Inception Fic: In the Garden of the Commendatore 1/5
The exercise in masochism-- the hours of research (with little of it reflected in the finished product), the countless edits and revisions, the pages of smut thrown out because the characters wouldn't cooperate, every other writing project put on hold until I could get this monkey off my back-- finally ends.
In the Garden of the Commendatore
by Starvinbohemian ~ Rated R ~ 31,000 words
Ariadne/Robert, implied Ariadne/Arthur, + Ensemble
Ariadne and Robert build a green skyscraper.
...In the Garden of the Commendatore...
Part I:
THE COMMENDATORE:
“Thou didst thyself invite me, For that I must requite thee,
Then answer me, then answer me,
As my guest, when shall I claim thee?”
- Don Giovanni, Mozart.
She has to pass a crowd of protesters to get into the Convention Center.
Burly security guards and a guardrail stand between them and the protesters, but Ariadne sees her fellow conventioneers eye them nervously as they move up the steps.
She isn’t afraid of them, but reading their signs- “Fischer Morrow Took My House,” “Give Us Our Jobs Back,” and “Business Without Heart”- makes her uncomfortable. She averts her eyes.
Her pulse jumps anxiously as the usher scans her ticket, but the boy barely looks at her. He runs the metal detector over her body as if he’d give anything for a more exciting job. She doesn’t blame him.
“There you go,” he says, signaling her in.
She hides a smile as she passes him and makes her way toward the entrance table for a program.
Eames’s forged ticket was a bit of unexpected good luck, and she makes a mental note to thank him when she sees him. Thanks to a certain speaker, tickets were almost impossible to get this year. Ariadne’s supervisor at Wilson & Bailey was sent a special reserved ticket but he had no interest in attending since he was more concerned with the renovations the firm was hired to make to a university in New Hampshire.
When she asked to go in his stead to the conference, he gave her an amused look and said, “I really don’t think this would be up your alley, sweetie. Do you have my latte?”
She wanted to snarl back, "I’ve built whole cathedrals the likes of which no one’s ever seen, so get your own damn coffee."
Of course, she didn’t, she doesn’t, and she won’t. To Harrington, she’s just another intern. She has to remember that even as he continues to confuse her with a personal secretary.
She takes her program and merges with the crowd.
~*~
“Why don’t you just quit?” Arthur asks her.
Looking at him, illuminated as he is by cascades of light streaming in through an entire wall made of stain glass mosaics- reds, indigos, turquoises, every color she could think of for the most opulent cathedral in non-existence- takes her breath away.
What he is really asking is, “Why don’t you stop pretending you can still live in the real world?”
She doesn’t have a simple answer for him.
How to explain to someone like Arthur, who seems almost to step from dreams rather than into them, the relevance of life goals once meticulously sketched out in a young girl’s bedroom, of the expectations of parents who never left Ohio themselves but still dreamed large for their daughter? How to articulate a half-realized fear of losing herself and breaking away entirely from reality like Cobb almost did?
As it is, she already carries her totem with her everywhere she goes, even though it’s been over a year since the Fischer job.
“Didn’t you ever try to have a normal life?” she asks him.
Arthur’s face is a mask, and she suddenly realizes that she wasn’t really expecting an answer when she voiced the question. He’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma and likely always will be.
But he surprises her when he says, “Once.”
For a brief moment, she thinks this is a privileged glimpse behind the curtain, and her heart beats a little faster at the thought.
But when he doesn’t elaborate, she realizes his omission is just a flicker of obscured movement within a fog-filled mirror. There are invisible years hidden within that one word that Ariadne knows she will never, ever see or know.
“I think you’ll find that it really only takes once.”
~*~
Ariadne scans through the conference program with genuine interest, but she also glances up every so often to search the crowd for familiar faces.
Contrary to what her boss thinks, the twelfth annual Green Architecture Symposium holds many attractions. The program lists talks on everything from “Urban Real Estate and Sustainable Housing”- in her mind’s eye, she immediately sees apartment buildings made entirely of tall, twisting trees and jungle vines- to “International Perspectives on Eco-friendly Building Renovations,” which makes her think of dream copies of Notre Dame and the Duomo stretching higher and wider and merging together into a glorious hybrid.
She experiences a surprised thrill when she sees that one of the presentations being given is entitled, “Cities in the Imagination.” But her elation immediately fades into disappointment when she realizes the talk is about the relationship between architecture and fiction.
Of course.
Frustrated, Ariadne throws the program away and wanders aimlessly around the conference to kill time before the real attraction of the conference starts. She checks her watch.
Just over an hour till show time.
As she wanders, Ariadne more than half-expects Eames to jump out at her from some hiding place, especially after that strangely obscure note he sent, urging her to attend today. He must be here somewhere. Why else send the ticket?
Her curiosity makes her antsy, though she suspects his interest lies somewhere near to her own, in a certain investment that they both share.
She suffers through about half a presentation on community gardens and co-ops before finally giving up and heading over toward where she was always going to end up.
The Pine Room was obviously designed for large conferences. Even so, it’s a packed house today.
Despite arriving early, Ariadne still has to stand at the back with everyone else who arrived too late to get a seat. At least half the audience seems to be wielding the mighty pen of journalism over crisp white legal pads.
She isn’t really surprised. Everything Robert Fischer does these days is fodder for analysts, journalists, business competitors, scientists, environmentalists, tabloids, curious onlookers- and Ariadne apparently.
A lot of people think Robert has gone insane, that he either lost his mind after his father died or else that he’s always been insane and his father somehow managed to keep a lid on it while he was alive.
Why else would the heir to a Fortune 500 company suddenly throw his inheritance to the wind just when the keys to the kingdom were finally in the palm?
What kind of person cuts his ties with the multibillion-dollar oil industry and throws his lot in with the same hippie environmentalists behind so many other failed revolutions, turning gods of industry into enemies overnight?
A visionary, she thinks.
~*~
After only a few months of living in the city, there’s a night when Ariadne has a little too much wine and does something foolish.
Though no stranger to crappy apartments, she really hates her latest crappy little apartment. A cockroach fell out of a cereal box into her bowl that morning and proceeded to splash around in the milk as she gagged in horror. The air conditioning’s broken again, and the city is in the middle of a blistering heat wave which just won’t end even after the sun leaves the sky.
She has enough money spread out through three separate bank accounts that she could buy a skyscraper to live in if she so chose, but at the time, she thought herself clever for choosing the kind of living space one would expect a girl fresh out of grad school and new to the Big Apple to be able to afford.
Now, she thinks that was the stupidest idea she ever had.
On this particular night, she’s had one too many wine coolers, battled one too many cockroaches, and read one too many unenlightened articles decrying Robert as a born-again hippie lunatic. She takes to her laptop with the vengeance of a drunken… Ariadne.
The article she writes in defense of Robert’s new business model is both idealistic to the point of being saccharine as well as poorly researched…
… and somehow ends up being printed in the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal.
She’s too embarrassed to tell anyone about the article and even goes so far as to buy up all the copies from the kiosk nearest her work to prevent her coworkers from reading it. She unloads them into the nearest dumpster.
But, somehow, a copy of the magazine issue ends up being mailed to her parents back in Ohio.
“I didn’t realize you even followed this business stuff,” her mother says over the phone. She sounds bewildered.
A week later, she finds another copy stuffed into her mailbox. There’s a post-it note stuck to the cover that reads, “Keeping Tabs?”
There’s a small sketch of dice at the bottom.
Arthur.
She wonders if Arthur realizes he's just revealed that he’s been keeping tabs on her.
~*~
As Robert takes the stage, a low hum of excitement passes through the audience.
There is a reason why this year’s conference has sold out faster than any previous year.
Rumors have been circulating throughout the business world, but this is the first time Robert has publically revealed the details of his magnum opus, the project that is going to put him on the map and officially separate his legacy from his father’s.
It’s a skyscraper. An eco-friendly skyscraper.
“Upon completion,” he tells them, “Fischer Tower will be the new division headquarters for Fischer Morrow as well as the world’s most advanced environmental architectural project to date.”
It’s been two years since Ariadne has seen Robert Fischer in person, and this is the first time she has seen him in his element. There is a confident set to his shoulders, and his voice, steady and commanding, easily carries to where she’s standing in the back.
Seeing him like this loosens a knot she didn’t even realize was sitting in her gut.
Lifting his chin proudly, Robert says, “The CIS Tower in Manchester has over seven thousand solar panels on its façade and twenty-four wind turbines on the roof that produce ten percent of the building’s total energy needs. Fischer Tower will do better.”
