They all laughed and Simon and Lester slowed their pace. Vera crossed her arms and Lester held her in a one-arm embrace, liking the sweet slick of her jacket against his bare arm and the berry tartness of her breath as she smiled up at him.

“Class trip, huh? Sounds exciting.”

He squeezed her closer and Simon looked away from the intimate room they had carved out of the embrace and the damp air. Loring Park was empty except for the prostrate drunks and homeless who dotted the green, here and there, next to trees and hedges. Out of the way, so they wouldn’t be stepped on or singled out for ridicule, but not tucked too far from view where anything could happen to them.

They crossed the park and on either side of Grant Street the apartment buildings curved like plowed furrows around a planting disc. The buildings were solid, with wide foyers for porters and valets who were no longer needed, now piled high with phone books and rusting bicycles.

Simon walked ahead on Marquette and heard Vera and Lester share some private joke that sent Vera squealing ahead a few steps before she was pulled back tight against Lester’s side. She crept under his wing, still laughing. They passed the aging Radisson, its porticoes and cornices chipped and obsolete, the name alone encouraging its clientele to brave downtown streets in lieu of the Holiday Inns and Ramadas circling the city’s neck, rambling blown-up versions of ranch-style houses piled next to miniature golf courses and Country Kitchens, a whole camp for families who didn’t want to stray from the interstate. It certainly wasn’t the Radisson itself that lured them. Three blocks down the incomplete IDS, with its steel exposed like starched bones, took up a whole block.

“Ninety thousand,” said Simon.

Lester ignored him, familiar already with the offhand awe Simon adopted in relation to the building.

“What?” asked Vera.

“Ninety thousand cubic yards of concrete for the footings and pilings.”

“And?”

Lester laughed.

“And that’s a lot of fucking cement. It’s buried three stories deep. The supports go deeper than that even.”

They walked to the chain-link Cyclone fence around the site. Vera ran her fingers over the mesh, popping them over the openings. Even that temporary thing felt more solid than she did, more present. Her head spun lightly.

There was a break in the fence, a mesh door wired to an angle-iron frame. Simon took out a key and opened the padlock.

“Can we do this?” asked Vera, taking a step backward.

“We doin it ain’t we? I work here, for Christ’s sake.”

She looked at Lester, not trusting Simon’s hard smile. Afraid of the width of his shoulders, the flat strength of his hands.

Lester smiled reassuringly and nodded over her head at Simon. He motioned them through and shut the gate behind them.