The Submission - Amy Waldman [54]
Thomas lit up by habit when he saw Mo, then remembered to glower. Mo was still arraying his excuses when Thomas shoved him against the wall, the gesture touchingly schoolboyish, as if Thomas’s heart wasn’t in the violence. It was how Mo himself would have lashed out. Unable to speak, he started laughing, mostly from relief that this moment was over.
“I deserved that,” Mo said.
“If Alice were here you’d be bleeding.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“You are the world’s biggest asshole. You drew up that design, what, four, five months ago and never thought to mention it?”
“I didn’t think I would win, so it didn’t seem worth bringing up.”
“Bullshit!” Thomas said. “You’re way too cocky to think you wouldn’t win.”
“I didn’t even tell my parents. Does that make it any better?”
“I thought we were partners,” Thomas said. “I thought that was the goal here.”
“It was. It is. I still want to be. I just … this was about me, I admit that. But it was something I had to do on my own. And look how well it’s gone—serves me right.”
“So I’m supposed to feel sorry for you? Reporters came to our house. Alice is scared. I’m scared. The kids—you asshole,” he said again, with even more feeling.
“I didn’t know they came to the house, Thomas. Shit, I’m sorry. Somehow it never occurred to me they would drag you into it.”
“Of course it didn’t occur to you because that would have required thinking about someone other than yourself.”
Mo’s patience for penance was starting to wane. How many ways could he say he was sorry? “Fine, I am the world’s biggest asshole, but you did call me decadent. Decadent!”
Thomas started laughing. “I said you were more decadent than I am, which these days isn’t hard. She trimmed the fat from my sentence. I was actually trying to help you, even in my pissed-off state, by making clear you’re not some extremist. Her face lit up as soon as the word left my mouth.”
“And I was trying to help you by winning this competition. Think how good it will be for our practice.”
“There’s not going to be a practice, Mo! K/K Architects is dead. You killed it. If nothing else, Alice will never allow it. Grudges are her baby blanket.”
“I’ll work on her,” Mo said, sensing, in the shift to Alice, a softening. Even this inspired guilt: he knew he had taken a chance on alienating Thomas because unlike his wife, or Mo himself, the man couldn’t hold a grudge.
Roi could, apparently. He was in the office, but he didn’t speak to Mo—not that day, not the next. Summoned at last, Mo braced for a dressing-down.
“It may amuse you to know I thought about entering that competition myself,” Roi said, without preamble. “I had an idea—a good idea; one day I will show you some sketches I made. But I thought, once they learn a Frenchman has won? A Frenchman who, in his youth, was a devoted member of the Communist Party in Paris? They will never allow it. And so I didn’t go forward. You were braver.”
Mo was so surprised he couldn’t speak. Better a French Communist than an American Muslim, he thought: Paul Rubin had suggested that Mo submit his design under Roi’s name.
Roi went on. “No competition is ever pure, you know. Don’t think otherwise: someone knows someone on the jury; one strong will dominates the deliberations. They are all contaminated. I loathe them, actually. We do them only because that’s how most of the work in Europe is given. But this is different, what people are saying about you. I am not fond of all Muslims, the ones who won’t assimilate, I mean; France admitted too many. But that is separate. You won, and we must make sure you