He pushes a button, and an image of at least thirty enormous wind turbines settled along a digital roof flashes before them.
Ariadne’s pulse kicks up in anticipation as Robert’s voice gains momentum. Three-dimensional images as well as charts and graphs rotate over Robert’s head as he directs his laser pointer over them. The aesthetic design for the tower strikes her as rather pedestrian, but the appeal of the project is really in the details.
“The Waugh Thistleton Residential Tower in London,” he tells them, “uses helical wind turbine technology that contributes 40,000 kW hrs a year toward the building’s total energy needs. Fischer Tower will do better. Your very own Hearst Tower here in New York City is made from eighty percent recycled steel, which was commendable for its time. But I’m here to tell you that Fischer Tower can and will do better, and while also being more beautiful to look at than even the Burj al-Taqa energy tower in Dubai.”
Ariadne takes hope from this that what she’s looking at isn’t the final design. Because there is no way this boring, however advanced, tower is going to match the beauty of the upward spiraling pink and green glass of the Burj al-Taqa Tower, so tall it seems to reach for heaven like a modern day Tower of Babel.
“She’ll have no equal,” Robert says, and she hears the pride in his voice.
Despite her reservations, Ariadne has to agree. Though there are already environmentally friendly skyscrapers in the world- several in fact and all impressive in their own right- nothing on this scale has ever been done before.
Robert’s enthusiasm might seem overly theatrical and tragically hubristic to some, but Ariadne knows this project is his baby. He’s put everything into this, gambled his reputation, his legacy, his fortune.
Enthralled as she is by all this, Ariadne’s concentration momentarily slips when she feels the kind of tingling sensation that comes from someone watching her. Glancing around, she expects to finally locate Eames.
However, it’s Arthur’s gaze that she meets.
Standing against the opposite wall, he’s too far away for her to make her way over to him or vice versa without disrupting the presentation. Ariadne settles for a little wave, and he nods back.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Robert says, “Fischer Tower has the potential to lead the world in eco-friendly building. The project will be the biggest architectural challenge anyone’s ever taken on, and it will be the greatest achievement in sustainable building anyone’s ever accomplished.”
He’s greeted with stunned silence that slowly gives way to polite applause, but it can barely be heard over the rising murmurs of the crowd. They came for a scandal, and he didn’t let them down.
The second Robert descends from the stage he’s enveloped by a swarm of greedy reporters. It’s like watching a piece of meat being dipped into a piranha tank.
Ariadne can barely breathe through her excitement, and she claps louder than anyone else. The possibilities for a project on this level are endless. What he could accomplish…
More importantly, this proves that they did the right thing when they planted the idea for Robert to break up his inheritance. This is good. More than good.
Her enthusiasm earns her more than a few surprised glances.
“Biting off more than he can chew all right,” mutters the man beside her whose elbow has been poking into her ribs for the past half-hour.
“I always thought he was a little off, but I had no idea,” his associate replies. “This will finish off what’s left of Fischer Morrow for good.”
“Maurice Fischer must be turning in his grave.”
You’re unimaginative fools, she thinks.
Arthur sends her a knowing smile from across the room.
~*~
Non ti fidar, o misera (Don't trust him, oh, sad one)…
~*~
“What are you doing here?”
Arthur shrugs. “Working.”
“Oh.” The old ache barely stirs after all this time. Arthur is his job and he likely always will be. Undeterred by what could either be concision or evasion, she asks, “On what?”
She thinks he nearly smiles, but it’s impossible to tell for sure. “Would you like to see?”
They take a cab over to the hotel.
Arthur pays the driver the full fare before she can even reach for her purse, and she rolls her eyes. He catches her doing it, of course, and smirks.
When they reach the lobby, he makes her wait by the door while he goes to talk to someone on the staff. She shifts anxiously on her feet, unable to suppress the near-electric thrill from being so close to the action again.
Arthur comes striding back to her side and says, “We have to wait. Have a drink with me?”
Waiting isn’t really what she had in mind, but Ariadne follows him to the hotel bar, where Arthur orders her an apple martini without having to ask what she’d like. The bartender looks at her over her I.D. with obvious suspicion.
Annoyed, Ariadne drops her gaze so she won’t have to see Arthur’s amusement.
“Are you working with Eames?” she asks, beginning to put two and two together.
Arthur eyes her, and she instinctively knows what he’s thinking. Don’t ask questions if you aren’t willing to join the game. Same old, same old from Arthur.
She feels the irrational urge to stamp her feet like the child the bartender obviously thinks she is. They’ve worked together before. They were a team, a damn good one by the way, and he still doesn’t trust her?
“Arthur…”
“It depends,” he says, which is really no answer at all.
She wants to ask all the routine questions just so he can dodge them, as in where have you been, what have you been doing, why do you stay away for so long when you’re the only one I can show my dreamscapes to- okay, maybe she would never ask that last one because it would just prove Arthur’s point.
But it turns out that she doesn’t get to ask any of her questions, because Arthur suddenly stands with a swiftness that makes her blink up at him in surprise. “What are you…?”
“Stay here,” he hisses.
Bemused, she watches Arthur dart across the room to a table against the opposite wall. What is he doing?
Just as she is thinking he has officially lost his mind, Arthur’s reasoning comes walking into the bar.
She has barely turned in her seat before she stops cold.
Robert.
He claims a stool on the opposite side of the bar from where she’s sitting and orders a drink. He doesn’t even glance at her.
It’s so strange to see him again in person- and at such proximity- that it takes her brain a moment to catch up with the situation. But catch up she does.
Ariadne straightens as the dots start to connect. The dots are these: Robert must be staying at this hotel. It can’t be a coincidence. Arthur must have known that when he asked her over here. For some reason, Arthur doesn’t want Robert to see them together. All of which must mean…
Robert’s the job. Again.
Ariadne sends a disapproving glare over her shoulder, but Arthur’s pretending to read a newspaper and not looking in her direction.
She takes another tentative glance at Robert and feels her heart sink. He seemed so confident during his presentation, but now Ariadne can see that his hand is shaking just slightly as he lifts his drink to his mouth. He looks exhausted.
Suddenly angry, Ariadne pushes away from the bar and stalks off toward the ladies’ room. She doesn’t bother going inside and instead waits in the narrow hallway for Arthur to follow her. He doesn’t disappoint.
“You can’t do this,” she says before he can even ask. “You can’t.”
“Do what?”
“Did some business rival of his hire you to sabotage the Fischer Tower project? Because you can’t do that. This project is important.”
Arthur gives her a strange look. “I never knew you were such an environmentalist.”
“I’m not. That’s not the point. It’s just-”
“All the possibilities?” he finishes for her. She feels herself melt a little at his knowing smile.
“Look, I know you have some… strong feelings about this,” he says, smirking at her. “I read your article, remember?”
She glares at him.
“But you don’t have to worry about that. We’re not trying to sabotage our own work. This is something different.”
Ariadne wants to believe him. “Isn’t there some kind of- I don’t know- ethical conflict in working the same mark twice?”
“You do realize our work doesn’t exactly come with a training manual, right? We don’t have an ethics committee.”
Maybe they should.
“Then what’s the job?” Despite her initial indignation, she can’t keep all of the eagerness out of her voice, and Arthur picks up on it easily.
“Well, it’s not exactly ethical,” he teases.
“Arthur,” she says warningly.
“This isn’t the job. It’s just a test.”
“Can I count on never getting a straight answer out of you?”
“Just watch.”
~*~
When Ariadne returns, she sees that a young blonde woman has joined Robert at the bar.
Ariadne is close, but not close enough to hear what they are saying or to appear conspicuous.
With a sigh full of self-disgust, she settles into her role as voyeur, just as Arthur meant for her to do.
The woman is leaning so far into his personal space that she can only be flirting with him, but Robert’s eyes are on the television that hangs over the bar. Images of the talking heads, already bantering amongst themselves about his skyscraper, are interspaced with shots of the protesters outside the Convention Center.
There is already an empty glass in front of him, but Robert signals the bartender again.
“The apple has fallen so far from the tree you can’t even see it anymore,” says a television commentator. “Maurice Fischer spent his life building a company the likes of which the corporate world had never seen before. He was a titan. Two years at the helm, and Robert Fischer has already managed to squander everything his father built.”
Ouch. He looks resigned as he downs his new drink in one smooth gulp. The move is so cliché she would laugh if she didn’t feel so bad for him.
“Not everyone feels the success of Fischer Morrow was something to be admired and preserved,” says the host in segue to his next guest.
A woman wearing a “Save the Earth” t-shirt shakes her head sadly. “After everything Fischer Morrow has done to the planet, one eco-friendly tower is hardly enough to make amends.”
