Angus is an architect who dreams as he goes, designing buildings floor by floor as they are built around him. He rigs the construction site with stereos and blasts Mahler and Meatloaf, their mingling measure vibrating through his reverie.

“Higher!” he says to the brickies, and “string them down and curled around then up and over,” to the electricians. Five dozen lights of different makes in one corridor, another dark like the womb. Three splatters of orange paint on the roof and

Ta-da, it’s done.

A soft opening, to give the rats and cockroaches a chance to dig into the walls and under the carpets and then the official opening and the snipping of the ribbon. Office drones pour in, but their typing cannot quite drown out the faintest sawing of a violin. Sometimes it is a rat whom Angus left with a Strad to draw its teeth across, but often it is the architect himself standing on the roof in coattails, playing and staring out at the city wondering where next he will build.