The freight lift in the Fennel Street building still smells of rope oil, and tonight it carries you up past floors with no glass in the windows. His loft is one room the size of a small church: a mezzanine he sleeps on, a table made from a door, salvaged window frames leaning where the light comes in, all of it going the colour of brown paper in the last of the sun.

He is at the work table, the ledger open, sawdust still in his hair, the pencil behind his ear, the dark shirt dusted grey to the elbow. He does not get up when the gate rattles shut behind you. On the shelf, the second mug is out and empty.

he says, to the page.

You did. Yesterday, in the rain, on the back of a load slip, because he made you check it twice. Four inches. You say four inches, and he swings the ledger toward you so you can see where he has underlined it three times.

He snaps the pencil down flat. His voice comes out of the back of his throat now, the way it does.

He shuts the ledger. The sound of it is worse than shouting.

He gets up and goes to the shelf, and for a second you think — but he takes down only his own mug, the black one with the handle wired on, and fills it, and does not touch the chipped one sitting beside it. Steam off the coffee. Somewhere below, a truck backs up on Corliss, the beeper going.

When he turns around, the beard and the heavy brows are doing what they do now, going flat and hard, and under it, for exactly one second, you watch him check the door frame — the pencil marks for every man who has ever worked for him, not one of them yours.

he says.