“What about Fischer’s claim that the new direction for his company will be devoted to exploring alternative energy options?”
“The world doesn’t need another skyscraper cluttering up the sky. And who’s to say we even believe Robert Fischer intends to limit his company to alternative energy? Fischer Morrow still has several side companies exploiting small villages in the-”
The bartender tactfully changes the channel, but Robert immediately snaps, “I was watching that.”
Shrugging, the bartender turns the channel back.
Sensing his disinterest, the blonde becomes more aggressive and touches his knee. Apparently too bold a move for Robert at the moment because he moves away from her.
Whatever he says makes the blonde’s face fall. Their eyes meet briefly over Robert’s shoulder, but Ariadne quickly drops her gaze.
Defeated, the woman slides off the stool and leaves him at the bar. She shrugs helplessly at Arthur as she passes him.
Oh, Ariadne thinks. She’s part of it.
Robert’s eyes never leave the television screen.
Eames couldn’t have found a prettier con if he played her himself, but Ariadne suspects that even the most beautiful woman in the world would have had trouble keeping Robert’s attention on her tonight. She hopes for Arthur’s sake that there is a back-up plan.
“It’s not that the project isn’t admirable.”
Ariadne looks up in surprise at the sound of her boss’s voice coming from the television.
“It’s just that Fischer’s vision exceeds his reach.”
Ariadne snorts. He didn’t even bother to come see the presentation, but he’s being interviewed about it? She feels a fresh wave of resentment for the man who still sometimes forgets her name after a year. Her name. “Annie, could you hand me the…”
“Moron.”
She realizes belatedly that she might have accidentally said that aloud when she notices Robert staring at her.
Whoops.
“Sorry,” she says sheepishly.
“Don’t be,” he says wearily. “It’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”
Moved, she hesitates and then says, “The man’s a talentless hack with no vision of his own. You shouldn’t let him get to you.”
Robert takes a closer look at her, and Ariadne shifts uncomfortably under his measuring gaze. He clearly doesn’t remember her, but there’s no sense pushing her luck.
She glances guiltily over her shoulder at Arthur, but he’s still pretending as if he doesn’t notice them.
“Who is he?” Robert asks and Ariadne near jumps. But he’s gesturing to the television with his empty glass and not at Arthur.
“Oh. Um. Arnold Harrington. He’s the head architect at Wilson & Bailey.”
“And a ‘talentless hack’?”
She laughs despite herself. Talking to him like this when he has no idea who she is or what they’ve been through together feels surreal and gives her a strange, heady feeling. “That’s right.”
“You know this because…?”
Ariadne can only imagine what someone like him sees when he looks at someone like her, but she recognizes this as a flaw in his layout and doesn’t hold his arrogant tone against him. This time. “He’s my boss.”
Robert blinks. “Then you would know, I suppose. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one with that opinion.”
He stares morosely into his empty glass as if it holds all the secrets of the universe, and she wishes she could tell him that he’s scaled mountains, dodged armed projections, and infiltrated a heavily guarded fortress. It might cheer him up.
“Visionaries make people nervous,” she reasons.
The incredulous look he gives her makes Ariadne blush. Sentimental idealism, she reminds herself, leads to foolish articles written at three in the morning that end up in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal. And she probably sounds like an idiot.
Arthur suddenly fakes a cough.
Ariadne can take a hint, but she feels strangely reluctant to leave just yet. Interacting with Robert was never part of the plan, but Arthur was right about one thing. She does feel a certain investment in his success, and this will probably be the one and only conversation they ever have in the real world. The only one he’s likely to remember.
And while she has him here…
“Which architectural firm are you working with, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Robert’s face immediately clouds over, and she can almost see the iron walls come down. “I’m not interested in switching firms,” he says coldly.
He turns back to the television, which she interprets as a dismissal.
“That’s not what I was asking. I’m not making a business pitch.”
Robert just grunts.
Ariadne waves the bartender back over and asks him, “Do you have a pen?”
He gives her a funny look, but he still hands her a pen from his pocket. She grabs her napkin and starts sketching rapidly. “Have you ever seen the Bahrain World Trade Center Towers?” she asks Robert.
Though obviously annoyed with her now, he mutters, “Should I have?”
She decides to take further liberties and slides down a few stools so that she’s sitting next to him. Ignoring his startled look, she pushes her napkin sketch toward him. “You see how the two towers are connected by the huge wind turbines?”
He goes long enough without responding that she thinks he’s decided to ignore her. But either due to something resembling politeness or the desire to get rid of her faster, he says, “I guess…”
“And see how the buildings are sail-shaped? Well, the sail-shapes are designed to funnel wind between them into the turbines.”
“Look-”
“The wind turbines and their angles make it possible for the towers to generate up to fifteen percent of their total power consumption.” She can hear herself slipping into an unconscious imitation of her professors from school, but she can’t seem to help herself.
“You’re not here to make a pitch, huh?” But he frowns and looks closer at her sketch. “Fifteen percent?”
Ariadne smirks. “Yup. I don’t have to tell you how much money that saves them.”
He gives her another appraising look. “What firm did you say you work for?”
“It doesn’t matter because I’m not here to make a pitch.” She smiles to lessen the impact of her snark. “I just really liked the ideas you presented at the conference. Except the façade design was kind of boring, that’s all. You said you wanted Fischer Tower to be the ‘most advanced architectural accomplishment to date,’ and I thought you could do better.”
“You were at the conference?”
“Yeah, I was.”
Her critique delivered, she stands. Arthur’s probably chomping at the bit to give her an earful for breaking anonymity. But she doesn’t really see the harm.
“Well, good luck, Mr. Fischer.”
“Uh, thanks.” He seems kind of dazed by her verbal assault, but he still holds out his hand. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” she says, glancing again at Arthur. She hesitates and then gives him her hand. “Ariadne.”
“That’s… a unique name.”
She doesn’t think he’s trying to be rude this time, so she lets that pass, too.
“You’re an architect?”
She smiles.
~*~
“Did you have fun?” Arthur asks her.
“I’m sorry your play didn’t work,” she says, though her attention is already elsewhere.
As they stroll down the block, Saito’s face seems to stare out at them from the front pages of newspapers cluttering up the various newsstands they pass. They’re already saying that Saito’s company is on the move to fill the power vacuum left by Fischer Morrow.
Ariadne turns away with a shudder.
“That’s all right,” Arthur says easily. “I’m sure we’ll figure something else out.”
~*~
Ariadne is just putting the finishing touches on a visualization of a grand spiral staircase meant to replace an outdated elevator system at the university when her supervisor appears in front of her with a bemused expression on his face.
“Cynthia just got off the phone with someone from Fischer Morrow.”
Her fingers slip on the keyboard and bring up an error message over the three-dimensional model she’s been working on all morning.
“Um, Fischer?” she stammers. “And Morrow? What did he- um- they want?”
“Robert Fischer wanted to make an appointment.”
“That’s…” Unexpected. “…neat?” She doesn’t know how she’s meant to respond, but Harrington was obviously expecting a bigger reaction. “When are you going to meet with him?”
“I’m not,” he says flatly.
Even more unexpected. “Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t want to meet with me.”
“But you said…”
“He wants to meet with you.”
Uh-oh.
~*~
Harrington gets as far as a handshake before Robert says, “Would you mind giving us a minute?”
The look Harrington gives her as he leaves the room tells Ariadne her job is considerably less secure than it was yesterday.
“I think you just cost me my internship, Mr. Fischer,” she says amiably once they’re alone.
“It’s probably just as well,” he says, handing her a folder.
Ariadne looks from his face to the folder and only takes it after he raises an eyebrow at her obvious hesitation. She doesn’t think he would go to all this trouble just to confront her, even if he knew what she’d done to him, but who knows?
Upon opening the folder, she finds herself looking at an article from the… Wall Street Journal. Oh. Ariadne feels her face grow hot.
She looks up reluctantly. “You read this?”
Robert has wandered over to Harrington’s full-length office window. “A copy was sent anonymously to my office,” he says, watching the street below.
Arthur. It had to be because who else?
Why the hell would he do that?
“You didn’t send it?”
“No,” she says, offended. “Why would I do that?”
The folder holds more than just her article, but when she turns the pages, curiosity gives way to surprise and then furious indignation.
He has everything here. Copies of her birth certificate and driver’s license, her grades from grad school and before, copies of all her recommendations and references, current and former addresses, recent photographs of her coming and leaving work- it just goes on.
