The Seventh Secret (6 page)

That moment, the door to his office opened, and Irene Myers announced, "Mr. Foster. Joan Sawyer of
Los Angeles
magazine is here."

Foster mumbled his thanks, and tried to get his mind on the interviewer. She was a tall, flat-breasted young woman, with squinting brown eyes behind thick-lensed spectacles, a longish nose, thin lips; she wore a tan pants suit and carried a tape recorder.

"How do you do," she said, making straight for his desk and setting down the recorder. "I hope you don't mind if I tape you. It's the best way to get everything right. I'm a stickler for accuracy."

"So am I," said Foster pleasantly, waving her to a leather-covered chair across from him. "I'll let you tape if you let me smoke."

"Your funeral," she said unsmilingly. She fiddled with the tape recorder, started it, tested it, then she eased into the chair and fished a typed set of questions out of her purse. "I told your secretary, when I made the appointment, that I was doing a long piece on the leading architects in Southern California. I did a little research on you, and you seem to qualify."

"How kind of you," Foster said playfully.

"I know you're a busy man," said Joan Sawyer. "So why don't we get going?"

"Suits me fine."

"By the way, we shot pictures of some of your recent structures. The Cornell Theater on Sunset Boulevard. The International Condominium in Westwood. The House of Neptune seafood place in Malibu. All quite original and impressive."

"Thank you, Miss Sawyer."

"When did it begin, your becoming an architect? You weren't one when you went into the army."

"I became interested after I got out. That's when I went back to college."

"Why don't we start just before that, when you were in the army. You were in Vietnam two years?" Foster did not hide his frown. "Yes."

"How old were you when you enlisted?"

"Twenty," said Foster. "I wasn't particularly patriotic. I didn't even know what Vietnam was about. I just knew I was without purpose or direction, a dumb kid trying to figure out what to do with myself. Vietnam sounded exotic, a filler in time. So I went in."

"Then what?"

"Then what—" Foster repeated, his frown deepening. "I was a helicopter pilot attached to an engineer group in the Twenty-fourth Corps under Lieutenant General James W. Sutherland. There was some fighting. Along with the artillery and an MP battalion, we saw action in Quang Tri province near the Laotian border. Took a fair number of casualties. I was grounded by antiaircraft, so I spent more time with my M16 rifle than flying. Eventually I caught some shrapnel in one leg, and after surgery I was discharged. That was late 1971."

"How's your leg now?"

"No problem. I jog five miles three times a week. I'm in good shape for thirty-six, well, just about thirty-seven. After the war, I rattled about a little and finally went back to school under the GI bill. The University of California in Berkeley. That's where I became interested in architecture."

"How come architecture?"

"Well, my father had been an engineer . . ." He hesitated, and reflected upon it. "No, it was something else. A feeling I had. In the war, I had devoted a couple of years to tearing things down. Now I had the urge to build things up."

He saw the lady reporter eyeing him closely. She said, "You mean that?"

"Of course, I mean that. It's what civilization is all about. After each orgy of destruction, it behooves humans to rebuild, to build, to move ahead in an orderly way. Somehow, the war turned me toward architecture. In Berkeley they had a School of Architecture
    
we called it the Ark. I enjoyed Berkeley and worked hard. After four years, I had my bachelor of architecture."

"Then you opened an office?"

"Not so fast. Every graduate must serve a two-year apprenticeship. I did mine with a large firm in Laguna Beach. After that an architectural candidate takes the State Board Examination. One week of exams involving design, drawing, a half-day oral. Rigorous, and in California a bit offbeat. Here we have some extras like the seismic problem, making buildings as earthquakeproof as possible. Anyway, I passed. I became an architect."

"What were some of your earliest projects?"

"Easy ones in the beginning. A community center and a neighborhood bank, for example. The designs involve a lot of engineering, but you also learn about practical necessities, important unglamorous ones, like lighting and putting in bathrooms. Eventually I met someone who let me do a beach house, something modest. Finally I was in business. I was on my own."

Joan Sawyer glanced around her. "And this is your business. How long have you been, as you put it, on your own?"

"Let me think. This makes six years."

He observed that the Sawyer woman was extracting something that resembled notes from her purse. She was studying them. "Incidentally—our files say that about four years after you set up your business, you got married."

Foster hesitated. "Yes. I see you've done your homework."

"Valerie Granich. Daughter of Charles Granich. Land developer. Billionaire. Bel Air. I have it right, haven't I?"

"You have it right," he said coldly.

"Last year you were divorced."

"Public record."

Joan Sawyer looked up. "Have you remarried?"

"No, thanks."

"Would you mind telling me a bit about your marriage? Your divorce. Human details. Something personal always helps a story. Anything you can tell me?"

Foster compressed his lips.

There was plenty he could tell her, but it was not for reader consumption. From the time of the divorce he had vowed never to speak of his short marriage, never, not even mention Valerie's name to anyone, or even think about her.

Nevertheless, he thought about her now. When he'd met Valerie, he'd found her dazzling. A beautiful, slim brunette, polished, clever, sophisticated—he had been flattered that she had chosen him from so many, himself a relative nobody.

