The engineer comes up to the cab to stop him. Behind him, a man with a canvas satchel belted shut. His badge says SAVA. MEASURES. He has to stand.
"There is nobody above nineteen."
Over the radio somebody is breathing through his teeth.
The driver moves his lunch off the spare seat. From here: water, the market's awnings, two funicular cars passing at the middle station. The dome. The monastery. His wife calls it a job with a view. Eleven years. He eats facing the glass.
"Show me where he is."
The engineer puts a finger against the window.
"Keep it there."
The rescue cage rises. The driver feels the cable in his palms. At nineteen he stops. Four floors above it, the engineer's finger has flattened against the glass.
"You have stopped too low."
He raises the cage.
The building is called the works. In June they wired a small tree to its highest beam. A man from the counterparty thanked them and left in a car. In July they stripped the ninth back to the frame. The client required continuity. His crew did it in eleven days.
On the radio the injured man says he can get in himself.
"Wait for the others."
"I can get in."
The driver knows that voice. The man speaks to his wife like that when she calls the hut. A good one, he says afterward. Worries too much.
Someone still owes the driver a blue shirt, lent for a wedding. He has never asked for it.
Eleven. Rain crosses the cab's glass. Tuesdays, bought in bulk for the far hill. The market below stays dry. The engineer notes the weather. Under the shortfall clause: none.
The cage holds three men now. One foot points where no foot should. The other two keep their heads lowered over it. From the cab they could be arguing over a card.
"What floor?" the engineer asks.
The driver brings them down.
At ground level the men carry their mate out between them. The empty cage rocks. Through the radio comes a laugh, cut short.
The engineer writes nineteen on the lift sheet and holds it across the controls. Unauthorized lift. Three hours' pay deducted. The driver's name at the bottom.
"You saw where they were."
"I saw you bring them down."
He signs.
Sava has written twenty-three on a Measures card. He lays it beside the lift sheet. The engineer turns it face down.
"Attendance is ours."
Sava turns the card back over. "Height isn't."
The driver asks him to witness the deduction. Sava's hand stays over his card. He puts it inside his copy of 1984 and buckles the satchel.
By the hoist, the lift log hangs on its nail. Years of floors in the crew's hands. Nobody is paid to keep it. He writes twenty-three.
At dusk he frees the jib. It finds the wind toward the channel. He climbs down, resting his knees at every platform.
Nineteen on the fence. Twenty-three lit floors. He counts again.
He goes home.