Stealing Fire (2 page)

People were picking up their bags. Porters were calm, helping them up the few stairs into the train, making them feel pampered before they'd even boarded. All I saw on the platform was heads, hats, hands waving good-bye or hello. No Iris.

Then I thought about what I would do if our places were reversed. I turned around and walked inside the station. I saw her, sitting on a bench, looking a little nervous, not much, reading a book.

I was flooded with relief. “I couldn't find you!”

“Did you think I'd leave without you?”

“I thought maybe you'd figure I was already on the train.”

“You know what? We're going to miss the train if we keep talking about where we thought the other person was. Let's get going!” she said.

I grabbed our bags and held her elbow, moving through the line of people to the front. I flipped open my ID, and we were escorted onto the train. One of the perks of the job. We had a first-class drawing room, and I couldn't wait to get Iris alone.

“Hey,” she said, before we'd even settled in. “Let's go to the dining car.”

“I thought maybe we'd check our sleeping quarters first. You know, make sure it's good enough for you.”

“Right … Do you ever have anything else on your mind?”

“Around you? Not very often.”

“You want to tell me about that fracas in the station?”

“After I clear my mind. Relax.”

“That was Frank Lloyd Wright.”

“Yes?”

“The elderly man in the middle of the big stink. He's the preeminent architect in America.”

“Anyone who walks around carrying three names has got to be important.”

“When he was young, I think he was just Frank.”

“And then his life got complicated.”

“Very.”

I opened the door into our compartment. It was the plushest we'd had yet.

“Yazzie, feel these sheets! Egyptian cotton.”

We tumbled onto the sheets and felt the cotton. It was exquisite. I learned the real meaning of that word from my wife.

*   *   *

Life wasn't going according to plan. Usually the old man traveled by auto caravan with his group of interns from Wisconsin to the desert. It would be easy to move in and out among them on a long road trip. Easy for things, even important things, to get lost, even to make it seem accidental. Easy to urge someone toward behavior that would get them kicked out of the group.

But the train? He had chosen his favorites to go with him.

I cornered Mother before they left and made up some romantic hogwash about having to be on board.

“You ask too many favors,” she said, “and he's about had it with you.”

“Tell him I'll work on the color elevations. That we'll get a head start if we have those finished by the time we hit Arizona.”

She looked doubtful. I felt like throttling her, but she was key. I knew her button, her soft spot. I would humiliate myself.

“You're my true family. I can't bear to be away from you.”

She stroked my hair. “No one understands better than I what it's like when life deals you a cruel blow,” she said. “I'll see what I can do.”

I kissed her cheek, I kissed her hand. I even cried. I was blanketed with gratitude.

But just like that, a gangster showed up at the train station before we left, almost ruining everything before the trip started. Wright didn't remember how he'd met him—that was a relief.

In the confusion I got on the train. My investment in the ticket was worth it.

I went inside that calm place to keep the world from spinning. Everything was all right. All right. This wasn't much different than changing the structure of a building to support the design. The important thing was the design.

I felt lucky.
Might even be better,
I thought.
It usually works out that way for me.
And I stayed inside that still place, reveling in the peace, designing a few new plans.

I caught the eye of a sassy young woman who had just boarded. She was with a man. Why not take a chance? I winked at her, her mouth made an O, and she returned my smile. So many possibilities.

 

Three

We had dinner reservations at six thirty and went to the dining car early to do some people-watching. The tables were full.

Iris ordered a martini with an olive stuck on a toothpick. I don't get near booze unless it's champagne for a special occasion. Too many neighbors and relatives on my Navajo mom's side have fallen off the road of their life because of drink. You see that enough times, and booze doesn't have much appeal. Iris and I chatted, and held hands, and made comments that weren't very nice about other passengers. We made up names for them. We were in a great mood, and I came up with a name for the lady in the next booth that made Iris laugh so hard tears ran down her cheeks.

And then? The most famous architect in America and a tall woman with her hair pulled back stopped talking to a couple of young men a few tables up from us. They walked our way. Iris just about ripped the seams in her stockings, she was jiggling her legs so much.

“Yazzie, I can't believe we're on the same train with Frank Lloyd Wright, and he's coming toward us!”

“Even people with three names go places, Iris.”

She looked at the old man and glowed.

“He's really that big a deal?” I said.

“Huge.”

And then the huge-little man spotted us, motioning like
Could we join you?
The seats at our table were the last of four in the car. I nodded,
Sure.
I was interested in him. His energy was different than most old men's. He reminded me of my grandfather Mose Goldman, the man who is my hero, who raised me. Who loved me into manhood.

“We meet again!” he said. “This is my wife, Olgivanna Wright.”

She was taller than Mr. Wright when they stood together, younger than Mr. Wright by a decade or two. She wasn't what you'd call beautiful, but she had presence.
Style,
Iris would say.

“I am so proud and privileged to meet you, Mr. Wright.” Iris dove right in. “Yazzie, oh, this is my husband, Yazzie Goldman, and I'm Iris Goldman.”

“Delighted.”

“I almost lost my husband at the train station!” Iris said. “Hope everything got ironed out.”

Wright's wife looked at him and cocked her eyebrow in the way only a wife can.

“Oh, it was nothing, nothing. Tempest in a teapot.”

“Frank?” his wife said.

“A person who wanted to talk design collared me. I don't do consultations for free.”

“No, we don't.”

“Mr. Goldman here—”

“Yazzie, please,” I said.

“Yazzie moved him along.”

