Read Online I Am God by Giorgio Faletti - Free Book Online Page B

had stayed on good terms, and in spite of what the judge had ruled, she allowed him to see his sons whenever he wanted. Except that Jeremy couldn’t always get away and before long the boys were seeing less and less of him and were less and less enthusiastic when they did. Their excursions had become less frequent, and going to games had stopped altogether.
    It seemed that demolition had become his speciality, both at work and outside.
    He shook himself free of these thoughts and tried to get back to the present.
    Sonora Inc., the hugely successful construction company he worked for, had acquired two adjoining four-storey buildings on the corner of Third Avenue and 23rd Street, paying a considerable sum to the owners and decent compensation to the few families who still lived in those buildings. In their place there would be a forty-two-storey condominium, with a gym, a roof swimming pool and other facilities.
    The new was elbowing aside the old.
    They had almost finished the demolition. Jeremy found this part of the process necessary but extremely boring. After months of effort and noise, it was as if the work hadn’t even started. He had even felt a touch of sadness as he watched those two old redbrick buildings come down, as if a chunk of history was disappearing with them. But the excitement of construction would soon put paid to that feeling. Before too long, the excavators would carve out sufficient space to throw down foundations appropriate to a building of that kind. And then the creation would begin, the gradual climb upwards, the adding of piece to piece, until the joyful moment when they planted a Stars and Stripes on the roof.
    Standing in the doorway of the hut, he saw the workers downing tools one by one and walking towards him.
    He looked at his watch. The argument with those assholes had lasted so long, he hadn’t realized it was lunchtime. He wasn’t hungry, but more than that, he had no desire right now to join in the chatter that always accompanied lunch. He’d always been on cordial, even friendly terms with his men.They didn’t share anything outside work, but work did take up most of their time, after all. And on the sites that he supervised he liked people to work as harmoniously as possible. That was why he had earned the esteem of his bosses and the respect of the workforce, even though they all knew that, when necessary, he was ready to take the gloves off and show an iron fist.
    The fact that in his case it wasn’t a velvet glove, but a work glove, didn’t change anything.
    Ronald Freeman, his deputy, came into the hut, making the floor sway slightly as he did so. He was a tall, well-built black man with a passion for beer and spicy food. Both tendencies had left their mark on his face and body. Freeman had married an Indian woman – something spicy to get his teeth into, as he put it. Jeremy had been to dinner at their house once. No sooner had he put in his mouth the first piece of something that had a name like masala than he had felt himself burst into flame and had been forced to take an immediate swig of beer. Then he had laughed and asked his host if you needed a firearms licence to serve food like that.
    Ron took off his hard hat and went to the corner where he had put the thermal container his wife prepared for him every day. He sat down on the bench that ran along one side of the hut and placed the container on his knees. He saw Jeremy’s face and realized it was one of those days.
    ‘Trouble?’
    Jeremy shrugged his shoulders, downplaying the situation. ‘The usual crap. When an architect and an engineer agree after arguing for hours, you can bet the next thing they’ll do is go off in search of a third pain in the ass, so they can put together a kind of Bermuda triangle.’
    ‘And did they find one?’
    ‘You know how it is. It isn’t hard to find a ballbuster.’
    ‘The Brokens woman?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘If that woman understood double what she understands now, she’d