They had almost finished the demolition. Jeremy found this part of the process necessary but extremely boring. After months of effort and noise, it was as if the work hadn’t even started. He had even felt a touch of sadness as he watched those two old redbrick buildings come down, as if a chunk of history was disappearing with them. But the excitement of construction would soon put paid to that feeling. Before too long, the excavators would carve out sufficient space to throw down foundations appropriate to a building of that kind. And then the creation would begin, the gradual climb upwards, the adding of piece to piece, until the joyful moment when they planted a Stars and Stripes on the roof.
Standing in the doorway of the hut, he saw the workers downing tools one by one and walking towards him.
He looked at his watch. The argument with those assholes had lasted so long, he hadn’t realized it was lunchtime. He wasn’t hungry, but more than that, he had no desire right now to join in the chatter that always accompanied lunch. He’d always been on cordial, even friendly terms with his men. They didn’t share anything outside work, but work did take up most of their time, after all. And on the sites that he supervised he liked people to work as harmoniously as possible. That was why he had earned the esteem of his bosses and the respect of the workforce, even though they all knew that, when necessary, he was ready to take the gloves off and show an iron fist.
The fact that in his case it wasn’t a velvet glove, but a work glove, didn’t change anything.
Ronald Freeman, his deputy, came into the hut, making the floor sway slightly as he did so. He was a tall, well-built black man with a passion for beer and spicy food. Both tendencies had left their mark on his face and body. Freeman had married an Indian woman – something spicy to get his teeth into, as he put it. Jeremy had been to dinner at their house once. No sooner had he put in his mouth the first piece of something that had a name like
Ron took off his hard hat and went to the corner where he had put the thermal container his wife prepared for him every day. He sat down on the bench that ran along one side of the hut and placed the container on his knees. He saw Jeremy’s face and realized it was one of those days.
‘Trouble?’
Jeremy shrugged his shoulders, downplaying the situation. ‘The usual crap. When an architect and an engineer agree after arguing for hours, you can bet the next thing they’ll do is go off in search of a third pain in the ass, so they can put together a kind of Bermuda triangle.’
‘And did they find one?’
‘You know how it is. It isn’t hard to find a ballbuster.’
‘The Brokens woman?’
‘Yeah.’
‘If that woman understood double what she understands now, she’d still understand shit. She must be a sensation in bed, if her husband lets her off the leash like that.’
‘Or else she’s a stiff in bed, and her husband hopes she’ll tire herself out during the day so she won’t make any demands on him at night. Imagine what it must be like to have that woman lying beside you and feel her reaching out her hand…’
Ron gave a grimace of horror. ‘If it was me, they’d have to stick a pack of dogs in my underpants to dig it out.’
At that moment, two men climbed the steps to join them. Ron took advantage of their arrival to open his container. A strong smell of garlic pervaded the hut.
James Ritter, a pleasant-looking young worker, took a step back towards the door he’d just come in through. ‘Holy shit, Ron. Does the CIA know you’re carrying a weapon of mass destruction around with you? Eat all that stuff, you’ll be able to solder metal with your breath.’
Freeman’s only response was to ostentatiously lift a forkful of food to his mouth. ‘You’re an asshole. You deserve that trash you usually eat. You know, Viagra, which by the way I’m sure you’re already taking, sure ain’t gonna work with that crap inside you.’
Jeremy smiled.
He liked this atmosphere of camaraderie. Experience had taught him that men were better able to do heavy work if things were kept light. That was why he usually prepared something at home and ate his lunch sitting in one of the two huts with his workers.
But when he was in a bad mood, he preferred to be alone. To think about his own business and not weigh things down for others.
He went to the door and stood there for a moment looking out.
‘Not eating, boss?’
He shook his head, without turning. ‘Nah, I’m going to the deli around the corner. When I get back, I’ll count how many victims Ron’s food has claimed.’
He descended the steps of the hut, and went back to being an ordinary citizen. He crossed at the crossing and set off along 23rd Street, leaving Third Avenue behind him. The traffic wasn’t too heavy at this hour and in this part of the city. The rhythms of New York were very regular, except from time to time when things went crazy.
It was like an endless conjuring trick. In this city everything appeared and disappeared constantly. Cars, people, houses.
He got to the deli at a steady pace, without stopping to look in any windows. Partly because he wasn’t interested in what was in those windows, but mainly because he didn’t want to see his own reflection. For fear of discovering that he, too, had vanished into thin air.
He pushed open the door of the crowded deli, and the smell of food hit his nostrils. Seeing him come in, the oriental girl behind the cash register found the time to smile at him before turning to the line of people waiting to weigh their food and pay for it.
He went slowly along the long display counter, looking for something that attracted him in the various containers. Assistants, also oriental, replaced them as they emptied. He took a plastic container, served himself a few pieces of stewed chicken that looked acceptable enough, and prepared himself a mixed salad.
In the meantime, the line at the cash desk had grown shorter and a minute or so later he found himself facing the girl who had smiled at him when he had entered. At a first distracted glance, he had judged her to be much younger than she was. Now that he saw her at close quarters, he realized she wasn’t young enough to be his daughter after all. She smiled at him as if she might be willing to become something different for him. She probably did that with everyone, Jeremy thought. He weighed his containers, paid the money he was asked to, and left the woman to smile at the next customer in the same way.
He went to the back of the deli and sat down alone at a table for two. The chicken kept its promise – in other words wasn’t very good. He almost immediately left it and devoted his attention to the salad, remembering how Jenny had insisted, when they were still together, that he eat more vegetables.
With his tongue, he pursued the fragments of salad that got stuck between his teeth and washed them away with sips of the beer.
His thoughts returned to the morning’s meeting with Val Courier, a famous architect of somewhat dubious sexuality, and Fred Wyring, an engineer with equally dubious calculations, who had been joined by the wife of the owner of the company. Mrs Elisabeth Brokens, who looked like a brochure for Botox, having tired of going from one analyst to another, had decided that the best cure for her neuroses would be work. Having no aptitude, no training, and no ideas, she had been forced to turn to her husband. Maybe she had freed herself from her neuroses, but only by passing them on to all the people she came in contact with.
Jeremy Cortese didn’t have any qualifications, but had graduated on the job. Day after day, working hard and learning from those who knew more than him. He found arguing with incompetents a waste of time, which he’d eventually have to account for to someone, in this case Mr Brokens in person. Mr Brokens knew his work well but evidently didn’t know his wife quite as well, if he let her stick her nose in things like that.
Every time he saw her show up, he was tempted to set the stopwatch, so that he could