The feeling of invasion is so overwhelming that Ariadne needs to sit down. She has to reign in her fear and rage before she can get the words passed her throat to speak. “You had me investigated?”
He glances at her over his shoulder. “Everyone who works for me has a thorough background check done. It’s nothing personal.”
“It’s completely personal,” she snaps. “I’m not your employee. You had no right to do this.”
Getting a hold of herself, she quickly scans through the file in search of anything connecting her to the inception job. He has everything else, but apparently not that.
Robert finally leaves the window and turns his attention fully to her. “I’m sorry,” he says even though his tone says otherwise, “but I’ve already had two competing corporations send girls to me. Very convincing girls.”
The implications of this settle in slowly, and Ariadne can’t hide her wince. Arthur and Eames sent a girl to him, too, though she doubts he knows about that.
“I have to take certain precautions.” He sounds so matter of fact about it, as if she were the one being unreasonable for taking offense.
Shaking her head, Ariadne pushes the folder across the table to him. “Well, Mr. Fischer, we’ve been in here all of a minute and you’ve already invaded my privacy, possibly violated my civil rights, I think accused me of being a prostitute, and maybe cost me my prestigious internship.”
She holds up her hands. “Why? To offer me a job? After all this, it better be good.”
“Well, it was good. But then I found out you’re still an intern.”
He gives her a pointed look, but Ariadne refuses to blush. “I never said I wasn’t.”
“Still, it changes things. You aren’t certified yet.”
Losing patience, she says, “No, I’m not. Sorry you wasted your resources in putting this folder here together. But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here then.”
Robert sets his briefcase down on the table and pops the hinges. He puts Ariadne’s dossier away. “I looked into this firm, too, and you were right. Your boss has little to recommend him.” He looks her square in the eye. “I think you could do better.”
Her breath catches. “How?”
“You still have almost a year left on your internship here. I think you should finish it at Fischer Morrow. Wilson & Bailey pays you in scraps. You’ll like the salary package with us.”
Because there actually is a salary package? Starting to feel dizzy, she says, “Now who’s making a pitch?”
He smiles wryly. “Touché. But you have to admit… it’s tempting.”
Now that he’s essentially given her no choice?
She sighs and absently fingers the totem in her pocket. “You have no idea how hard I had to work to get this internship. I beat out hundreds of other applicants.” To eat Harrington’s shit, she mentally adds. “Now, my supervisor thinks I went over his head to steal a big account.”
“He barely trusts you with fetching his coffee,” he says a little too smugly. “If you join up with us, you’ll only be an intern in name. I’m told…” He draws out the word as if tasting it. “… it’s a dream job.”
Dream job, huh? Ariadne finally gives in and pulls out her totem. Placing it on the table, she knocks it over to see how it falls. Huh. Reality then.
“What’s that?”
She puts it away without answering. “Mr. Fischer, interns usually have to crawl on their knees through glass to get the kind of job I already have, and none have the type you’re describing.”
“And I’ll bet they all would have said yes by now.”
Ignoring him, she continues, “So, I have to ask: why? Why me?”
Robert sighs and rubs his forehead. He looks tired all of a sudden. “All those things you wrote… did you mean them?”
Ariadne stares at him. She had been drunk and frustrated and maybe more than a little bit guilt-ridden when she wrote that article. It never should have seen the light of day. But… “Yes. I did.”
“Well, I need people behind this project who actually believe in it,” he says quietly. “Unfortunately, those are still in short supply. Also, I’ve seen samples of the work you did at school. You think outside the box. You were also right about the façade design. It could be better. What you said in the bar… and what you wrote in the article tell me you already have some ideas. Do you?”
She looks away and after a long pause, she says, “Yeah.”
“Thought so.” He places one of his business cards on the table and slides it toward her. “Think about my offer, Ariadne.”
He sounds as if he already knows what she’ll decide. Picking up his briefcase, he walks to the door.
“Mr. Fischer?”
He pauses. “Yes?”
“Next time? Just ask.”
~*~
Fin ch'han dal vino (Finally, with the wine)…
~*~
She gets a phone call later that night from Eames.
“Fancy a drink?”
She meets him at some dive bar in the village. He hasn’t even bothered to dress down, his dress shirt a flamboyant yellow under a cream blazer.
“Seen Arthur lately?” he asks, lighting himself a cigar. She wrinkles her nose at the strong smell of tobacco he exudes from his mouth.
“You know I have,” she says. “He said he was working with you.”
“Rather presumptuous of him.” He pushes a bottle of wine toward her. “Try this. I’ve been told charming little architects absolutely die for it.”
“Eames…”
“Come now. I’ve traveled a long way to get here. Oblige me.”
Sighing, Ariadne takes the bottle from him and pours herself a glass. In a way, she’s grateful, because the organized movements give her more time before she has to ask the inevitable question. She takes a sip.
Eames’s enigmatic smile looks almost sinister through the cloud of cigar smoke. “Well?”
“It’s fine. I guess. Look, I know Fischer’s your mark.”
“Arthur tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to because I’m not an idiot,” she says, starting to feel angry again.
“How’s Fischer doing?”
Ariadne doesn’t justify that with a response. Eames knows better than she does how Robert is doing. She steels herself and then asks, “Did you plant the idea in his head to offer me a job?”
The sound startles her when Eames suddenly throws back his head and laughs. “Oh, dear, don’t look like that. It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“So, it’s a coincidence that someone anonymously sent him a copy of my article and then he just shows up to offer me a job?”
“Very good,” he says fondly. “You know about the article. Anything else?”
Sensing the hint, Ariadne thinks it through again. Eames sent her the ticket, Arthur took her to Robert’s hotel, but then the con failed because- Oh. Oh, damn it.
“The pretty con in the hotel bar.” Ariadne ducks her head and groans into her hands. “She wasn’t there for Fischer. She was there for me, right?”
Eames claps lightly.
“Arthur put me in his way at the hotel bar.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “You bastards. You complete bastards. I’m the mark.”
“No, no,” he says, smiling. “Fischer is still the mark. You were just… fun.”
Ariadne feels considerably less amused. “How did you even know I would talk to him?”
Eames gives her an ‘oh come now’ look. “We didn’t of course. But we do know you, darling girl, and after I read your adorable treatise in his defense-”
“Shut up,” she says, putting a finger in his face. “One more word about that and I’m dumping this whole bottle down your adorable blouse.”
“It’s not a blouse,” he says, pouting.
“Whatever. I presume there was actually a point to all of this. You have a reason for putting me together with Fischer, right?”
“Maybe,” he says playfully.
“I’m all ears.”
“Well, it just so happens that you’ve been offered a job at Fischer’s new company, and we’re in need of a plant in that same company as well as an architect. How fortuitous for all!”
Ariadne forgoes her glass and just chugs straight from the bottle. They’re going to need something much stronger than this if she is going to make it through this conversation.
Slamming the bottle back down on the table, she says, “No.”
“Ariadne…”
“Eames, I’ve already told you and Arthur both no. I’m out of the game.”
Just like Cobb, she thinks. She can build something real that lasts if she just tries, but she can’t do that if she is lost to dreaming.
“And that’s working out for you, is it?” he asks, growing serious. “Everything just as you hoped?”
She glares at him.
“Not feeling the pull of the dreamscape? The rush of absolute power? Absolute creation?”
Her eyes fall shut. “Stop it.”
“Arthur mentioned your… eagerness to play with the PASIV last time he dropped in. Something about a cathedral? Is the real world still enough, Ariadne?” He pauses. “The real world job… still fulfilling?”
She swallows. “Maybe I don’t think he deserves for it to happen to him twice.”
He cocks his head and actually sounds curious when he asks, “Do you feel guilty for what we did then?”
Yes. No. Sometimes? “I don’t know, Eames,” she says, frustrated, “but don’t you think I should?”
“You’re asking the wrong person, but I think you know that. Can you honestly tell me you don’t feel a little pride at being part of the first and only successful inception job ever? On your first try?”
God, there are days when it almost kills her not to shake everyone around her and tell them what she accomplished while they were all living their boring little lives. But you don’t get to brag about partaking in corporate espionage.
“I can’t work for Fischer,” she says miserably.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not real! You’re asking me to give up a real job for a pretend job that could get me arrested.”
“You forget that I’ve seen you in the field. You never had a problem with the danger aspect. If you had, then you never would have come into Fischer’s mind in the first place. As I see it, this is win-win for you. You get to build a skyscraper in the real world and whatever else you want in the dreams. At the same time. How can you pass that up?”
He’s right. Even now, she can feel the exhilarated buzz of so many possibilities at her fingertips. To be able to build dreams again... And to be part of the Fischer Tower project, which definitely counts as something real…
Was this always a losing battle?