But he should have seen it was wrong from the start. They were together for the wrong reasons. She had nothing honest to give, in bed or out of it. No warmth whatsoever. Just fun and games, surface stuff, no intimacy. Her interests scarcely extended beyond parties, staging or attending them. And pseudocultural occasions, a theater opening, a concert, an art museum displaying old masters. Life was an opening night. She was completely Daddy's girl, spoiled, inconsiderate, self-centered. A society-column morsel.

When her father offered to set his son-in-law up in larger quarters, to feed him new clients, make him an instant success (and dependent), Foster turned him down. He wanted to do it on his own, and he wanted Valerie to live on his income. Valerie had been irritated and impatient with that nonsense. She didn't want to live like a budget-keeping bride in the San Fernando Valley.

Then there was something else. Being married to a struggling architect seemed, for such a one as herself, a lowly enterprise and demeaning. If he had been a graduate of the Bauhaus, an instant Gropius or Le Corbusier, a real ornament in her world, that would have been different. But a beginner who insisted on making his sweaty way up, that was almost an embarrassment. Soon she had wanted Foster to give short shrift to bread-and-butter architecture and to devote himself to art, to painting. At least a struggling artist was more respectable, so many hadn't been appreciated until they were dead, anyway.

Finally, while he was working steadily to make it on his own, she had begun to drift away and to occupy herself with some arty group in Pasadena. When he learned she was occupying herself with a supercilious and pretentious young blond abstract painter ten years her junior, and that she had become the young man's patron and finally his bed partner, Foster said enough. In a rage, he kicked her out, and Valerie's father arranged the divorce.

Following that, Foster had had nothing to devote himself to except his work until his Hitler book project came along. After Valerie and her father, Hitler began to look good. In the last year, Foster had absorbed himself in the architectural book, and continued to be distrustful of his own judgment about women. To him, each freshly encountered woman represented no more than the possibility of a romp. He did not like himself for the feeling, but there it was.

To his surprise, Foster heard Joan Sawyer's voice once more. "You haven't answered me, Mr. Foster," she was saying. "Is there anything you want to say about that?"

"About what?"

"Your marriage, of course. It could be a colorful background."

Foster was no longer laid back. He sat up. He was becoming truly annoyed with this aggressive young reporter on the make for a byline story. "Lady," he said, you were invited here to discuss my role as an architect, not as a husband. No more diversions. Stick to the ground rules, or good-bye."

She was flustered, afraid to lose her story, he could see. "I'm sorry," she said, contritely. "You're right. I sometimes let myself get carried away. I was just trying to round out—you know, personalize the story. No more sidetracking, I promise you. Am I forgiven? Can we go on now?''

He relaxed slightly. She was decent enough. "Go on," he said.

"We were talking about your business here the last six years. Do you do it all yourself?"

"Oh, no. Too much work. Fortunately. You met Irene, my secretary and bookkeeper. There are two more of us. I'm the one who meets with clients. I do the original creative design on a structure. Frank Nishimura gets into it next. He's a professional draftsman, not a designer but a draftsman. Don Graham is a general contractor. He follows through on the huts and bolts, the actual production of a structure after it's designed and the blueprints are okayed."

"Production of a structure," Joan Sawyer wondered. "What does that mean?"

"Well," said Foster, "making a building might be likened to making a human being—the outside, the facade, is important—but more important is what goes inside, the muscles and bones. So when I speak of the production of a building, I mean creating mechanical systems, waterproofing, wearability, that sort of thing."

"All right," the reporter nodded. "Now suppose I wanted you to do a house for me. How would you start?"

Foster considered the question. "For one thing," he said, "I prefer not to initiate an approach. As an architect, I'd prefer to respond to a program, to what you see for yourself in a house, your desires." He tried to make this clear to her. "Architecture should be in response to a request. I like to complement what my client has in mind."

"I thought there was more creativity to architecture," Joan Sawyer said briskly.

"Oh, there is, there is, no doubt about that," he assured her. "Once I have some notion of what you want, I wait for a creative spark. I like to take a space and in my head edit it into a composition. At the same time, I try to cut people free of what they have or think they want and land them in a better space. I ask myself—what more can I do with what they want? Once I have it, I go to work. I'd say that ninety-nine percent of my work is done out of sight of the client. After four weeks, usually, I have my ideas and Frank's plans down on paper. Those drawings are eighty percent of the work. I get eighty percent of my fee at that time. Does that give you an idea?"

"I think so," said Joan Sawyer. She leaned over to check the tape recorder once more, then sat back. "Very good. Besides seeing interviewers, do you ever promote yourself or your work? Do you lecture?"

Foster wrinkled his nose. "Not much. But I like to write when I can."

"Write? Like what? Have you published any books?"

Foster responded cheerfully. "I'm about to. My first book is almost ready."

"May I ask what it's about?"

"The title will tell you. It's called
Architecture of the 1000-Year Third Reich
." He waited for her reaction.

She sat up. "That's a new one. You mean the building done under Hitler?"

"Exactly. What he built and what he planned to build if Germany won the war. Here, let me show you."

He got to his feet and started to cross the room. She snatched up her tape recorder and followed him.

On the drafting table lay a portfolio. Before opening it, he said, "I've always been intrigued by World War II. As an architect, I focused in on what Hitler had built and planned to build. I wanted to know more, and tried to find books on the subject. There were none. So I decided to do one myself."