I can see him at his drafting desk, silver hair sticking out over his ears, empty blue pens cast to the floor, glasses pushed up, measuring each wall with perfect ruler accuracy. His daughter bounces in, disturbs him, bumps his arm and his pen starts out one unplanned time, a mistake. She tells him whatever she had so desperately to say; she lost a tooth or needed a shoebox or could a friend stay for dinner? He stares at the mistake line long after she leaves. He doesn’t want to re-ink the whole thing; he kind of likes the broken symmetry. He makes it into a protruding triangle, an eccentricity of the otherwise austere building plan. He bites his lip, inks it darkly and moves on.

The construction crew is done for the day and I can see the foreman standing on the unfinished concrete foundation of the vestibule, watching his crew shuffle down the hill towards their cars. He fingers his handkerchief idly, mindlessly finding the cleanest corner and wiping his forehead dry but no cleaner. He turns and walks through the stark shell of the building, the blueprints limp in his hand, reviewing next week’s work in his head. He remembers the weird little triangle and makes a note to call supply in the morning and make sure they remember to cut those boards extra long. He absentmindedly picks up a damaged chunk of wood and drops it in the scrap box on his way out.

She moves easily through the rooms, I can see her checking her clutch again to make sure she’s got the little black scissors for the grand opening. The black velvet dress feels expensively heavy and she keeps curling her toes to feel the seam of her stocking. She pinches a spinach puff off of a circulating hors d’oeuvres tray and nibbles it carefully, its flakey crust getting stuck to her lipstick. Waved over by an acquaintance, she makes small talk in the corner until he leaves to refresh his drink. When he’s gone, she leans lightly against that strange jutting triangle that gratefully, while she’s reclining for a moment, hides her from the public view.