She takes a deep breath. “What would I have to do?”
~*~
Continue to Part Two.
In the Garden of the Commendatore
by Starvinbohemian ~ Rated R ~ 31,000 words
Ariadne/Robert, implied Ariadne/Arthur, + Ensemble
Ariadne and Robert build a green skyscraper.
...In the Garden of the Commendatore...
Part I:
THE COMMENDATORE:
“Thou didst thyself invite me, For that I must requite thee,
Then answer me, then answer me,
As my guest, when shall I claim thee?”
- Don Giovanni, Mozart.
She has to pass a crowd of protesters to get into the Convention Center.
Burly security guards and a guardrail stand between them and the protesters, but Ariadne sees her fellow conventioneers eye them nervously as they move up the steps.
She isn’t afraid of them, but reading their signs- “Fischer Morrow Took My House,” “Give Us Our Jobs Back,” and “Business Without Heart”- makes her uncomfortable. She averts her eyes.
Her pulse jumps anxiously as the usher scans her ticket, but the boy barely looks at her. He runs the metal detector over her body as if he’d give anything for a more exciting job. She doesn’t blame him.
“There you go,” he says, signaling her in.
She hides a smile as she passes him and makes her way toward the entrance table for a program.
Eames’s forged ticket was a bit of unexpected good luck, and she makes a mental note to thank him when she sees him. Thanks to a certain speaker, tickets were almost impossible to get this year. Ariadne’s supervisor at Wilson & Bailey was sent a special reserved ticket but he had no interest in attending since he was more concerned with the renovations the firm was hired to make to a university in New Hampshire.
When she asked to go in his stead to the conference, he gave her an amused look and said, “I really don’t think this would be up your alley, sweetie. Do you have my latte?”
She wanted to snarl back, "I’ve built whole cathedrals the likes of which no one’s ever seen, so get your own damn coffee."
Of course, she didn’t, she doesn’t, and she won’t. To Harrington, she’s just another intern. She has to remember that even as he continues to confuse her with a personal secretary.
She takes her program and merges with the crowd.
~*~
“Why don’t you just quit?” Arthur asks her.
Looking at him, illuminated as he is by cascades of light streaming in through an entire wall made of stain glass mosaics- reds, indigos, turquoises, every color she could think of for the most opulent cathedral in non-existence- takes her breath away.
What he is really asking is, “Why don’t you stop pretending you can still live in the real world?”
She doesn’t have a simple answer for him.
How to explain to someone like Arthur, who seems almost to step from dreams rather than into them, the relevance of life goals once meticulously sketched out in a young girl’s bedroom, of the expectations of parents who never left Ohio themselves but still dreamed large for their daughter? How to articulate a half-realized fear of losing herself and breaking away entirely from reality like Cobb almost did?
As it is, she already carries her totem with her everywhere she goes, even though it’s been over a year since the Fischer job.
“Didn’t you ever try to have a normal life?” she asks him.
Arthur’s face is a mask, and she suddenly realizes that she wasn’t really expecting an answer when she voiced the question. He’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma and likely always will be.
But he surprises her when he says, “Once.”
For a brief moment, she thinks this is a privileged glimpse behind the curtain, and her heart beats a little faster at the thought.
But when he doesn’t elaborate, she realizes his omission is just a flicker of obscured movement within a fog-filled mirror. There are invisible years hidden within that one word that Ariadne knows she will never, ever see or know.
“I think you’ll find that it really only takes once.”
~*~
Ariadne scans through the conference program with genuine interest, but she also glances up every so often to search the crowd for familiar faces.
Contrary to what her boss thinks, the twelfth annual Green Architecture Symposium holds many attractions. The program lists talks on everything from “Urban Real Estate and Sustainable Housing”- in her mind’s eye, she immediately sees apartment buildings made entirely of tall, twisting trees and jungle vines- to “International Perspectives on Eco-friendly Building Renovations,” which makes her think of dream copies of Notre Dame and the Duomo stretching higher and wider and merging together into a glorious hybrid.
She experiences a surprised thrill when she sees that one of the presentations being given is entitled, “Cities in the Imagination.” But her elation immediately fades into disappointment when she realizes the talk is about the relationship between architecture and fiction.
Of course.
Frustrated, Ariadne throws the program away and wanders aimlessly around the conference to kill time before the real attraction of the conference starts. She checks her watch.
Just over an hour till show time.
As she wanders, Ariadne more than half-expects Eames to jump out at her from some hiding place, especially after that strangely obscure note he sent, urging her to attend today. He must be here somewhere. Why else send the ticket?
Her curiosity makes her antsy, though she suspects his interest lies somewhere near to her own, in a certain investment that they both share.
She suffers through about half a presentation on community gardens and co-ops before finally giving up and heading over toward where she was always going to end up.
The Pine Room was obviously designed for large conferences. Even so, it’s a packed house today.
Despite arriving early, Ariadne still has to stand at the back with everyone else who arrived too late to get a seat. At least half the audience seems to be wielding the mighty pen of journalism over crisp white legal pads.
She isn’t really surprised. Everything Robert Fischer does these days is fodder for analysts, journalists, business competitors, scientists, environmentalists, tabloids, curious onlookers- and Ariadne apparently.
A lot of people think Robert has gone insane, that he either lost his mind after his father died or else that he’s always been insane and his father somehow managed to keep a lid on it while he was alive.
Why else would the heir to a Fortune 500 company suddenly throw his inheritance to the wind just when the keys to the kingdom were finally in the palm?
What kind of person cuts his ties with the multibillion-dollar oil industry and throws his lot in with the same hippie environmentalists behind so many other failed revolutions, turning gods of industry into enemies overnight?
A visionary, she thinks.
~*~
After only a few months of living in the city, there’s a night when Ariadne has a little too much wine and does something foolish.
Though no stranger to crappy apartments, she really hates her latest crappy little apartment. A cockroach fell out of a cereal box into her bowl that morning and proceeded to splash around in the milk as she gagged in horror. The air conditioning’s broken again, and the city is in the middle of a blistering heat wave which just won’t end even after the sun leaves the sky.
She has enough money spread out through three separate bank accounts that she could buy a skyscraper to live in if she so chose, but at the time, she thought herself clever for choosing the kind of living space one would expect a girl fresh out of grad school and new to the Big Apple to be able to afford.
Now, she thinks that was the stupidest idea she ever had.
On this particular night, she’s had one too many wine coolers, battled one too many cockroaches, and read one too many unenlightened articles decrying Robert as a born-again hippie lunatic. She takes to her laptop with the vengeance of a drunken… Ariadne.
The article she writes in defense of Robert’s new business model is both idealistic to the point of being saccharine as well as poorly researched…
… and somehow ends up being printed in the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal.
She’s too embarrassed to tell anyone about the article and even goes so far as to buy up all the copies from the kiosk nearest her work to prevent her coworkers from reading it. She unloads them into the nearest dumpster.
But, somehow, a copy of the magazine issue ends up being mailed to her parents back in Ohio.
“I didn’t realize you even followed this business stuff,” her mother says over the phone. She sounds bewildered.
A week later, she finds another copy stuffed into her mailbox. There’s a post-it note stuck to the cover that reads, “Keeping Tabs?”
There’s a small sketch of dice at the bottom.
Arthur.
She wonders if Arthur realizes he's just revealed that he’s been keeping tabs on her.
~*~
As Robert takes the stage, a low hum of excitement passes through the audience.
There is a reason why this year’s conference has sold out faster than any previous year.
Rumors have been circulating throughout the business world, but this is the first time Robert has publically revealed the details of his magnum opus, the project that is going to put him on the map and officially separate his legacy from his father’s.
It’s a skyscraper. An eco-friendly skyscraper.
“Upon completion,” he tells them, “Fischer Tower will be the new division headquarters for Fischer Morrow as well as the world’s most advanced environmental architectural project to date.”
It’s been two years since Ariadne has seen Robert Fischer in person, and this is the first time she has seen him in his element. There is a confident set to his shoulders, and his voice, steady and commanding, easily carries to where she’s standing in the back.
Seeing him like this loosens a knot she didn’t even realize was sitting in her gut.
Lifting his chin proudly, Robert says, “The CIS Tower in Manchester has over seven thousand solar panels on its façade and twenty-four wind turbines on the roof that produce ten percent of the building’s total energy needs. Fischer Tower will do better.”
He pushes a button, and an image of at least thirty enormous wind turbines settled along a digital roof flashes before them.
