-- the moneymen couldn't decide how to finish the walls. The soon-to-be proprietor fresh out of his tech solutions startup wanted bare brick on red tile, so he said, so fed up was he with the endless emails and Slacks and funding calls on Teams with blacked-out faces in suits that wanted something that reminded him of a building he could really feel, could really wrap his mind around. No, said his wife, think of the maintenance. You'll get brick dust everywhere, these finishes chip and once the damp gets in it'll be all over for the walls. She did buildings in university, so she somewhat knew what she was talking about. They lived in a damp town where the rain never stopped falling and the people were sitting in little cafes all over Main Street plugging away at their little spreadsheets, their novels and screenplays, and those who were not writing were on little clandestine dates where both parties were young and shameful and always split the bill and always looked away from each other's eyes when they softly touched hands. It's hopeless, said the soon-to-be proprietor, voice echoing in the little hall. All this demand and none of the supply. Because no contractor in town will take you up on bare brick in this wet season, said the wife, it won't settle, the bricks will fall apart. Pleaded the ex-entrepreneur: But all I have on my mind is brick.

There was a third person in this unfinished room, a kid of a friend of the wife, young lady fresh out of his O-levels, painting the soon-to-be countertop with bright yellow paint because the movement of the brush on the solidness of the counter calmed her, like she was petting a living thing, a beast with deep roots into the earth, immense and old. There was a fourth person too, a worker for the subcontractor for electrical works who had not gone home with his employer but remained steadfastly at the rear of the unit, twisting little wires from the ceiling where the light bulbs would be attached to, eavesdropping on the fight but not really paying attention because he thought it would remind him too much of the wife of his own, which he had left all alone in his sunny home town to raise geese. The work site was populated with all manner of such characters at all times of day, which weighed upon the ex-entrepreneur even though he was not consciously aware of it, an ever-moving blanket of subcontractors and stagehands and relatives' daughters' friends, a mass of uncaring ears that moved like a sheathe of microbes over and below the solidity of his plans.

Fuck it, he said, throwing his hands up in the air. You decide. His wife was not really listening at this point. She was looking up old photos on her phone of distant mountains and trees, holiday photos taken from some craggy Japanese province from her ex-classmates' Instagram posts, where the tips of the mountains disappeared into the ink-stained clouds.