WINNING ROUND

WINNING ROUND

A Short Story

Nicholas Cochran


Jack Samson was almost three blocks away from the building, yet he could sense a peculiar emanation form the structure.

Twenty stories of glass and steel, plus a touch or two of chrome; they liked the way chrome reflected the sun all over the city at every time of day.
It was a climatological blessing that consistently spread over all the unfortunate inhabitants.
Jack muttered to himself that the city wasn’t all that bad; at least not all parts of it were dead or condemned.

Now that he was barely two blocks from the entrance, the emanations were stronger but less repellent; in fact, their character was quickly changing from unpleasant, to more than bearable.

Jack smiled. The building was at the end of the next block.
All approaches to the building were via busy streets, closely packed with architectural nightmares or gaudily kitsch renditions.
There was even a five story circular structure that rotated three times a day; just enough to give the occupants the impression that their moods were changing along with the scenery; if ugly multistory buildings could be classified as scenery.

But outside the ten square block area that had its epicenter in Jack’s edifice, the rest of the city was laid out in a flat pattern of straight streets and square corners.

Jack had placed first in his class all the way from kindergarten to MIT, where he was awarded a PhD. in Architecture.
Following graduation, he had worked exclusively on designs of round buildings, most of which revolved.

His objective, the hideous twenty-story number that gave off emanations, was where he intended to park himself at an appropriate site to observe the five storey red revolving building across the street.
Jack quickened his step; he had a stinging feeling in his chest that he related to the task he was about to undertake; something about the revolving building and its relationship to the twenty-storey number, had roused his curiosity.

There was something strange to him about the way in which the two structures appeared to depend upon one another for their very existence.
Jack had seen four psychiatrists and told them of his emotional turmoil that followed any visit to either building.
The fourth doctor referred Jack to a fifth and Jack said no thanks.

He was now assiduously attempting to resolve these peculiar emotions (singular in his life experience) on his own, by visiting both buildings as often as he could, to try to rip away whatever it was that was at the root of the antagonism between these structures.

Jack had immediately believed that the relationship between the two was essentially anthropomorphic; that, in some bizarre way, they had souls; that they had deep emotions.

Of course Jack never told any of his clients about this; his wife had left him shortly after he had told her his beliefs, even before he took her advice and went to the psychiatrists.

Tall, imposing, handsome, well dressed, extremely well read, wealthy; Jack Samson was definitely a man with a very broad range of interests.

Despite the impressive lists of Jack’s positives—in addition to his sterling character—everyone who heard Jack out on the surreal matters concerning the two buildings, drifted away; some more quickly than others.

Only his twenty-five year old daughter Stephanie, believed him entirely.

She had also become an architect and, on occasion, they formed a team; he would give her the needed help with a particular project; she would listen to her father articulate the inner-most thoughts and emotions that he was experiencing about the link—maybe an alliance—between the two constructions.
When darkness came, they would remove both themselves and Jack’s borderline paranoia, to Max’s for a late dinner.
Several calories, and almost as many drinks, later, Jack would put Stephanie in a cab and he would wander toward the two buildings to see if anything new was sparking between them that could help him outline, and then attack, the problems that were clawing at his soul; at his roots.

Today Jack had very high expectations.
However, he couldn’t quite get a fix on just why his gleeful emotions were riding so high and so thoroughly trampling his depressive thoughts; and baldly banishing his semi-suicidal leanings into the bargain.

He was now one block away from the imagined adversaries.

In the recesses of his consciousness, Jack felt as though he was about to encounter Armageddon; the Rapture, as it applied to architecture; a gladiatorial death-game between straight and round; Russian roulette using explosives and cranes as bullets.

Suddenly, he had gone over the edge, and he knew it; but he could not help himself.

He could envision no salvation from the black dogs that were forcing his mind to fill with dark scenes of death by way of structural destruction.

His inward eye also had a voice; it was screaming throughout his total essence, that he must—by any artifice—get inside the larger building.

Jack’s inner devils commanded him to enter, if only because they could all reach a higher floor in the straight building where they could glare down on the round one, many stories below.
As an architect who specialized in round buildings, there was no question about which edifice he favored in this mental duel to the death between the two rivals. But why?

What are they fighting about?

Both Jack and his demons considered the question not only annoying but also irrelevant; how often does anyone perceive the true meaning of their bellicosity; the true bedrock of their antipathy; the fountainhead of their white-hot fury?

They pulled on the handle of the glass entrance door and heard the suction of the mechanism that closed the door behind them.
Jack clearly understood that a trap had been sprung by his black dogs and his demons, in a conspiracy with this building.

Suddenly, he understood: he was now being held prisoner by this building; that his presence there was a form of security for the straight building, by holding a partisan of the round structure.
Kafka came to mind; not for the first time since these strange fiends had attacked his core.
Fine.
But just now fully realizing that he was in a Kafkaesque situation did nothing for the torments tearing apart both his soul and his sanity.

Like an automaton, they strode toward the elevators.

One was open.

They entered and pressed the top floor. Slowly, the elevator ground its way north; and Jack couldn’t remember the ascent being so sluggish.

Abruptly, the elevator jarred to a stop and the doors opened onto—the thirteenth floor.
Jack had always wondered why the straight-building managers had permitted a thirteenth floor; but they had.

Jack felt their invisible hands pushing him to the right-hand corridor. He understood that he had pressed the button for the top floor but he was unable to muster any resistance.
They were throttling any uprising; savaging all opposition.
Yes. It had to be.

It was the right floor. They quickened the pace, rounded the corner and stopped at the first door on the left.
He drew out his key, unlocked it and they entered.

The interior was one vast room that girdled the elevator shaft; the entire thirteenth floor.

They found everything where Jack had left it.
Now sweat began to blind him, but they pressed on; jabbing his gut to energize him. His hands worked nimbly with a poetic rhythm; connecting and splicing; pushing buttons and pulling levers.
Suddenly a broad smile lit up their perfect dentition; only one more button to push.

Nevertheless, before that final push, two last tasks.

First, they carefully inspected all of the product and the wiring, as well as all necessary buttons and devices.

Second, they went to the windows overlooking the round building across the street.
He smiled again and began to nod as he would when he had talked to the psychiatrists about his imaginings.

But they aren’t imaginings; the round building is definitely superior; and this straight building is blocking the round building’s views to the river; and to the wooded counties beyond.

So, there it was.

Jack turned and they pushed the final button.

The top nineteen floors of the straight building crumbled to the streets below.

The occupants of the round building gaped . . . at first, in horror, but then as the stunning new vistas brought instant relief to their city-polluted eyes, the horror evaporated.
Every one on the four top floors of the round building asked that the revolving halt.
They wanted to inhale all the colors and beauty, as well as the blue skies with white cloudlets, and the sunshine, that were now to be their daily companions.
* * *
Jack’s daughter won both contracts.
The first was to build another fifteen stories on top of the existing round building.
The second was to construct a new revolving edifice, to be one story shorter than the previous height of the demolished straight structure.

It was to be named Samson’s Turn.