Ariadne’s pulse kicks up in anticipation as Robert’s voice gains momentum. Three-dimensional images as well as charts and graphs rotate over Robert’s head as he directs his laser pointer over them. The aesthetic design for the tower strikes her as rather pedestrian, but the appeal of the project is really in the details.
“The Waugh Thistleton Residential Tower in London,” he tells them, “uses helical wind turbine technology that contributes 40,000 kW hrs a year toward the building’s total energy needs. Fischer Tower will do better. Your very own Hearst Tower here in New York City is made from eighty percent recycled steel, which was commendable for its time. But I’m here to tell you that Fischer Tower can and will do better, and while also being more beautiful to look at than even the Burj al-Taqa energy tower in Dubai.”
Ariadne takes hope from this that what she’s looking at isn’t the final design. Because there is no way this boring, however advanced, tower is going to match the beauty of the upward spiraling pink and green glass of the Burj al-Taqa Tower, so tall it seems to reach for heaven like a modern day Tower of Babel.
“She’ll have no equal,” Robert says, and she hears the pride in his voice.
Despite her reservations, Ariadne has to agree. Though there are already environmentally friendly skyscrapers in the world- several in fact and all impressive in their own right- nothing on this scale has ever been done before.
Robert’s enthusiasm might seem overly theatrical and tragically hubristic to some, but Ariadne knows this project is his baby. He’s put everything into this, gambled his reputation, his legacy, his fortune.
Enthralled as she is by all this, Ariadne’s concentration momentarily slips when she feels the kind of tingling sensation that comes from someone watching her. Glancing around, she expects to finally locate Eames.
However, it’s Arthur’s gaze that she meets.
Standing against the opposite wall, he’s too far away for her to make her way over to him or vice versa without disrupting the presentation. Ariadne settles for a little wave, and he nods back.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Robert says, “Fischer Tower has the potential to lead the world in eco-friendly building. The project will be the biggest architectural challenge anyone’s ever taken on, and it will be the greatest achievement in sustainable building anyone’s ever accomplished.”
He’s greeted with stunned silence that slowly gives way to polite applause, but it can barely be heard over the rising murmurs of the crowd. They came for a scandal, and he didn’t let them down.
The second Robert descends from the stage he’s enveloped by a swarm of greedy reporters. It’s like watching a piece of meat being dipped into a piranha tank.
Ariadne can barely breathe through her excitement, and she claps louder than anyone else. The possibilities for a project on this level are endless. What he could accomplish…
More importantly, this proves that they did the right thing when they planted the idea for Robert to break up his inheritance. This is good. More than good.
Her enthusiasm earns her more than a few surprised glances.
“Biting off more than he can chew all right,” mutters the man beside her whose elbow has been poking into her ribs for the past half-hour.
“I always thought he was a little off, but I had no idea,” his associate replies. “This will finish off what’s left of Fischer Morrow for good.”
“Maurice Fischer must be turning in his grave.”
You’re unimaginative fools, she thinks.
Arthur sends her a knowing smile from across the room.
~*~
Non ti fidar, o misera (Don't trust him, oh, sad one)…
~*~
“What are you doing here?”
Arthur shrugs. “Working.”
“Oh.” The old ache barely stirs after all this time. Arthur is his job and he likely always will be. Undeterred by what could either be concision or evasion, she asks, “On what?”
She thinks he nearly smiles, but it’s impossible to tell for sure. “Would you like to see?”
They take a cab over to the hotel.
Arthur pays the driver the full fare before she can even reach for her purse, and she rolls her eyes. He catches her doing it, of course, and smirks.
When they reach the lobby, he makes her wait by the door while he goes to talk to someone on the staff. She shifts anxiously on her feet, unable to suppress the near-electric thrill from being so close to the action again.
Arthur comes striding back to her side and says, “We have to wait. Have a drink with me?”
Waiting isn’t really what she had in mind, but Ariadne follows him to the hotel bar, where Arthur orders her an apple martini without having to ask what she’d like. The bartender looks at her over her I.D. with obvious suspicion.
Annoyed, Ariadne drops her gaze so she won’t have to see Arthur’s amusement.
“Are you working with Eames?” she asks, beginning to put two and two together.
Arthur eyes her, and she instinctively knows what he’s thinking. Don’t ask questions if you aren’t willing to join the game. Same old, same old from Arthur.
She feels the irrational urge to stamp her feet like the child the bartender obviously thinks she is. They’ve worked together before. They were a team, a damn good one by the way, and he still doesn’t trust her?
“Arthur…”
“It depends,” he says, which is really no answer at all.
She wants to ask all the routine questions just so he can dodge them, as in where have you been, what have you been doing, why do you stay away for so long when you’re the only one I can show my dreamscapes to- okay, maybe she would never ask that last one because it would just prove Arthur’s point.
But it turns out that she doesn’t get to ask any of her questions, because Arthur suddenly stands with a swiftness that makes her blink up at him in surprise. “What are you…?”
“Stay here,” he hisses.
Bemused, she watches Arthur dart across the room to a table against the opposite wall. What is he doing?
Just as she is thinking he has officially lost his mind, Arthur’s reasoning comes walking into the bar.
She has barely turned in her seat before she stops cold.
Robert.
He claims a stool on the opposite side of the bar from where she’s sitting and orders a drink. He doesn’t even glance at her.
It’s so strange to see him again in person- and at such proximity- that it takes her brain a moment to catch up with the situation. But catch up she does.
Ariadne straightens as the dots start to connect. The dots are these: Robert must be staying at this hotel. It can’t be a coincidence. Arthur must have known that when he asked her over here. For some reason, Arthur doesn’t want Robert to see them together. All of which must mean…
Robert’s the job. Again.
Ariadne sends a disapproving glare over her shoulder, but Arthur’s pretending to read a newspaper and not looking in her direction.
She takes another tentative glance at Robert and feels her heart sink. He seemed so confident during his presentation, but now Ariadne can see that his hand is shaking just slightly as he lifts his drink to his mouth. He looks exhausted.
Suddenly angry, Ariadne pushes away from the bar and stalks off toward the ladies’ room. She doesn’t bother going inside and instead waits in the narrow hallway for Arthur to follow her. He doesn’t disappoint.
“You can’t do this,” she says before he can even ask. “You can’t.”
“Do what?”
“Did some business rival of his hire you to sabotage the Fischer Tower project? Because you can’t do that. This project is important.”
Arthur gives her a strange look. “I never knew you were such an environmentalist.”
“I’m not. That’s not the point. It’s just-”
“All the possibilities?” he finishes for her. She feels herself melt a little at his knowing smile.
“Look, I know you have some… strong feelings about this,” he says, smirking at her. “I read your article, remember?”
She glares at him.
“But you don’t have to worry about that. We’re not trying to sabotage our own work. This is something different.”
Ariadne wants to believe him. “Isn’t there some kind of- I don’t know- ethical conflict in working the same mark twice?”
“You do realize our work doesn’t exactly come with a training manual, right? We don’t have an ethics committee.”
Maybe they should.
“Then what’s the job?” Despite her initial indignation, she can’t keep all of the eagerness out of her voice, and Arthur picks up on it easily.
“Well, it’s not exactly ethical,” he teases.
“Arthur,” she says warningly.
“This isn’t the job. It’s just a test.”
“Can I count on never getting a straight answer out of you?”
“Just watch.”
~*~
When Ariadne returns, she sees that a young blonde woman has joined Robert at the bar.
Ariadne is close, but not close enough to hear what they are saying or to appear conspicuous.
With a sigh full of self-disgust, she settles into her role as voyeur, just as Arthur meant for her to do.
The woman is leaning so far into his personal space that she can only be flirting with him, but Robert’s eyes are on the television that hangs over the bar. Images of the talking heads, already bantering amongst themselves about his skyscraper, are interspaced with shots of the protesters outside the Convention Center.
There is already an empty glass in front of him, but Robert signals the bartender again.
“The apple has fallen so far from the tree you can’t even see it anymore,” says a television commentator. “Maurice Fischer spent his life building a company the likes of which the corporate world had never seen before. He was a titan. Two years at the helm, and Robert Fischer has already managed to squander everything his father built.”
Ouch. He looks resigned as he downs his new drink in one smooth gulp. The move is so cliché she would laugh if she didn’t feel so bad for him.
“Not everyone feels the success of Fischer Morrow was something to be admired and preserved,” says the host in segue to his next guest.
A woman wearing a “Save the Earth” t-shirt shakes her head sadly. “After everything Fischer Morrow has done to the planet, one eco-friendly tower is hardly enough to make amends.”
“What about Fischer’s claim that the new direction for his company will be devoted to exploring alternative energy options?”
