Turn 83 of 233

Meet with Jensen on Monday about the next project. I want both and I get them. Finish both in 10 days.

Lena drives to the Jensen & Sons office Monday morning at nine-thirty. The office is a low concrete building off the highway with the company logo on the side and three trucks in the lot. She walks in barefoot, three hundred and fifteen pounds of grime and tribal ink and steel barbells and the secretary looks up at her and doesn't blink. Walt is already in the waiting area, standing with his coffee, and he looks at her and looks at the floor and looks at the ceiling and says nothing. The door opens and a man in his fifties comes out — tall, broad, weathered, the kind of thick that comes from decades of steel work before it comes from a desk. He extends his hand to Lena and his grip is strong and his eyes move across her — the sleeves, the piercings, the belly, the bare feet, the grime — and he doesn't react. He just looks.

"Lena Park. Walt tells me you're the best lead he's had in ten years."

"He's right."

Jensen almost smiles. He gestures to the conference room and they sit and Walt sits beside her and Jensen lays out two folders. The east side residential development — six houses, conventional framing, the kind of work Lena has been doing since the first house. The downtown mixed-use is the other folder — ten stories, structural steel, the biggest project the company has run in three years. He pushes both folders across the table.

"Walt says you want both."

"I want both."

"Nobody runs both. One lead, one project. That's how this company works."

"I'll run both. The crew is built. They move the way I move. I'll split them — three on the residential, three on the commercial. I'll lead both sites."

Jensen looks at Walt. Walt looks at the table. Jensen looks at Lena for a long time and the silence is the kind of silence that means a decision is being made in real time.

"Ten days," Lena says. "Both done in ten days."

Jensen leans back. "Ten days on a ten-story steel frame. Nobody does that."

"I'll do it."

The silence stretches. Jensen picks up the east side folder and opens it and reads the first page and closes it and picks up the commercial folder and reads the first page and closes it and looks at Lena.

"You get both. Ten days. If you hit it, we renegotiate your title."

Lena stands and extends her hand and Jensen shakes it and the grip is firm and the deal is done. Walt walks her out and stands in the parking lot and the sun is hot and the trucks are idling and he looks at her with the expression of a man who has watched someone do something impossible three times and is watching them promise a fourth.

"Ten days on both. You understand what you just said."

"I understand."

"I'll have the crews split by noon. East side residential and downtown commercial. Marco and Frank on steel with you. Daryl, Ray, and Tuki on residential. You bounce between both sites."

"I'll be at both every day."

Walt rubs his jaw. "I believe you. That's the problem."

She drives to the east side site first and the slab is poured and the steel is staged and the crew is waiting and the morning starts. The six houses are conventional framing — faster than retrofits, simpler than commercial steel — and Lena walks the slab and reads the plans and sets the sequence in her head and the crew moves. She works the residential site until noon, framing walls and setting trusses and the three-man crew moves fast because the system is locked. At noon she drives downtown and the commercial site is a hole in the ground with a crane and a steel package and Marco and Frank are waiting and she walks the site and reads the plans and the ten-story steel frame is the biggest thing she has ever touched.

The days blur. Lena is at the residential site at five AM, framing through the morning, then downtown by ten, working steel with Marco and Frank until the afternoon, then back to residential to close out the day. The sumo stance on the heavy lifts, the O-line leverage on the beam carries, the belly as counterweight on every steel column she raises. The three hundred and fifteen pounds she carries is three hundred and fifteen pounds of machine and the machine doesn't stop. She eats on both sites — chickens, rice, donuts, protein bars, chocolate milk — and the belches echo off the steel framing and the crew doesn't flinch and the work moves. The residential houses go up in two days each — three houses in six days, the three-man crew locked in, the quality as good as the first four. The commercial steel climbs — three floors in four days, five floors in seven, the crane swinging columns into place and Lena guiding them with her hands and the sumo stance absorbing the weight.

Day ten. Both sites. The last residential house is closed in and the last steel column on the ten-story frame is bolted and welded and Frank's welds are clean and the shoring is solid and the work is done. Lena stands on the top floor of the downtown frame and the city is below her and the wind is in her face and the grime is thick and the tribal sleeves are dark in the sun and the leg sleeve on her left calf is healing and the steel barbells catch the light. Six houses and a ten-story steel frame in ten days. She calls Walt from the top floor.

"Both done."

Walt is quiet for a long time. "I'll call Jensen. He'll want to walk both sites."

She stands on the top floor and the city is below her and the wind is warm and she farts and the sound is lost in the open air and she is grinning because ten days is ten days and the body carried three hundred and fifteen pounds through every hour of it. She is so deeply comfortable.