Their destination apparently was a square booth in one of the back corners, its walls covered with what looked like large framed blueprints and schematics. There was a glass-topped case in the center of the space, also full of smaller pictures of buildings. Misshapen buildings. The sign above the entrance said SANDRO BARTH, LLC. BERKELEY, CA. A young woman got up from her desk as they approached. “Thanks, hon,” said Stella.
“No worries. Hope you found something drinkable.”
“Doubt it,” Stella said. She turned to Salo. He had stopped crying, which was a great relief to him. “We’ve invented this thing called coffee out on the West Coast. It’s kind of like this,” she raised her takeout cup, “in that it’s liquid and hot. But it’s different because it tastes good. I feel sorry for you guys.”
“We’re just used to it,” the woman said. She left.
“So … you live in California,” said Salo. He took the seat beside the desk. A group drifted in and over to the glass-topped case.
“I grew up in Oakland. I went back after the accident.”
She said this so easily, gliding on without a falter.
“You didn’t … you mean you didn’t graduate from Cornell?”
“Started over at Berkeley.” She smiled her beautiful smile. “I love how you East Coast people do that whole Ivy League thing. I get this a lot. What do you mean, you could have had a diploma from Cornell and you turned it down? I was thrilled to be accepted there, but I would have gone to Berkeley if my parents hadn’t persuaded me. Then, afterward, they were the ones who didn’t want me to go back.” She paused. “I sometimes think it was all harder on them than on me.”
Salo wasn’t surprised. The man’s daughter had climbed into a ridiculous car with three white students, one of whom had sent the others hurtling into injury and death. And Salo had not even gone to the hospital to see her and the damage he’d caused, whatever it was. It had to have been terrible, but nothing alongside the damage he’d inflicted on the others.
“What,” he began. “I mean, what were the … your … injuries? I can’t remember.”
She sighed. The topic seemed of little interest to her. “We don’t have to talk about this. I want to hear about you! What are you up to? Married, I see! Do you have children?”
Our father looked down at his own left hand. He had come close to denying his children, not duplicitously, but because he’d genuinely forgotten them. “Yes. I have three children.”
“Three! How old?”
He explained. It took so little time.
“My gosh, that’s a lot to take on.”
“I work for my family’s company. Financial services.”
She nodded. “Do you like it?”
“I…” The question didn’t immediately compute. “Well, sure. And I started buying paintings, years ago. Nothing like this,” he said apologetically. “I mean, they’re very nice, but I’m just looking.”
Stella burst out laughing. “Please! I’m not here to sell you art. These aren’t even paintings, you know. All drawings. I think he’s much more interesting than Darger, actually.”
“He?” Salo asked.
He was a San Francisco draftsman named Achilles Rizzoli. He’d spent his work life in an architectural firm rendering office buildings. By night he’d conjured a fantasy city offering everything from matrimonial matchmaking to reincarnation. The city was weirdly beautiful, but the strangest thing about it was that its individual buildings were real people, transmogrified into architecture.
“Everyone he knew became a building,” said Stella. “The thing is, he didn’t know that many people. He was odd, very antisocial. And he never showed his work publicly except for one day a year. He put up a sign outside his apartment and charged people ten cents. Then most of those people ended up getting drawn as buildings. A little girl who lived on his street named Shirley became these towers he called Shirley’s Temple. Another neighbor became a palazzo. And his mother was a cathedral.”