“The world doesn’t need another skyscraper cluttering up the sky. And who’s to say we even believe Robert Fischer intends to limit his company to alternative energy? Fischer Morrow still has several side companies exploiting small villages in the-”
The bartender tactfully changes the channel, but Robert immediately snaps, “I was watching that.”
Shrugging, the bartender turns the channel back.
Sensing his disinterest, the blonde becomes more aggressive and touches his knee. Apparently too bold a move for Robert at the moment because he moves away from her.
Whatever he says makes the blonde’s face fall. Their eyes meet briefly over Robert’s shoulder, but Ariadne quickly drops her gaze.
Defeated, the woman slides off the stool and leaves him at the bar. She shrugs helplessly at Arthur as she passes him.
Oh, Ariadne thinks. She’s part of it.
Robert’s eyes never leave the television screen.
Eames couldn’t have found a prettier con if he played her himself, but Ariadne suspects that even the most beautiful woman in the world would have had trouble keeping Robert’s attention on her tonight. She hopes for Arthur’s sake that there is a back-up plan.
“It’s not that the project isn’t admirable.”
Ariadne looks up in surprise at the sound of her boss’s voice coming from the television.
“It’s just that Fischer’s vision exceeds his reach.”
Ariadne snorts. He didn’t even bother to come see the presentation, but he’s being interviewed about it? She feels a fresh wave of resentment for the man who still sometimes forgets her name after a year. Her name. “Annie, could you hand me the…”
“Moron.”
She realizes belatedly that she might have accidentally said that aloud when she notices Robert staring at her.
Whoops.
“Sorry,” she says sheepishly.
“Don’t be,” he says wearily. “It’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”
Moved, she hesitates and then says, “The man’s a talentless hack with no vision of his own. You shouldn’t let him get to you.”
Robert takes a closer look at her, and Ariadne shifts uncomfortably under his measuring gaze. He clearly doesn’t remember her, but there’s no sense pushing her luck.
She glances guiltily over her shoulder at Arthur, but he’s still pretending as if he doesn’t notice them.
“Who is he?” Robert asks and Ariadne near jumps. But he’s gesturing to the television with his empty glass and not at Arthur.
“Oh. Um. Arnold Harrington. He’s the head architect at Wilson & Bailey.”
“And a ‘talentless hack’?”
She laughs despite herself. Talking to him like this when he has no idea who she is or what they’ve been through together feels surreal and gives her a strange, heady feeling. “That’s right.”
“You know this because…?”
Ariadne can only imagine what someone like him sees when he looks at someone like her, but she recognizes this as a flaw in his layout and doesn’t hold his arrogant tone against him. This time. “He’s my boss.”
Robert blinks. “Then you would know, I suppose. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one with that opinion.”
He stares morosely into his empty glass as if it holds all the secrets of the universe, and she wishes she could tell him that he’s scaled mountains, dodged armed projections, and infiltrated a heavily guarded fortress. It might cheer him up.
“Visionaries make people nervous,” she reasons.
The incredulous look he gives her makes Ariadne blush. Sentimental idealism, she reminds herself, leads to foolish articles written at three in the morning that end up in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal. And she probably sounds like an idiot.
Arthur suddenly fakes a cough.
Ariadne can take a hint, but she feels strangely reluctant to leave just yet. Interacting with Robert was never part of the plan, but Arthur was right about one thing. She does feel a certain investment in his success, and this will probably be the one and only conversation they ever have in the real world. The only one he’s likely to remember.
And while she has him here…
“Which architectural firm are you working with, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Robert’s face immediately clouds over, and she can almost see the iron walls come down. “I’m not interested in switching firms,” he says coldly.
He turns back to the television, which she interprets as a dismissal.
“That’s not what I was asking. I’m not making a business pitch.”
Robert just grunts.
Ariadne waves the bartender back over and asks him, “Do you have a pen?”
He gives her a funny look, but he still hands her a pen from his pocket. She grabs her napkin and starts sketching rapidly. “Have you ever seen the Bahrain World Trade Center Towers?” she asks Robert.
Though obviously annoyed with her now, he mutters, “Should I have?”
She decides to take further liberties and slides down a few stools so that she’s sitting next to him. Ignoring his startled look, she pushes her napkin sketch toward him. “You see how the two towers are connected by the huge wind turbines?”
He goes long enough without responding that she thinks he’s decided to ignore her. But either due to something resembling politeness or the desire to get rid of her faster, he says, “I guess…”
“And see how the buildings are sail-shaped? Well, the sail-shapes are designed to funnel wind between them into the turbines.”
“Look-”
“The wind turbines and their angles make it possible for the towers to generate up to fifteen percent of their total power consumption.” She can hear herself slipping into an unconscious imitation of her professors from school, but she can’t seem to help herself.
“You’re not here to make a pitch, huh?” But he frowns and looks closer at her sketch. “Fifteen percent?”
Ariadne smirks. “Yup. I don’t have to tell you how much money that saves them.”
He gives her another appraising look. “What firm did you say you work for?”
“It doesn’t matter because I’m not here to make a pitch.” She smiles to lessen the impact of her snark. “I just really liked the ideas you presented at the conference. Except the façade design was kind of boring, that’s all. You said you wanted Fischer Tower to be the ‘most advanced architectural accomplishment to date,’ and I thought you could do better.”
“You were at the conference?”
“Yeah, I was.”
Her critique delivered, she stands. Arthur’s probably chomping at the bit to give her an earful for breaking anonymity. But she doesn’t really see the harm.
“Well, good luck, Mr. Fischer.”
“Uh, thanks.” He seems kind of dazed by her verbal assault, but he still holds out his hand. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” she says, glancing again at Arthur. She hesitates and then gives him her hand. “Ariadne.”
“That’s… a unique name.”
She doesn’t think he’s trying to be rude this time, so she lets that pass, too.
“You’re an architect?”
She smiles.
~*~
“Did you have fun?” Arthur asks her.
“I’m sorry your play didn’t work,” she says, though her attention is already elsewhere.
As they stroll down the block, Saito’s face seems to stare out at them from the front pages of newspapers cluttering up the various newsstands they pass. They’re already saying that Saito’s company is on the move to fill the power vacuum left by Fischer Morrow.
Ariadne turns away with a shudder.
“That’s all right,” Arthur says easily. “I’m sure we’ll figure something else out.”
~*~
Ariadne is just putting the finishing touches on a visualization of a grand spiral staircase meant to replace an outdated elevator system at the university when her supervisor appears in front of her with a bemused expression on his face.
“Cynthia just got off the phone with someone from Fischer Morrow.”
Her fingers slip on the keyboard and bring up an error message over the three-dimensional model she’s been working on all morning.
“Um, Fischer?” she stammers. “And Morrow? What did he- um- they want?”
“Robert Fischer wanted to make an appointment.”
“That’s…” Unexpected. “…neat?” She doesn’t know how she’s meant to respond, but Harrington was obviously expecting a bigger reaction. “When are you going to meet with him?”
“I’m not,” he says flatly.
Even more unexpected. “Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t want to meet with me.”
“But you said…”
“He wants to meet with you.”
Uh-oh.
~*~
Harrington gets as far as a handshake before Robert says, “Would you mind giving us a minute?”
The look Harrington gives her as he leaves the room tells Ariadne her job is considerably less secure than it was yesterday.
“I think you just cost me my internship, Mr. Fischer,” she says amiably once they’re alone.
“It’s probably just as well,” he says, handing her a folder.
Ariadne looks from his face to the folder and only takes it after he raises an eyebrow at her obvious hesitation. She doesn’t think he would go to all this trouble just to confront her, even if he knew what she’d done to him, but who knows?
Upon opening the folder, she finds herself looking at an article from the… Wall Street Journal. Oh. Ariadne feels her face grow hot.
She looks up reluctantly. “You read this?”
Robert has wandered over to Harrington’s full-length office window. “A copy was sent anonymously to my office,” he says, watching the street below.
Arthur. It had to be because who else?
Why the hell would he do that?
“You didn’t send it?”
“No,” she says, offended. “Why would I do that?”
The folder holds more than just her article, but when she turns the pages, curiosity gives way to surprise and then furious indignation.
He has everything here. Copies of her birth certificate and driver’s license, her grades from grad school and before, copies of all her recommendations and references, current and former addresses, recent photographs of her coming and leaving work- it just goes on.
The feeling of invasion is so overwhelming that Ariadne needs to sit down. She has to reign in her fear and rage before she can get the words passed her throat to speak. “You had me investigated?”
He glances at her over his shoulder. “Everyone who works for me has a thorough background check done. It’s nothing personal.”
