Chapter Nine
~ Day Two ~
In the morning, Truman Byrd looked across the massive expanse of his desk and studied the woman sitting in front of him.
There were three women in Truman Byrd’s life who he had ever truly loved.
The first had been his mother, Rose Byrd.
The second, before it turned ugly and warped, had been Mabel.
And the third was the diminutive architect sitting in his office, Florence Abrams. She was smoking a cigarette and watching him with her odd little bemused look, the one she seemed to give him more often than not.
Florence was the architect whose steel-reinforced buildings withstood earthquakes that otherwise flattened entire blocks, and therefore she was the one he awarded the contract for Enchanted Hill—female architect be damned, and a Jewish lesbian to boot.
They argued about structures and materials and silhouettes, sometimes raising their voices at each other in a near-feverish pitch.
He secretly loved the times when Florence got worked up enough to bring her petite frame up on her tiptoes, trying to shout in his face.
They had created the Castle together—their minds coming together over many intimate sessions to conceive and birth it.
The result was a brilliant partnership, in which Florence showed a steady, tolerant amusement of him and his whims.
She studied him now across the desk, wearing a smart navy pantsuit, her hair cut in a sharp bob. Florence took a drag off her cigarette and pushed aside her breakfast tea. “Am I here for a new project, or a revision?”
“Come, now, you know the Castle will never truly be finished. It’s like a garden; an ongoing, living thing.”
“So a revision, then.”
“I want to talk about an expansion to the outdoor pool. It feels cramped at times.”
She snorted. “Cramped. Truman, you’re patently ridiculous.”
They glared at each other over the desk.
Florence had once argued with him about the materials for the Hill’s cornices for the length of two months.
She had not yelled. Instead, she had calmly taken her plans for teakwood and limestone and hammered them to his front door with a stake, then driven off without another word.
The castle had ended up with teakwood cornices overtaking the white limestone below like a cresting wave, just like she wanted.
And he’d be damned if they weren’t the prettiest thing he ever saw.
She had designed, hand-painted, and glazed the tiles for the stairs of the esplanade herself.
Overseen their implementation, setting them like jewels into the wet clay.
The Castle was their shared love. It had become their own never-ending puzzle to solve.
And despite the way her eyes rolled with each new project, they also lit with the challenge, and he knew how she secretly loved it.
She pulled out a graphite pencil and a piece of sketch paper just as the telephone on his desk rang. He gave her an apologetic look and she waved him off, already bending toward her drawing.
“Yes?” Truman asked.
“Mr. Byrd,” Rather said, his head of staff. “There has been a change in plans that will alter the guest list for this week.”
Truman’s jaw tightened slightly. “What is it?”
“I’ve just received a telephone call that Beau Remington is now able to attend.”
“I thought Beaumont couldn’t make it,” Truman said, his tone markedly clipped.
He looked at the monogram embroidered on his sleeve.
Beau Remington, the up-and-coming actor, was a nascent shooting star—just emerging, but his trajectory was destined to be both swift and brilliant, there was little doubt about it.
Charisma in a man like that came about once a decade, with a face carved like a Roman god, and he was about to sign a contract for a movie starring alongside Clementine that could make both of their careers soar.
The timing was important. Truman’s studio needed a hit, especially with the recession causing studios to fold. He just wasn’t certain he liked how artfully Clementine was angling for this man to be her costar.
“Yes, fine. Put him in the Garland Suite on the second floor,” Truman said, rubbing his temples. “And let me know the moment he steps onto the Hill.”
“Certainly, Mr. Byrd.”
He set down the receiver and watched the back of Florence’s shorn hair along her neck as she bent her head and sketched. The tea in her cup darkened the water in whirls.
“Florence,” Truman said, as if their conversation hadn’t been interrupted, “while we’re discussing revisions to the Hill, perhaps we might shore up its defenses.” He picked up his cigar to examine it but didn’t light it.
She paused in drawing to look up at him, her rose lips pursing.
“So the rumors are true,” she said. “Is the mob coming after you?”
He shrugged. “You know I’m less concerned about the present and more about the future.”
