***

"Hey, Malfie?" Stony hunched over the cable, chewing a mouthful of tuna and rye. "You remember when I asked you how come you quit the Convoys an' you said 'Lucy'"? Malfie sat against a concrete pillar, eating a sandwich. He removed a faint trace of mayonnaise from his lower lip. "Who's Lucy?"

"My woman." Malfie cleared his throat, his fist lightly pressed against his mouth, returning his gaze to the buildings in the distance.

Stony brushed crumbs from his pants. "You married?"

Malfie shook his head in the negative.

"You ever miss the Convoys?" He crumpled the silver foil in his lap into a ball.

Malfie wrinkled his nose. "Made a lotta money, man, a lotta money." He bobbed his head, a distant expression on his face. "But ah spent it. Women, liquor, drugs. Got tired. I was blowin' away my life. Had a good woman, a lovin' mother just waitin' for me, an' I was runnin' like a fool. We was in L.A. I just walked off the stage and took the next plane home. You can't run away from love. You can't run away from love, so I came home. Had seventeen thousand dollars left. Bought mah mother a house with it. Me, Lucy and mah mother live in it now. Someday, someday we're all goin' back to Cuba, live on the beach"—he winked—"get me another horse."

They sat in silence.

"Hey, Malfie? Do you dig this?"

"'Lectricians?" He shrugged, a hand over his mouth. "Yeah, yeah, I got peace here. Good money and peace. I can think a lot when ahm workin'."

Stony tilted his head. "Whadya think about?"

"Lucy."

"Hmph... You get along with the guys?" Knowing that he didn't.

Malfie frowned. "I'm a lone wolf, ah don't need anybody here. I got Lucy, mah mother and mah Cadillac an' someday I take 'em all to Cuba."

"Did you dig bein' away from home?" Stony started unfolding the silver foil. Malfie touched his cheekbones, wrinkled his nose.

"Nah, it was bad."

"Was it fun?"

"Fun?" Malfie shrugged as he lit a cigarette.

"This is my last day here," Stony said.

Malfie looked at him, the faintest glimmer of curiosity in his eyes. "What're you gonna do?"

"I'm workin' inna hospital. Cresthaven?"

"You gonna be a doctor? That's good money."

"Nah, I'm just workin' with kids." Stony smoothed the silver foil against his thigh.

"I dig kids." Malfie bent down and picked up a small strand of cable wire under his boot.

"You think I should stay here?" Stony concentrated on the silver foil, eyes directed toward his lap.

"I don't give a fuck what you do," Malfie answered without malice.

***

At two-thirty in the afternoon a carpenter was killed when a brickie on the twenty-fourth floor couldn't fit a forty-pound 4 by 4 wooden pallet in the covered garbage chute, so he just tossed it over the side.

When the whistles down below started shrieking like crazy. Stony and 240 construction workers ran to the lip of their concrete floors and peered over the side of the building. Twenty-four layers of men, their faces reflecting every response from amusement to horror. From Stony's viewpoint on the twentieth floor the body in the dirt looked like a swastika.