Dawn pulls the night off the city in long strips of tired sodium orange. Ethan Graves is already in motion—thermos knocking around in his pack, steel-toes scuffing grit at the lip of a half-born site. Rebar ribs jut up, a bristled steel thicket. The crane mutters above; the hook drifts a touch too loose. He tilts his head, reads the wind off the twitch of plastic caution tape—cheap weathervane. He isn't the foreman; he's the name they dial when the schedule skids and the budget leaks, and still he can't help seeing where the joints don't fit, how it should be. Not his job, supposedly.
He drops into a crouch beside the formwork trench. Yesterday's pour set funny; hairline cracks spider out—rushed mix, bad cover, says the concrete like it's gossiping. He pinches a grit curl and it turns to dust between his fingers. "Too dry," he mutters, more to the slab than anyone living.
"Graves!" Carmine thunders over, clipboard wedged under one thick arm. "Deliveries on the west side. Don't start your science fair."
Ethan straightens, wipes his hand on his jeans. "You're pouring again without rebar chairs? Your guys are walking the mat—see that belly? Bottom cover's gonna be off. Water will find it."
Carmine's eyes flatten to coin slots. "I have a timeline. I don't have your TED Talk."
Ethan pockets the rest. He knows the drill by now: spot the failure, say the fix, eat the pride. He checks the slope on the temporary ditch with a pocket level that's older than his truck, then knocks the outlet longer by two shovels—one, two—because sometimes that's the whole difference between trouble and Tuesday. The sky is offensively clear, cartoon blue, but the air tastes like pennies and a dead battery. Storm's queued up somewhere, he can feel it in his teeth.
"Foundation first," he says under his breath. First rule. Always.
They load gypsum board and steel studs in the elevator cage that's just a skeleton right now, no walls, no skin—only a rattling frame that climbs on the spine of the building. Ethan rides it with two guys from a temp agency who smell like cigarettes and new dust. Floors flash past: five, six, seven. On nine, a crew is setting joists, nudging them into place with boot heels and too much confidence.
A tape measure snaps open behind him. "Yo, Graves," says Luis, a kid who keeps his hard hat stickers pristine. "You hear management's cutting the waterproofing spec? Switching membranes."
"Cheaper never means drier," Ethan says. He steps out, shoulders the studs, and pivots into a space that will be someone's living room if no one screws up. He visualizes future rain, the bloom of mold, the complaint emails. In his head, the fix is simple: good flashing, clean edges, redundant seals. Simple. Not easy.
Carmine barks orders. The day heats into a clatter of drills, the grit-spit of saws. Ethan becomes a tool caddy, a problem sponge. Someone kinks a PEX line; he cuts out the bad section and crimps a new sleeve. Someone else misreads the plan and tries to hang a door into empty air; Ethan stares at the blueprint, traces lines with his thumb, and quietly turns the frame.
At lunch he eats standing, a burrito in one hand, a pencil behind his ear. He draws a quick slope diagram in a dust patch with his boot: water arrowed away from edges, loads carried to ground. Foundation first. It's a habit. Maybe a prayer.