“You’re considering it, then?” she asked quietly. Her sharp eyes watched him. “A run for higher office?”
He smiled cryptically and didn’t answer, rubbing his jawline.
“Your inability to sit still is bloody exhausting,” she said, but the words betrayed a begrudging fondness.
Her eyes were crystal-clear but held a hint of concern.
“We’ll shore up the defenses,” she said with a short nod.
She was rarely outrightly warm, instead preferring to show affection with subtle hints.
She had only ever once verbalized her appreciation to him, when they had broken ground and the champagne had loosened her tongue, letting it slip that she was grateful he would hire a woman.
Then she had rolled up her blueprints with a snap and said something unintelligible about the soil and the sightline.
“This place was built like a palace, not a fortress. We made it fit for a prince. A politician is another matter,” Florence said.
Truman nodded. “Are you coming back for the party?”
“I’m not much for parties,” she said.
“Oh, come.”
“I’ll think about it. I’ll be in touch with ideas first.”
She stood, and he followed her to the door, watching the way her fingers tapped against the fabric of her pantsuit like a Morse code of ideas. Florence fastened her hat and said “I’ll see myself out, Truman; I think I can find the door I set on its own hinges,” and he smirked and said “Until then.”
He stood in the light-flooded hallway and looked out at the palm trees, the mountains that appeared as though they were a green wave sliding down into the sea.
The Pacific beyond it was an open chest of diamonds, with endless facets glittering in almost every direction.
He had come so far from the days when he was eating beans out of a can for months on end simply to survive.
The scent of them still made him want to retch.
He and Mabel had visited parks and movie theaters and museums on the days when they were half-price or free, and sneaked into them on the days when they weren’t.
Mabel had wanted pretty things, and how he had wanted to give them to her.
They had talked about the future together, imagined what they could become.
He had believed in the dream of it all so fiercely that he had even forced himself to grovel to his father for a loan to launch his first paper.
He had bet on himself—and so Truman sat with beans in his stomach and listened to his father sneer about how it was money he knew he would never get back.
Truman walked out of his father’s house with Franklin Byrd’s money in his pocket and what felt like spit on his face, and he told himself he would never be humiliated like that again.
Truman glanced down at where Clementine liked to sit in the sun, slathering oil on her golden arms. He had done it. He had made a name for himself. He had built this fortune by leaving part of his soul behind, and he damn well sure wasn’t going to be assassinated—or cuckolded—in his own castle.
He narrowed his eyes, thinking. Listening to his intuition. And then he picked up the telephone again.
After checking to make sure that Truman had retired safely to his own quarters the night before—unharmed by Jack, and not visiting Clementine—Cora’s sleep had been hard and deep, without dreams. As she often did when she was overtired, she woke wondering if Bobby was sleeping somewhere next to his new bride, Helen—if Helen had moved into his tiny Brooklyn apartment next to the train line that rattled the walls and overlooked a bakery that always smelled like fresh challah. Cora wondered if they were happy.
“I’ve got the jacks today,” she had said to Daisy, tying on her apron. “I remember.”
“You mean you have the jacks all week, right?” Daisy asked with a sly grin.
She had helped Cora pin up her hair and then went to work as the guests of Byrd Castle had begun to emerge from their rooms, dressed in silk dresses and day suits.
Cora had done a half-hearted job on the toilets before stashing her cleaning supplies behind an urn.
Her thoughts kept returning to the moment her eyes had met Jack’s across the room. Had he recognized her, or not?
And did any part of her want him to?
She was scouring a bronze grate patterned with birds on the fourth floor when Florence Abrams left Truman Byrd’s office.
Cora had been peering through the quatrefoil arches to watch Jack, Clementine, and Governor Gilham on a walking tour led by the head gardener.
Cora felt something curl inside her when Jack said something to make Clementine laugh.
Clementine’s silk dress billowed out behind her, surrounded by grazing peacocks, and then she and Jack disappeared behind a copse of cypress trees.
Cora turned toward the low sound of Truman’s voice drifting from his office. Florence must not have closed the door all the way.