Page 127 of Best In Class
He orders the snapperputtanescawhile I get the vealosso bucco.
We skip the appetizer and opt for a salad with our meal instead. Got to save room for the cannoli cheesecake Pacci is famous for!
It is enormously easy to be with Dom. It’s also inspiring and stimulating.
We don’t talk about family. We don’t talk about the Minton project. We don’t talk about the past.
“Frank Lloyd Wright is not overrated,” Dom counters when I say he is.
I touch my napkin to the corner of my mouth, and set it back on my lap. “Of course, he is. He built monuments to his own ego.”
“He redefined organic architecture.” Dom refills my wine glass.
I cut into a delicate piece of braised veal. “He redefined how to trap heat in a house with no ventilation. Falling water is gorgeous until the roof leaks.”
Dom laughs. “Maybe! But come on—did you see the textile blocks in the Ennis House? That geometric facade?”
I chew on my meat for a moment and tilt my head thoughtfully. “Fine, but if that’s what gets your motor going, I think you want Zaha Hadid. Her work is chaos and grace. Liquid geometry. Concrete that looks like silk.”
“Zaha was pure genius,” he agrees. “Her Heydar Aliyev Center is an architectural masterpiece. I had a tear in my eye when I saw it.”
“You did?” I laugh.
“Yeah.” He shakes his head as if in self-recrimination. “The building is a marvel, challenging notions of geometry and gravity, with not one right angle in sight. It’s got such gravitas and somberness.”
I swirl the wine in my glass. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Talking about buildings like they’re people?”
He looks at me, serious now. “Well, I have alwaysbelieved that buildings have more than character, they have…moods. They can breathe.”
“Exactly!” I drink some wine. “I can feel a building’s karma when I walk into it.”
Over dessert and coffee, we talk about climate-responsive façades, the stubborn beauty of brutalism, and the poetry of good lighting.
We talk about the line between vanity and vision in design, and how hard it is to walk.
This—thisis what I always wanted. A man I could love with my mind and my body. A man who sees architecture the way I do, not just as structure, but as a story.
Dom is halfway through an impassioned ode to adaptive reuse in Europe when a syrupy voice interrupts us.
“Well, if it isn’t the golden couple.”
Camy stands next to our table, close to Dom, like she’s posing for a magazine shoot. Hair blown out, lashes long, heels so high they should require a scaffolding permit. Her dress is designer and clingy, and her smile is all sharp angles.
“Camy,” Dom greets her flatly.
“Dom,” she purrs. “How are you?”
“I’m well. And you?”
“Missing you, baby.”
I roll my eyes. Dom looks amused.
Camy’s eyes flick to me, and her lips curve in a smirk. “Luna. You look…radiant. Must be the company you’re keeping.”
I sip my wine, not even bothering to fake civility. “Nah, this place has excellent lighting.”
She chuckles, now uncomfortable.
