“Here? Here I do everything.” He turned his head to take in the girders and stamped metal subflooring that advanced and receded, the loose cables strung next to the lift. “I do everything. We’ll get you on the crew, Les. When you’re old enough.”

“I’m happy on the ground.”

“Chickenshit. You’d be happier pulling fifteen dollars an hour in the air.”

“Nope,” said Lester. “I like it better down there.”

He held out the bottle to Simon, who took it and held it to the scant pointillist light.

“Like I said, chickenshit.”

He took a long drink and tapped the stop button. The lift jerked, bobbing up and down on the cable.

“I gotta get off this thing before I puke,” said Vera.

Simon motioned her back, lifted the wire door and surveyed the floor. He held Vera’s cool hand and helped her out. Lester jumped out with a hop. Simon hit the kill switch so no one could call the lift back down, and grabbed the duffel. The floor was empty, just a steel surface pimpled with rivets that made them lift and plant their feet carefully. There were a few piles of rebar and H-beam, buckets of rivets, but that was all. A steel frame and floor, no walls or stairs. There were no floors above, just the unfinished structure. A cage of beams ready to keep growing. Lester and Vera followed Simon, hand in hand.

Simon walked to the edge and dropped the bag. He bent down, heedless of the open edge, and unzipped it and pulled out a tangle of nylon webbing and rope that dripped from his hand like rabbit guts. He picked through it and extracted two pieces of webbing and held them out to Lester and Vera, who attempted to appear unconcerned as they looked over the edge.

“Put these on. Like a diaper.”

Lester took the seats and handed one to Vera, who turned away from him, as if pulling on her panties on the edge of the bed at midday, nervous in the unforgiving sun.

Once they had the harnesses strapped on, Simon looped a belay through the safety clamps and tied it around a piece of upright I-beam.

“Now,” he said, dusting his hands off, “now we’re ready to party.”

He plopped down on the edge and took the wine and a prized bottle of Royal Canadian that ambered the scant streetlights swinging up from below. Lester and Vera walked cautiously to the edge and sat down slowly, white-knuckling the lip of the building.

“What about you?” asked Vera.

“Me? I don’t need no rope. Shit, I can fly. I can float.”

“How do you know if you’ve never taken a dive off a here?”

“Physics. The laws of physics. I’m too light.”

He uncapped the whiskey and sipped it, inspected it again, and passed it over to Lester. Lester drank and wiped his mouth.