maybe.”

Sabrina and Stern exchanged a smile. “Well done,” Stern murmured. Then he said to Koner, “We'll put together ideas for the lower floors while you play with your numbers, but let us know as soon as you can.”

Koner nodded. “Right. Absolutely. No time to lose.”

“I have to finish the house in Lake Forest,” Sabrina said quietly.

He frowned. “How long?”

“Two to three weeks.”

“But that's finishing up a job; it's not full time, right? You could be meeting with Vern at the same time.”

“Finishing a job is often the busiest time. I'll do what I can, but I won't have much time until April.”

“This is a big job, Stephanie. People make time for big jobs.”

She took a breath. “I have a family. I run Collectibles with Madeline; I have a project in Lake Forest that I intend
to finish in the best way I can. I'll do my best, Billy; that's all I can promise.”

He peered at her. “Maybe you're not hungry enough. Maybe I need somebody who's willing to toss everything else over to do my job.”

“Maybe you do,” she said, her voice turning cold. “I've never let anyone down, I've never had a project run over in cost or time unless my clients made too many changes, but I can't guarantee any of that unless I have control over when I start a new job. If that isn't good enough for you, I suggest you find someone else.”

Scowling, he tried to stare her down, then nodded, as if to himself, and stuck out his hand. “I don't want anybody else. Vern? You okay working with Stephanie?”

“Very much so.”

“Well, so okay.” They shook hands. “So that's done.”

“I'll send you my contract,” Sabrina said. “You'll want your lawyer to look at it.”

“Shouldn't be too complicated, should it? You're not the architect, after all; you're doing the simple part: paint and carpets. That shouldn't take more than a simple contract. Fixed price, too; we talked about that.”

“And I said I didn't work that way.” Sabrina walked to the center of the vast open space. The painted brick walls were flaking, long cracks ran like lightning through the plaster, electrical conduit hung from steel beams in the exposed ceiling, the window frames were splintered and most of the windows were broken, the lavatories had been vandalized, the painted steel columns that marched from one end of the building to the other were pitted and peeling, the floor was a wild mosaic of linoleum, carpet strips, paint, and the original wood planks.

“The simple part,” she repeated thoughtfully. “I'll tell you what, Billy. I'll send you my contract, which is probably pretty standard, and when I've gone over Vern's plans I'll give you an estimate of the number of hours I'll spend on it—an estimate, not a fixed-price bid—and when we're finished, if you think I've made the job overcomplicated
or billed you for too many hours, I'll refund ten percent of my total charge.”

“You mean you're making a bet?”

“Something like that.”

“Who decides how complicated it was or how many hours it should have taken?”

“You do.”

“How about that. Well, it's a deal. You're okay, Stephanie. You believe in yourself. I like that.”

“So do I,” Stern said. He shook Sabrina's hand. “I'm looking forward to working with you.”

She drove home in a haze of euphoria.
Oh, Garth, I can't wait to tell you
 . . . That was the core of her life now: that at the end of a wonderful day, or any kind of day, what she wanted most of all was to share it with her husband.
I'll always need this: to tell you all of it so we can make it ours, not just mine.

She treasured her excitement as she drove home and pulled into the driveway, but as she came to a stop she saw Penny flying toward her, sobbing.
Oh, not now. Later, but not now; I really want this time just to be happy with Garth
 . . . But she saw that his car was not in the garage, and then, the minute she opened the car door, Penny was in her arms, so she pushed her exhilaration aside and knelt on the driveway, holding Penny close. “Hush, hush, sweet Penny. We'll take care of it, whatever it is.”

After a moment, Penny's shudders eased and her breathing slowed. “Let's go inside,” Sabrina said. “Otherwise, we'll freeze to the driveway and Daddy will have to chisel us loose. I'd like a cup of tea; how about hot chocolate for you?”

Penny nodded. “She wanted me to have tea.”

“You mean Mrs. Thirkell? Well, she's only been here for a few days and I guess nobody told her that the best thing in a crisis is hot chocolate. Come on, love, then we'll talk.”

Sabrina made hot chocolate while Mrs. Thirkell made fresh tea and then Penny and Sabrina carried their mugs to
the living room and curled up in one of the deep couches near the bay window. The wind had risen and tree branches whipped against the house as low clouds gathered. “Doesn't Chicago have springtime in March?” Sabrina murmured. “Well, I ought to be used to it; London doesn't, either.”