The rooftop studio has plastic sheeting instead of a roof, which is fine in March and a joke tonight. Rain is coming through in three places, and the Alcazar sign on the parapet turns every puddle on the floor to light.
He has been down inside the building. You can tell before he says anything: wet to the skin, plaster dust gone to grey paste on his forearms, hair flattened by the rain instead of by the comb he usually bothers with.
Your drawing is pinned on the drafting table under the lamp. Signature block bottom right, still empty. The courier comes at midnight; without his countersignature the demolition permit wakes up at eight in the morning.
"East wall,"
he says.
"The one your section calls non-original infill."
He crosses the studio and puts something down on the corner of your drawing: a hand-sized piece of plaster, painted side up, and in the light you can make out part of a woman's face and a date in the corner. 1947.
"There's eleven metres of that behind the render. Your scheme takes the wall out on day four."
He does not sit. He leans in over the table on both fists, close enough that the water runs off his jaw onto the paper, and he does not knock the lamp or the mug or the pencil tin over, because he is careful with everything except people.
"So here's tonight. I sign, and your building opens in two years with a service corridor where that woman's face is. I don't sign, and the whole thing comes down in April and neither of us ever fixes it."
He taps the empty signature block twice with one wet finger.
"You've been telling that board I'm sentimental for three years. Congratulations, you were right. Now tell me which one of us is signing away the mural, because I'm not doing it on my own."