"Don't try to know. It doesn't matter. Let's just stay away from each other. Shall we?"
"I'll never give you up."
She shrugged. "All right, Peter. This is the only time I've ever been kind to you. Or to anyone."
6.
ROGER ENRIGHT had started life as a coal miner in Pennsylvania. On his way to the millions he now owned, no one had ever helped him. "That," he explained, "is why no one has ever stood in my way." A great many things and people had stood in his way, however; but he had never noticed them. Many incidents of his long career were not admired; none was whispered about. His career had been glaring and public like a billboard. He made a poor subject for blackmailers or debunking biographers. Among the wealthy he was disliked for having become wealthy so crudely.
He hated bankers, labor unions, women, evangelists and the stock exchange. He had never bought a share of stock nor sold a share in any of his enterprises, and he owned his fortune single-handed, as simply as if he carried all his cash in his pocket. Besides his oil business he owned a publishing house, a restaurant, a radio shop, a garage, a plant manufacturing electric refrigerators. Before each new venture he studied the field for a long time, then proceeded to act as if he had never heard of it, upsetting all precedent. Some of his ventures were successful, others failed. He continued running them all with ferocious energy. He worked twelve hours a day.
When he decided to erect a building, he spent six months looking for an architect. Then he hired Roark at the end of their first interview, which lasted half an hour. Later, when the drawings were made, he gave orders to proceed with construction at once. When Roark began to speak about the drawings, Enright interrupted him: "Don't explain. It's no use explaining abstract ideals to me. I've never had any ideals. People say I'm completely immoral. I go only by what I like. But I do know what I like."
Roark never mentioned the attempt he had made to reach Enright, nor his interview with the bored secretary. Enright learned of it somehow. Within five minutes the secretary was discharged, and within ten minutes he was walking out of the office, as ordered, in the middle of a busy day, a letter left half typed in his machine.
Roark reopened his office, the same big room on the top of an old building. He enlarged it by the addition of an adjoining room — for the draftsmen he hired in order to keep up with the planned lightning schedule of construction. The draftsmen were young and without much experience. He had never heard of them before and he did not ask for letters of recommendation. He chose them from among many applicants, merely by glancing at their drawings for a few minutes.
In the crowded tension of the days that followed he never spoke to them, except of their work. They felt, entering the office in the morning, that they had no private lives, no significance and no reality save the overwhelming reality of the broad sheets of paper on their tables. The place seemed cold and soulless like a factory, until they looked at him; then they thought that it was not a factory, but a furnace fed on their bodies, his own first.
There were times when he remained in the office all night. They found him still working when they returned in the morning. He did not seem tired. Once he stayed there for two days and two nights in succession. On the afternoon of the third day he fell asleep, half lying across his table. He awakened in a few hours, made no comment and walked from one table to another, to see what had been done. He made corrections, his words sounding as if nothing had interrupted a thought begun some hours ago.
"You're unbearable when you're working, Howard," Austen Heller told him one evening, even though he had not spoken of his work at all.
"Why?" he asked, astonished.
"It's uncomfortable to be in the same room with you. Tension is contagious, you know."
"What tension? I feel completely natural only when I'm working."
"That's it. You're completely natural only when you're one inch from bursting into pieces. What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it."
"Isn't it?"
He did not think of Dominique often, but when he did, the thought was not a sudden recollection, it was the acknowledgment of a continuous presence that needed no acknowledgment. He wanted her. He knew where to find her. He waited. It amused him to wait, because he knew that the waiting was unbearable to her. He knew that his absence bound her to him in a manner more complete and humiliating than his presence could enforce. He was giving her time to attempt an escape, in order to let her know her own helplessness when he chose to see her again. She would know that the attempt itself had been of his choice, that it had been only another form of mastery. Then she would be ready either to kill him or to come to him of her own will. The two acts would be equal in her mind. He wanted her brought to this. He waited.
The construction of the Enright House was about to begin, when Roark was summoned to the office of Joel Sutton. Joel Sutton, a successful businessman, was planning the erection of a huge office building. Joel Sutton had based his success on the faculty of understanding nothing about people. He loved everybody. His love admitted no distinctions. It was a great leveler; it could hold no peaks and no hollows, as the surface of a bowl of molasses could not hold them.
Joe Sutton met Roark at a dinner given by Enright. Joel Sutton liked Roark. He admired Roark. He saw no difference between Roark and anyone else. When Roark came to his office, Joel Sutton declared:
"Now I'm not sure, I'm not sure, I'm not sure at all, but I thought that I might consider you for that little building I have in mind. Your Enright House is sort of ... peculiar, but it's attractive, all buildings are attractive, love buildings, don't you? — and Rog Enright is a very smart man, an exceedingly smart man, he coins money where nobody else'd think it grew. I'll take a tip from Rog Enright any time, what's good enough for Rog Enright is good enough for me."
Roark waited for weeks after that first interview. Joel Sutton never made up his mind in a hurry.
On an evening in December Austen Heller called on Roark without warning and declared that he must accompany him next Friday to a formal party given by Mrs. Ralston Holcombe.
"Hell, no, Austen," said Roark.
"Listen, Howard, just exactly why not? Oh, I know, you hate that sort of thing, but that's not a good reason. On the other hand, I can give you many excellent ones for going. The place is a kind of house of assignation for architects and, of course, you'd sell anything there is to you for a building — oh, I know, for your kind of building, but still you'd sell the soul you haven't got, so can't you stand a few hours of boredom for the sake of future possibilities?"
"Certainly. Only I don't believe that this sort of thing ever leads to any possibilities."
"Will you go this time?"
"Why particularly this time?"
"Well, in the first place, that infernal pest Kiki Holcombe demands it. She spent two hours yesterday demanding it and made me miss a luncheon date. It spoils her reputation to have a building like the Enright House going up in town and not be able to display its architect in her salon. It's a hobby. She collects architects. She insisted that I must bring you and I promised I would."
"What for?"
"Specifically, she's going to have Joel Sutton there next Friday. Try, if it kills you, to be nice to him. He's practically decided to give you that building, from what I hear. A little personal contact might be all that's needed to set it. He's got a lot of others after him. They'll all be there. I want you there. I want you to get that building. I don't want to hear anything about granite quarries for the next ten years. I don't like granite quarries."