Excerpted: Chandelier by David O’Meara

It was only a half truth I told back there. I was an architect. Quite successful for a while. Commissions. Decent ones. Not the Royal Library in Denmark, but some business designs. A condominium. A regional gallery. There was even my brief reign as cultural panelist on a weekly TV program.

But then something fell. It was a wall, actually, and the best part of the glass roof. There had been an earthquake in the area, it must be mentioned. Ten days prior to the collapse. Nothing Japan-like in scale. One of our cheery, eastern Canadian earthquakes, a few numbers on the Richter. Tilted picture frames and yelping dogs.

That kind of thing. But the foundation of my charming gallery had shifted and the wall came down. And what can you do? This is about media and public perception in the end. Engineers were questioned. The building contractors were put under suspicion too. There had been a lot of Montreal mafia in the news. Public servants had been fired, rumours of hefty bribes. There’s big money in development and wherever those dollar signs accumulate there is usually some burly entourage with overseas connections driving very nice cars. For a few weeks it looked like my gallery would be overshadowed by the organized crime circus, one of the tiny tails pinned to their stalwart donkey. But in the age of internet, it’s hard to shake the fallout from a collapsing wall, no matter where speculation shifts. One efficient search engine and your name is attached to fallen public galleries and crime bosses for eternity.

Most of the offers dried up. But I didn’t care. The money had been good but who wants to piss and moan about possible load-bearing options all his life. My forte had been aesthetics. The Philosophy of the Dwelling. The Feng Shui of Glass and Steel. Building these structures was one thing, but the idea of them was far more interesting. I had already been writing architectural reviews for the Globe and Mail and Independent, lengthier articles for Architect Today, so the minor earthquake was a sign. Or a forcible shove.

They call my flight.

I am going to wait until the last possible second. I am going to finish this drink, pay my bill, take a leak and then stroll toward my gate only once they announce my name. They can sweat a bit. They’re always making us wait. This business flight is on my dime and I’m going to do it at my own pace.

You would think after the unfortunate wall malfunction that my career would be shit, my reputation rubbish, my credit as ghastly as roadkill. But the opposite happened. I was never so interesting or in demand. My status may have been roadkill, smeared across the asphalt, but the spectators liked the colours, the contours and the spectacle of entrails left by my downfall. Why?

Cheek and insolence.

Refusing to crawl in a hole, I carried on blithely, as if, in fact, it was everyone else who had designed that ridiculous wall and I was just on hand to explain it to them. I turned it all around. Instead of accepting the ripe tomatoes thrown at my face, I blew raspberries into the wind. The public wanted a jester and I was there with my jug ears and air horn. Hasn’t it always been that way with me?Criticism is just bait and switch anyway. I have challenged and mocked what others have held dear. The sincerest efforts, when dissected, can become the subject of ridicule and embarrassment. Since no one wants to touch the unpalatable verities, I will.

My cellphone sings a tinny ditty, but I’m looking at it and there’s no name, just an unfamiliar number. A million guesses but I’m not going to answer it now. They can leave a message at this point. Who would be calling me at two p.m. on a Saturday afternoon? I could, after all, be on the runway and powered off lest my satellite signal breaches the cockpit’s sophisticated instruments and catastrophe reigns. I’ll shut it down now, in fact; I’m on vacation. No, that’s not true. I’m on a quest for redemption and closure.

There, you see?

They are just calling my name.