The Foreman's Wager

Six months ago I signed divorce papers in a strip mall lawyer's office next to a nail salon. It took eleven minutes. Then I sat in my Corolla in the parking lot and ate half a gas station granola bar and thought, well. Now what.

I was twenty-nine. I'd spent four years married to a man who called my job "her little site thing" to his friends. The kicker was I made more than him by the end. Not the point, but also kind of the point.

So when the project manager slot opened up at Acosta Renovation Group, I decided it was mine. Not hoped. Decided. I got to the site by six every morning. I learned every subcontractor's name and their kid's name and which ones would take a phone call at seven on a Sunday. I reorganized the materials log for the waterfront job so well that old man Acosta printed it out and taped it inside his office cabinet, which is the highest honor that man has ever bestowed on a living thing.

Then Monday happened.

***

We were all called into the site trailer at noon. That never means anything good. Twelve guys in dusty hoodies and me, crowded around the folding table while Rex, the general superintendent, shuffled papers like he was slower than the email he could've just forwarded.

"You all know why we're here," Rex said, which was a lie, because nobody knew why we were here.

I looked at Reggie. Reggie looked at me.

Reggie Daniels. Senior carpenter, thirty years old, forearms like bridge cable, and my personal headache for the past five years. Well. Not five consecutive years. We'd gone through the construction management program at the community college together, class of two years back now. We'd been friendly the way two people are friendly when each one checks the other's grades. Then he graduated a semester early and vanished into a framing outfit upstate, and then last spring he showed up on my site with a tool belt and a nod, like no time had passed at all.

"Final two candidates," Rex said. "Ashley Rivera. Reggie Daniels. Congratulations. Commiserations to everybody else, don't sulk, there's a fridge full of soda in the trailer, help yourselves."

Somebody snorted. Rex waited for quiet.

"Here's how we settle it. Unit A and Unit B, the two penthouses, top floor. Identical finishes. Identical punch lists. Ashley takes A. Reggie takes B. Ten days. Whoever finishes first with the fewest open items gets the job."

The trailer went quiet in that way construction sites go quiet, which is not quiet at all. Somebody's radio was still going. A nail gun popped somewhere three floors down.

"That's it?" Reggie asked. "No coin flip?"

"A coin flip doesn't tell me who can run a job," Rex said. "This does. Full crews. Same budget. Same materials allowance. You clock your crew's hours, you log everything, you don't touch the other guy's unit. Any questions."

"Yeah," I said. "What happens if it's a tie?"

"Then I decide," Rex said, "and nobody will like it. Anything else?"

Reggie raised his hand like we were in school, which made two guys laugh, and Rex ignored it. "Materials allowance. Same for both?"

"Same for both. Down to the dollar. And I mean down to the dollar, I'll have Noor audit the receipts."

Reggie nodded slowly. I could see him running numbers already. He did that. Lips moving, eyes middle distance, like a man doing long division at a party.

"We're good," he said.

"We're good," I said.

"Crew lists on my desk by three," Rex said, and picked up his papers and left, which was very him. Announce a war, exit through the back.

***

The crew started filing out. Reggie stayed by the table, arms crossed, watching me.

"Rivera."

"Daniels."

"You gonna pick Diaz for drywall?"

"Depends. You gonna pick Diaz for drywall?"

"He's my cousin's brother-in-law."

"He's the best drywall finisher in the county and you know it."

"I do know it." He grinned. He had a good grin and I hated that I'd noticed it in school too, back when I was twenty-four and engaged to the wrong man and noticing felt like a small crime. "So we're both gonna fight over Diaz."

"We're both gonna fight over Diaz."

"Fair. First come, first signed."

He held out his hand. I shook it. His hand was warm and rough and I let go maybe a half second later than a handshake requires, and I'd like the record to show he noticed, because his eyebrows did a thing.

"May the best candidate win," he said.

"Absolutely. And if it's me, I expect graciousness."

"Oh, you'll get graciousness!" He slung his bag over his shoulder. "I'll write it in your punch list. Item one, be gracious. Item two, hire me back, I do good trim work."

"You're assuming I'd keep you."

"I'm assuming you're smart."

He left. I stood in the trailer a minute longer than I needed to, being annoyed at myself. Then I went and found Diaz.

I never said this about Reggie out loud, not in school and not on site. He was the only person in that program who ever beat me on an exam and didn't make a meal of it. He'd just slide his paper face down and ask about my weekend. I respected the hell out of that. I respected him, full stop, and respect is a complicated feeling when the man owns a nail gun holster that fits like it was sewn on.

Not the week for it. That's what I told myself Monday through Wednesday, anyway.

Because the week got ugly fast. Not between us, actually. Between us it was almost polite, which was somehow worse. He'd hold a door for me with forty pounds of trim sample in my arms and say "after you, boss," and I'd say "not yet," and we'd both smile like idiots and go back to trying to destroy each other on paper.

Wednesday, my electrical sub called in sick with a boat problem, which is a real category of emergency in this state. Wednesday night I redrew the lighting layout myself to save Thursday. Also Wednesday, Reggie's plumber had a family thing, and I heard through Diaz, who heard through everybody, that Reggie stayed until ten running supply lines by hand. Thursday morning I came in at five thirty and found him already there, asleep in his truck in the loading dock, seat reclined, radio on low, a gas station coffee cup wedged in the dash.

I stood there in the cold like a creep for a second. Then I knocked on his window, because I'm not a monster.

He blinked awake. Rolled the window down.

"How long you been here?" I asked.

"Since four."

"You're insane."

"I'm behind." He sat up, hair flattened on one side. "You?"

"Since five."

"Ah. So you slept."

"I slept four hours in my bed at my apartment, which counts."