“It’s completely personal,” she snaps. “I’m not your employee. You had no right to do this.”
Getting a hold of herself, she quickly scans through the file in search of anything connecting her to the inception job. He has everything else, but apparently not that.
Robert finally leaves the window and turns his attention fully to her. “I’m sorry,” he says even though his tone says otherwise, “but I’ve already had two competing corporations send girls to me. Very convincing girls.”
The implications of this settle in slowly, and Ariadne can’t hide her wince. Arthur and Eames sent a girl to him, too, though she doubts he knows about that.
“I have to take certain precautions.” He sounds so matter of fact about it, as if she were the one being unreasonable for taking offense.
Shaking her head, Ariadne pushes the folder across the table to him. “Well, Mr. Fischer, we’ve been in here all of a minute and you’ve already invaded my privacy, possibly violated my civil rights, I think accused me of being a prostitute, and maybe cost me my prestigious internship.”
She holds up her hands. “Why? To offer me a job? After all this, it better be good.”
“Well, it was good. But then I found out you’re still an intern.”
He gives her a pointed look, but Ariadne refuses to blush. “I never said I wasn’t.”
“Still, it changes things. You aren’t certified yet.”
Losing patience, she says, “No, I’m not. Sorry you wasted your resources in putting this folder here together. But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here then.”
Robert sets his briefcase down on the table and pops the hinges. He puts Ariadne’s dossier away. “I looked into this firm, too, and you were right. Your boss has little to recommend him.” He looks her square in the eye. “I think you could do better.”
Her breath catches. “How?”
“You still have almost a year left on your internship here. I think you should finish it at Fischer Morrow. Wilson & Bailey pays you in scraps. You’ll like the salary package with us.”
Because there actually is a salary package? Starting to feel dizzy, she says, “Now who’s making a pitch?”
He smiles wryly. “Touché. But you have to admit… it’s tempting.”
Now that he’s essentially given her no choice?
She sighs and absently fingers the totem in her pocket. “You have no idea how hard I had to work to get this internship. I beat out hundreds of other applicants.” To eat Harrington’s shit, she mentally adds. “Now, my supervisor thinks I went over his head to steal a big account.”
“He barely trusts you with fetching his coffee,” he says a little too smugly. “If you join up with us, you’ll only be an intern in name. I’m told…” He draws out the word as if tasting it. “… it’s a dream job.”
Dream job, huh? Ariadne finally gives in and pulls out her totem. Placing it on the table, she knocks it over to see how it falls. Huh. Reality then.
“What’s that?”
She puts it away without answering. “Mr. Fischer, interns usually have to crawl on their knees through glass to get the kind of job I already have, and none have the type you’re describing.”
“And I’ll bet they all would have said yes by now.”
Ignoring him, she continues, “So, I have to ask: why? Why me?”
Robert sighs and rubs his forehead. He looks tired all of a sudden. “All those things you wrote… did you mean them?”
Ariadne stares at him. She had been drunk and frustrated and maybe more than a little bit guilt-ridden when she wrote that article. It never should have seen the light of day. But… “Yes. I did.”
“Well, I need people behind this project who actually believe in it,” he says quietly. “Unfortunately, those are still in short supply. Also, I’ve seen samples of the work you did at school. You think outside the box. You were also right about the façade design. It could be better. What you said in the bar… and what you wrote in the article tell me you already have some ideas. Do you?”
She looks away and after a long pause, she says, “Yeah.”
“Thought so.” He places one of his business cards on the table and slides it toward her. “Think about my offer, Ariadne.”
He sounds as if he already knows what she’ll decide. Picking up his briefcase, he walks to the door.
“Mr. Fischer?”
He pauses. “Yes?”
“Next time? Just ask.”
~*~
Fin ch'han dal vino (Finally, with the wine)…
~*~
She gets a phone call later that night from Eames.
“Fancy a drink?”
She meets him at some dive bar in the village. He hasn’t even bothered to dress down, his dress shirt a flamboyant yellow under a cream blazer.
“Seen Arthur lately?” he asks, lighting himself a cigar. She wrinkles her nose at the strong smell of tobacco he exudes from his mouth.
“You know I have,” she says. “He said he was working with you.”
“Rather presumptuous of him.” He pushes a bottle of wine toward her. “Try this. I’ve been told charming little architects absolutely die for it.”
“Eames…”
“Come now. I’ve traveled a long way to get here. Oblige me.”
Sighing, Ariadne takes the bottle from him and pours herself a glass. In a way, she’s grateful, because the organized movements give her more time before she has to ask the inevitable question. She takes a sip.
Eames’s enigmatic smile looks almost sinister through the cloud of cigar smoke. “Well?”
“It’s fine. I guess. Look, I know Fischer’s your mark.”
“Arthur tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to because I’m not an idiot,” she says, starting to feel angry again.
“How’s Fischer doing?”
Ariadne doesn’t justify that with a response. Eames knows better than she does how Robert is doing. She steels herself and then asks, “Did you plant the idea in his head to offer me a job?”
The sound startles her when Eames suddenly throws back his head and laughs. “Oh, dear, don’t look like that. It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“So, it’s a coincidence that someone anonymously sent him a copy of my article and then he just shows up to offer me a job?”
“Very good,” he says fondly. “You know about the article. Anything else?”
Sensing the hint, Ariadne thinks it through again. Eames sent her the ticket, Arthur took her to Robert’s hotel, but then the con failed because- Oh. Oh, damn it.
“The pretty con in the hotel bar.” Ariadne ducks her head and groans into her hands. “She wasn’t there for Fischer. She was there for me, right?”
Eames claps lightly.
“Arthur put me in his way at the hotel bar.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “You bastards. You complete bastards. I’m the mark.”
“No, no,” he says, smiling. “Fischer is still the mark. You were just… fun.”
Ariadne feels considerably less amused. “How did you even know I would talk to him?”
Eames gives her an ‘oh come now’ look. “We didn’t of course. But we do know you, darling girl, and after I read your adorable treatise in his defense-”
“Shut up,” she says, putting a finger in his face. “One more word about that and I’m dumping this whole bottle down your adorable blouse.”
“It’s not a blouse,” he says, pouting.
“Whatever. I presume there was actually a point to all of this. You have a reason for putting me together with Fischer, right?”
“Maybe,” he says playfully.
“I’m all ears.”
“Well, it just so happens that you’ve been offered a job at Fischer’s new company, and we’re in need of a plant in that same company as well as an architect. How fortuitous for all!”
Ariadne forgoes her glass and just chugs straight from the bottle. They’re going to need something much stronger than this if she is going to make it through this conversation.
Slamming the bottle back down on the table, she says, “No.”
“Ariadne…”
“Eames, I’ve already told you and Arthur both no. I’m out of the game.”
Just like Cobb, she thinks. She can build something real that lasts if she just tries, but she can’t do that if she is lost to dreaming.
“And that’s working out for you, is it?” he asks, growing serious. “Everything just as you hoped?”
She glares at him.
“Not feeling the pull of the dreamscape? The rush of absolute power? Absolute creation?”
Her eyes fall shut. “Stop it.”
“Arthur mentioned your… eagerness to play with the PASIV last time he dropped in. Something about a cathedral? Is the real world still enough, Ariadne?” He pauses. “The real world job… still fulfilling?”
She swallows. “Maybe I don’t think he deserves for it to happen to him twice.”
He cocks his head and actually sounds curious when he asks, “Do you feel guilty for what we did then?”
Yes. No. Sometimes? “I don’t know, Eames,” she says, frustrated, “but don’t you think I should?”
“You’re asking the wrong person, but I think you know that. Can you honestly tell me you don’t feel a little pride at being part of the first and only successful inception job ever? On your first try?”
God, there are days when it almost kills her not to shake everyone around her and tell them what she accomplished while they were all living their boring little lives. But you don’t get to brag about partaking in corporate espionage.
“I can’t work for Fischer,” she says miserably.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not real! You’re asking me to give up a real job for a pretend job that could get me arrested.”
“You forget that I’ve seen you in the field. You never had a problem with the danger aspect. If you had, then you never would have come into Fischer’s mind in the first place. As I see it, this is win-win for you. You get to build a skyscraper in the real world and whatever else you want in the dreams. At the same time. How can you pass that up?”
He’s right. Even now, she can feel the exhilarated buzz of so many possibilities at her fingertips. To be able to build dreams again... And to be part of the Fischer Tower project, which definitely counts as something real…
Was this always a losing battle?
She takes a deep breath. “What would I have to do?”
~*~
Continue to Part Two.