Chapter 4 - The Forty-Square-Foot Studio
That night, we didn't stay in a hotel.
I rented a tiny, four-hundred-square-foot basement studio on the eastern edge of Colfax Avenue. The rent was three hundred and fifty dollars a week, cash up front.
The room had a single window near the ceiling that looked out onto an alleyway, a squeaky metal bed frame, a small gas stove, and a laminate desk with three mismatched drawers.
It was smaller than my closet at the Weston estate.
Samuel set his grocery bag in the corner, wiped his boots on the mat, and immediately pulled a small leather-bound sketchbook and a drafting pencil from his coat pocket.
“What are you doing?” I asked, dropping my single suitcase onto the bed.
“We have four hundred dollars, Hannah,” Samuel said, sitting on the wooden chair at the desk, opening the sketchbook. “Four hundred dollars buys two weeks of shelter and basic grain. If we want to survive without your father’s money, we need a revenue stream by Tuesday.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, pulling my wool sweater tight around my shoulders. “I’m an architect, Samuel. Or at least, I completed three years of my master’s degree before Father made me drop out to work in his leasing department.”
Samuel looked up, his silver beard catching the dim yellow light of the single ceiling bulb.
“You know how to draw structural elevations?” he asked.
“I know how to calculate load-bearing capacities for steel girders in my sleep,” I said proudly.
A slow, brilliant smile spread across Samuel’s face. For the first time, the stoop in his shoulders vanished entirely. He looked like a master builder looking at a new piece of granite.
“Then we don't look for jobs, Hannah,” Samuel declared, his voice dropping into a firm, commanding tone. “We build a firm.”
“With what capital?” I asked, laughing despite the absurdity of the situation. “We don't even have a printer!”
Samuel tapped his leather-bound sketchbook with his pencil.
“In 1994, I designed the structural retrofitting for the old grain silos in the RiNo art district,” Samuel said softly. “The current owner, an old contractor named Frank Miller, owes me a debt he couldn't pay twenty years ago. Tomorrow morning, we walk to his yard.”
May you like
He stood up, walked over to the bed, pulled the extra wool blanket from his bag, and laid it carefully over my knees.
“You sleep on the bed, Hannah,” Samuel said gently, taking his coat and folding it into a pillow on the small rug near the radiator. “Tomorrow, we show Garrett Weston what happens when you attempt to crush steel.”