Mrs. Wright thanked me. Mr. Wright thanked me. So very much polite chatter.

Iris had finished her first martini and was tossing back her second. “Mr. Wright,” she said, “I am about to embarrass myself, but I am a huge fan of your work. When we go to Chicago, I see you everywhere. Your work everywhere, I mean.”

“I am everywhere, even outside Chicago, and aren't you kind to say so?”

“Plus, you keep wowing people with new forms, work that absolutely stretches the boundaries of what anyone thought was possible in architecture.”

“I am going to have to live another eighty years! For the first time in my life I have more commissions than I can manage,” he said. “It's a strange time in life to become popular.”

“It's spectacular! You're defying age.”

“What is age? We only get old when we stop being creative.”

This conversation was right up Iris's alley.

“My wife is an artist,” I said. “A painter.”

“Lovely!”

“She just had a show in Santa Fe that sold out in the first two hours.”

“Very impressive. You don't happen to have a portfolio with you?”

“No, just my sketchbook, and that no one sees. It's sort of like a diary.”

“I understand completely.”

He tapped a tube that he'd held on to as he slid into the booth.

“And that?” Iris said to him. “Too large for a sketchbook.”

“This, this is the culmination of my vision. Absolutely organic, every draft.” He caressed the tube, filled with his dream. “And no one touches these plans but me, not even my wife.”

Mrs. Wright lost interest after about five seconds of the conversation between Wright and Iris. She'd probably heard about his organic buildings for a long time. Then she looked over my shoulder and perked up. I turned my head and saw that a man about thirty years old had gotten her attention. He was too pretty. He beckoned her with a finger.

She looked at her husband. “Frank, Payton needs me.” She excused herself and joined him.

*   *   *

I'd watched Wright and the tall guy yukking it up. Strangers a couple of hours ago, now bosom buddies. People are such phonies.

I could be worried about the tall man. I had never met a man that was so, I wasn't sure, so self-assured—he almost seemed like a real person. I'd let it go. As my nanny used to say, No use in borrowing trouble. They'd be off the train and out of the Wrights' life soon enough.

The young wife was probably Jewish. Had that wild curly hair, free with laughter, looked sharp. The man? Who knows what his origins were. One thing was for certain: They were both mongrels, and Wright would go for that. I'd have to get Mrs. Wright away before she fell for them, too.

When I waved a finger at her, she joined me at my lone dinner.

“Mrs. Wright.” I looked dejected and needy. More of the humiliation thing. No crying, though. You could only pull that one so many times before it became ineffective. She waved back to me, and she was out of their booth in a flash.

“Listen here,” she started. “I don't want to spend the trip babysitting for you. I have my hands full with my husband.”

“It's someone else I'm worried about. I think Helen might be in trouble.”

“What? Mr. Wright will cut you off in a minute if he finds that out.”

“I've heard from some of the fellows that you're able to, you know, help take care of that kind of problem.”

I sat, miserable.

“I don't know what to do,” I said. “I love her, but she says she's not ready.”

“Use this situation and turn it around. Marry her,” she said. “Maybe it will settle you down.”

“I want to in the worst possible way, but marriage takes two people. I can't hijack her to the altar.”

I leaned toward her, and the rest of my fish and chips fell in her lap. She pretended she didn't notice, so great was my pain and so big was her hurt for me.

“Listen to me.” Her voice was stern. I didn't like that. “Woo her. You are used to women falling all over you, left and right. This woman can have any man she wants. Make it clear why she should want you.”

“Thank you, thank you,” I said. “I don't know what I'd do without you.”

“You're on your own for a little bit. I'm afraid my husband might be making some sort of arrangement with those people at our table. I have to find out.”

“Of course,” I said. “I hate to get personal, but you might want to change your dress. Tartar sauce, a few french fries…”

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” She stalked off toward her compartment. I supposed she would change or clean up the mess.

That would give her time to cool off, and she needed it.

*   *   *

Iris excused herself for a moment, no explanation needed.

“Mr. Goldman, you're staring.” Wright tilted his head and looked at me. “You're a curious man.”

“Curiosity keeps me alive. Keeps my clients alive, too.”

“Pardon me?”

“I'm a detective working on the Super Chief. I'm hired by the train, at a moment's notice, to help out if there's trouble.”

“Which is why you were able to take care of that ridiculous skirmish.”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the man who buttonholed me?”

“I handed him over to the policeman who works the railroad station.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Sir?”

“Well, potential clients … benefactors and interesting projects are coming at me left and right. No need to antagonize anyone.”

“Excuse me, but that man wasn't in the market for a new home or a department store. And Jake Fine is infamous.”

“You know him?”

“Not personally. He's shadowy, but well-known in certain circles.”

He leaned across to me and lowered his voice. “Please don't say a word about him to Olgivanna.”

“She's in the dark about your financial situation?”

“She generally knows where every nickel and dime is coming from, all the debts, and how the money is being spent. But we've been so busy, and the résumés to wade through—God, the throngs of young hopefuls who'll be waiting at Taliesin—she has enough on her plate.” He sounded pleased and buried at once.

“Mr. Wright, I'm sure you stumbled into this by mistake. It happens. Money is tight, you've got a big name, someone approaches you with the offer of a loan, and you're temporarily desperate for dough.”

“That's it in a nutshell.”

“There's no easy way to say this, but Fine is the genuine article and so are his employees. Fine wouldn't think twice about threatening you, or worse.”

He puffed himself up. “I have been threatened before and I am still here.”