7. Edda #2
We move inside through a service entrance.
The air shifts immediately, cool and stale, the building dim after the gray afternoon light outside.
Dust floats through narrow beams of daylight slipping in from the few unboarded windows.
It smells like old wood and plaster, like time has been left here to settle into the walls and stay.
"The main staircase is original," I say, gesturing toward the curved banister that winds up toward the second floor. "The railings need restoration, not replacement. Someone tried to paint over the woodwork in the seventies, but underneath it's hand-carved oak."
Bennett runs his palm along the banister, fingers slowing as they follow the carved leaves beneath the paint. The motion feels unexpectedly careful, like he is reading something he did not expect to understand. It does not fit the man who makes a living clearing spaces down to nothing.
"My mother would have loved this," he says quietly.
The words settle into the dusty silence and change the shape of it. I should answer, but for a second, I do not.
"The building?" I ask because it is safer than what I think he might mean.
"The craftsmanship." His hand stays on the wood, like he is anchoring himself there. "She collected antique furniture. Said you could feel the maker's intention in the joints."
That lands differently than it should. Not sentimental. Specific. Personally, in a way, he does not seem built for it.
I think about my father's tools, still hanging on the shop wall in outlines I have never moved. The way his hands guided mine when he taught me to true a wheel, patient and exact, like the world only needed the right pressure to hold its shape.
"She was right," I say.
For a moment, neither of us moves. His hand is still on the banister. Mine is nowhere useful in the space between us, which feels like its own kind of awareness I am not naming.
Bennett looks at me then, really looks, and something passes between us that has nothing to do with contracts or heritage reviews or the carefully maintained distance we’ve been performing all afternoon.
For a moment, he’s just a man standing in an empty building, carrying the weight of someone he lost.
Then it’s gone. His expression smooths back into professional neutrality, and he nods toward the second floor. “Show me the rest.”
We spend two hours moving through the building’s interior.
I point out original features, flag areas of concern, and explain the difference between preservation and restoration while Bennett listens with that relentless focus of his.
He asks smart questions. He doesn’t push back when I tell him his previous plans would have erased irreplaceable elements.
Instead, he writes it down in a leather notebook that probably costs more than my monthly grocery budget.
By the time we reach the third floor, the light through the windows has shifted from gray to amber, late afternoon bleeding toward evening.
My feet ache from standing, and there’s plaster dust in my hair, but the satisfaction of real work settles into my bones.
This is what I’m good at. What I’ve spent years learning.
“The final section is the roof access,” I say, leading him toward a narrow doorway at the end of the hall. “The original skylights are still intact, but they will need reglazing.”
We step out onto the flat roof, and the city opens around us in every direction.
The skyline glitters in the fading light, glass and steel catching the last warmth of the day.
Traffic hums below, distant and softened by the height.
Up here, the sound thins, broken instead by wind and the occasional cry of a pigeon circling overhead.
I move toward the edge, fingers closing around the safety railing as my gaze sweeps the neighboring structures.
It is instinct more than thought, the habit of someone used to reading sightlines, load paths, and what a structure can and cannot take.
South, a building is wrapped in scaffolding, its facade mid-renovation.
East, a newer structure, reflects the sky in clean, uninterrupted glass.
Behind me, I can feel him still, not speaking, just taking it in.
Something in the periphery pulls my attention down to street level.
A figure stands too still among the moving crowd, angled toward the building. In their hands is a long, dark object, held with a focus that does not belong to casual observation.
Toward us.
I recognize the shape a half second before my brain catches up. A camera. Long lens. The kind photographers use when they are too far away to ask for anything close.
My gaze locks onto the angle, tracing the line of sight until it lands on the photographer’s face.
Thomas Frey.
Diana Cassel’s deputy. Marcus already flagged him as the leak behind the gossip column. He is not even pretending otherwise. Gray coat, planted on the sidewalk, camera raised and aimed straight at the rooftop.
At Bennett and me.
We are standing together in the fading light.
I do not react. No point. No acknowledgment. I let my attention slide past him like he is just another stranger in a city that never stops moving.
But I register everything anyway. His stance. The weight of the camera in his hands. The slight shift in his footing when he realizes I have seen him.
And more than that, I register what he is trying to capture.
Bennett and I. Together. Too close to be accidental.
Bennett steps in beside me at the glass, close enough that I register him before I look over. Outside, the city spreads in clean lines and unfinished ambition.
“The zoning allows for additional height on this block,” he says. “We could add two more floors without impacting the neighboring structures.”
“You could,” I say, keeping my tone even. “But it changes the roofline’s relationship to the original design. The architect didn’t intend for it to compete with the surrounding height. It was meant to sit below it.”
“Intention doesn’t generate revenue.”
“It generates value,” I reply. “There’s a difference.”
Silence settles between us, not empty, just loaded in a way neither of us acknowledges out loud.
When I glance at him, he is already looking at me. Not at the view anymore. Like he has been waiting for me to turn.
The question is there again, unspoken but sharp in the space between us. Why do you keep pushing back? Or maybe it is not a question at all. Something more instinctive, something that does not belong in a conversation about zoning or structures.
I break the moment first.
“We should head down,” I say, shifting my tablet closer. “I need to finish my notes before I lose the light.”