02 _ Maltese Goddess, The Read Free Page B

long I stood there, just gaping at the sight. When I looked around I found Galea himself watching, a look of amusement in his eyes. “Like it?” he said.
    “It’s magnificent!” I said.
    “You should see it at night, actually,” he went on. “From where we are standing, all the lights in the ceiling of the living room—there are 360 of them—light up like little stars, and reflected in the glass, they stretch out as far as the lights from the city towers.” He seemed to take a boyish pleasure in his own work and my evident admiration. “Come and have a better look.”
    We descended a couple of steps into the living room, to a very elegant off-white sofa flanked by cream leather Barcelona chairs. At one side of the room was a huge marble fireplace which soared to the ceiling. Behind was the outside wall of the old house, its original red brick now whitewashed to suit its new environs in the addition of glass and steel. Most of the furnishings were antique white, and everything was done on a grand scale. Despite the proportions, however, the feeling was one of calm and contemplation, a kind of pure space.
    “Would you like a tour of the house before we get down to work?” he asked.
    “Sure,” I replied.
    The rest of the house was also lovely, the main living spaces complemented by a palette of honey, cream, and buttermilk. Wooden floors were the color of pale straw, covered in some places with antique carpets, their colors worn to the same golden hues.
    The dining room was spectacular. It also had a view of the ravine. But in a departure from the colors in the rest of the house, it featured a black lacquered table that reflected the myriad lights from a chandelier, designed by Galea himself, he assured me, which caught the light in hundreds of pieces of crystal, then burnished it and threw it back in sparkling starburst patterns on the wall, the table, and the floor.
    The upstairs hallway was the upscale equivalent of a trophy room, decorated with framed drawings of some of the buildings he had designed and was famous for. Galea had attained a point in his career where he was always referred to as the award-winning architect, never just the architect, and here it was easy to see why. I recognized a town hall that had won an international competition in Milan, a grand public space in Riyadh, a concert hall in Australia. It was all very grand. Next to these were photographs of Galea accepting various prizes and hobnobbing with assorted famous people—politicians, movie stars, and the like. He pointed each of them out to me with obvious pleasure, like a little boy boasting about his exploits in the schoolyard.
    After the tour was over and my genuine exclamations of admiration expressed and accepted, Galea got down to business and showed me the plans for the house in Malta. His drawings already incorporated the furniture he’d purchased the day before. “There’s one shipment of furniture already there, and some Oriental carpets I picked up last time I was working in Turkey. Marilyn knows what furniture is to go from here. She has the list. And we have a tight deadline. I’ll be there a week from Friday or Saturday.”
    “I’ll get it done, Mr. Galea. And we appreciate the business,” I said.
    “Good,” he said. “Now I must run. I have a meeting with the board of directors of an oil company. I’ll be adding a new dimension to the skyline of Toronto soon.” He smiled.
    Marilyn Galea and I walked him to the front door. By this time he appeared to be in a bit of a hurry, but not so much that he couldn’t stop to flirt. “I haven’t mentioned how lovely you look this morning,” he said to me as he took my arm. “I feel so much more confident my gathering in Malta will go well now that you have taken the house in hand.” He started to go out the door, holding my arm until the very last moment.
    “Martin,” Marilyn said quietly. He looked back.
She was
holding his briefcase and his sunglasses.
    He