He laughed. It was a good laugh too, and I hated that also. Steam came off his coffee when he popped the lid. He offered me a sip, which is a strange intimacy between two people competing for the same job, and I took it, which is stranger.

"You know what Rex's really testing," he said.

"Punch lists."

"He's testing who the crews will follow. The job is nothing more than that. Paperwork, anybody can do. The promotion goes to whoever these guys would walk through a flooded subfloor for."

I thought about that. He was right, and I hated that too, the amount of hating was getting silly.

"So don't work them to death," I said.

"Wasn't planning on it. I bought the crew donuts yesterday."

"I saw. That's why my drywall crew wandered over to your unit at seven."

"That's called competition, Rivera."

"That's called bribery, Daniels."

He toasted me with his cup. "May the best candidate win."

"Yeah," I said, walking off before my face could do anything dumb. "Stop saying that!"

The penthouses were on the ninth floor, glass on three sides, the water flat and gray beyond the unfinished railing posts. Mine smelled like drywall dust and cut oak. His, two units over, identical. Every morning I walked past his on the way to the hoist and every morning there was a moment, half a second, where the whole building felt very quiet.

Six days left. I had a job to win.

That night I stayed late. Not hero-late, just honest late, the kind where you stop pretending you're leaving. Nine o'clock, the site empty except for the security guy, Dwayne, doing his rounds with a flashlight and a thermos. I was in Unit A taping my lighting layout to the fridge box when I heard a noise two units over.

I should have gone home. I want that noted.

Instead I walked into Unit B and there was Reggie, sitting on a paint bucket in the middle of a half-finished great room, eating pad thai out of a cardboard box by work light. Two more boxes sat on the windowsill next to him. Plural.

"You ordering for a crew that went home four hours ago?" I said.

He didn't jump, which annoyed me. "Bought extra. Figured you'd be here."

"You figured that."

"You're here, aren't you."

Fair. I took the box labeled with a Sharpie A on it, because he'd labeled them, because of course he had, and sat on the bucket across from him. The noodles were too sweet and the spring rolls were soggy and it was the best meal I'd had in weeks, which says something about my life lately.

"You remember Duane's thermo test?" he said, chopsticks going.

"The one where half the class failed."

"You got a ninety-eight."

"You got a ninety-six and helped me study for it. I remember."

"You remember wrong. You helped me. I still have the notes somewhere. Color coded."

"You color coded?"

"Pastel highlighters. Don't make it a thing."

I laughed into the pad thai. Outside, the water did nothing, flat and dark. Two work lights, two buckets, an entire building with nobody in it. It felt like a fort we'd broken into.

"Why'd you leave after graduation?" I asked. "You disappeared. One semester early, gone. I heard upstate, then I heard nothing."

He chewed a while. "Framing outfit outside Binghamton. Good money, bad winters. My mom's place needed a roof and I needed hours."

"That's it?"

"That's it. And you were married by then, so."

The box stopped halfway to my mouth. "So."

"So nothing." He stood, stretched, and his back cracked like drywall breaking. "Long days make people say too much. Ignore me."

"Reggie."

"Rivera."

"You don't get to drop 'so' and walk it back. That's not how drop-'so' works."

He looked at me across the great room, work light behind his head. "I heard you got married. I figured showing up to say hi to a married woman I barely knew was a bad look. Then the roof thing. Then time. Then last spring Rex called and I figured the universe was done protecting me from myself."

"Protecting you."

"Ashley." First time he'd used my first name all week. "We're competing for a job. I'm not doing this conversation on day four with spring rolls watching."

"You brought me spring rolls."

"I know what I did."

I let it go, mostly because my heart was being loud about it and I needed a minute. We ate the rest in a silence that wasn't bad. On the way to the hoist he held the gate for me and said "after you, boss," and I said "not yet," and this time neither of us smiled like idiots. We smiled like something else.

* * *

Friday morning there was a tape measure sitting on my windowsill. His. Yellow, scratched, REGGIE in silver paint pen on the side, because even his tools introduced themselves.

He hadn't left a note. He'd just left it, which was either carelessness, which I didn't believe, or bait, which I did.

I carried it two units over. He was on his knees setting base shoe, and I held it out, and when he reached for it his hand landed over mine on the tape and neither of us moved. His palm was warm. My pulse did something unprofessional. Thirty seconds, easy, standing there in his unit with four fingers of daylight between our hands and a hundred feet of silence.

"You did that on purpose," I said.

"Tape measures wander."

"They don't wander two units and up a windowsill."

"This one's adventurous." He didn't take his hand off mine. "You could let go."

"I could."

Neither of us did, until Dwayne's flashlight beam swept the far wall and we broke apart like a couple of apprentices caught by the shop teacher. Reggie went back to his base shoe. I walked out with the straightest back of my life.

I got nothing done for an hour. Then I got everything done, fast, angry at how good I felt, which is a real phenomenon and nobody talks about it.

* * *

Friday was the standoff. His lumber order and mine showed up on the same lift slot, both tagged priority, both signed by Rex's assistant who apparently can't read two different names. Nine o'clock, top floor, the two of us arguing over a stack of oak flooring while our crews stood around pretending to be busy.

"It's mine, I ordered Wednesday."

"I ordered Thursday, it's tagged Daniels."

"The tag's wrong."

"Then we call Rex."

"I'm not calling Rex over oak. I'll cut around it and take the back half of the load."

"That costs you a day."

"It costs me a day. Fine."

He stared at me. "You'd rather lose a day than lose the argument?"

"I'd rather not owe you."

"And there it is." He sat down on the stack of oak, which is terrible for the oak, and looked at me. "Ashley, what do you think happens if I get one over on you?