audience took in its breath.
The auditorium was silent. It was that quiet I love, tension about to be broken. The spotlight reflected hard off the microphone clipped to the master of ceremoniesâ black lapel. The envelope tore, and the off-white card was half lifted from its paper housing, and then caught. The envelope fought back somehow, clinging to the card within it, one corner snagging, as though the name of the recipient shrank from human touch.
The master of ceremonies blinked to adjust his contact lenses, perhaps, and with the timing of so many such stagestruck speakers he took one second too long to acknowledge that he knew something the entire assembly did not.
The master of ceremonies was the president of a major corporation, an impeccably attired patron of the arts, and he was a man accustomed to working in private, in the boardroom, in the oak-and-leather box of an office. He enjoyed this attention, and he wanted to keep it, feeling in the beam of the stagelight a power that he, for all his accomplishments, relished.
The emcee spoke, and to me the syllables were for an instant entirely unfamiliar.
Not me, I thought, in a confused attempt to protect myself from disappointment. Surely itâs somebody else.
Nona was squeezing my hand, gripping it hard, with a clench like terror, except that she was smiling, her beauty smiling into my eyes. People were turning to clap their hands at me.
What an incantation a name is, meaningless sounds that are, at the same time, as intimate as a gland, or a first memory. I was dazed. I made myself repeat the syllables he had spoken, to make sure that I had heard correctly.
My name.
Christ, theyâll think Iâm milking the applause. More faces were turning to look, still smiling but touched, now, with curiosity. Eyes were on mine.
I pulled myself to my feet, the applause swept me onto the stage. Fortunately the stage had that reassuring artificial look, the look of a place that was hyperreal, lurid and awash with light and at the same time fake. The floorboards gleamed. The podium was far in the distance, a monolith I could never reach.
The audience was comprised of professional designers and architects, and the critics who approved and derided them. Then, naturally, there were the hundreds of people who employed these professionals.
I reached the podium and accepted the award, a simple, purist-pleasing rectangle of engraved paper. I turned, and for a moment it happened.
Peterson would be standing here, I told myself. Blake Howard would be sitting there, at the end of an aisle, his usual sort of seat, smiling toward the stage.
How strange the theater looked from where I stood. I surveyed the blur of faces, and what I saw resolved itself into individual countenances. These were the well-fed, wrinkles surgically erased, hair transplanted, jawlines lifted, women long past childbearing kept eerily teenage-thin.
These were the men and women I knew well, some of them friends since my childhood. Isnât it wonderful of Stratton to take up architecture, family friends had smiled, but at the same time it had been obvious that they generally thought it just a bit odd that I shouldnât content myself with horses and a tasteful and slightly dull collection of eighteenth-century oils.
There was DeVere, his eyes hard.
I began to speak, and the years of training, practicing careful diction under the attention of a gifted man who was at once teacher and servant, and the years of watching my parents at ease in public, all stood with me.
I praised Petersonâs work. I offered the solemn memory of the promising architect, and of âSan Franciscoâs best friend,â Blake Howard. By instinct, I was able to choose exactly the words people wanted to hear. Looking upward, up the slope of the seats, through the haze of faces and the glints off jewels here and there in the audience, I sought Nonaâs face, and found it, continuing to offer my thanks, my
The auditorium was silent. It was that quiet I love, tension about to be broken. The spotlight reflected hard off the microphone clipped to the master of ceremoniesâ black lapel. The envelope tore, and the off-white card was half lifted from its paper housing, and then caught. The envelope fought back somehow, clinging to the card within it, one corner snagging, as though the name of the recipient shrank from human touch.
The master of ceremonies blinked to adjust his contact lenses, perhaps, and with the timing of so many such stagestruck speakers he took one second too long to acknowledge that he knew something the entire assembly did not.
The master of ceremonies was the president of a major corporation, an impeccably attired patron of the arts, and he was a man accustomed to working in private, in the boardroom, in the oak-and-leather box of an office. He enjoyed this attention, and he wanted to keep it, feeling in the beam of the stagelight a power that he, for all his accomplishments, relished.
The emcee spoke, and to me the syllables were for an instant entirely unfamiliar.
Not me, I thought, in a confused attempt to protect myself from disappointment. Surely itâs somebody else.
Nona was squeezing my hand, gripping it hard, with a clench like terror, except that she was smiling, her beauty smiling into my eyes. People were turning to clap their hands at me.
What an incantation a name is, meaningless sounds that are, at the same time, as intimate as a gland, or a first memory. I was dazed. I made myself repeat the syllables he had spoken, to make sure that I had heard correctly.
My name.
Christ, theyâll think Iâm milking the applause. More faces were turning to look, still smiling but touched, now, with curiosity. Eyes were on mine.
I pulled myself to my feet, the applause swept me onto the stage. Fortunately the stage had that reassuring artificial look, the look of a place that was hyperreal, lurid and awash with light and at the same time fake. The floorboards gleamed. The podium was far in the distance, a monolith I could never reach.
The audience was comprised of professional designers and architects, and the critics who approved and derided them. Then, naturally, there were the hundreds of people who employed these professionals.
I reached the podium and accepted the award, a simple, purist-pleasing rectangle of engraved paper. I turned, and for a moment it happened.
Peterson would be standing here, I told myself. Blake Howard would be sitting there, at the end of an aisle, his usual sort of seat, smiling toward the stage.
How strange the theater looked from where I stood. I surveyed the blur of faces, and what I saw resolved itself into individual countenances. These were the well-fed, wrinkles surgically erased, hair transplanted, jawlines lifted, women long past childbearing kept eerily teenage-thin.
These were the men and women I knew well, some of them friends since my childhood. Isnât it wonderful of Stratton to take up architecture, family friends had smiled, but at the same time it had been obvious that they generally thought it just a bit odd that I shouldnât content myself with horses and a tasteful and slightly dull collection of eighteenth-century oils.
There was DeVere, his eyes hard.
I began to speak, and the years of training, practicing careful diction under the attention of a gifted man who was at once teacher and servant, and the years of watching my parents at ease in public, all stood with me.
I praised Petersonâs work. I offered the solemn memory of the promising architect, and of âSan Franciscoâs best friend,â Blake Howard. By instinct, I was able to choose exactly the words people wanted to hear. Looking upward, up the slope of the seats, through the haze of faces and the glints off jewels here and there in the audience, I sought Nonaâs face, and found it, continuing to offer my thanks, my
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