The crane swings, improbably sure of itself, and lowers its mouth to the side street. Men in hardhats feed it elaborate squares of raw wood, and up it goes. Thirty feet in the air, these slats will separate silent masturbation from dead-eyed TV-watching from dinners ruined by inappropriate recipe substitutions. One day, someone will place their forehead on the wood’s plaster covering and roll it softly from side to side, wondering how they got it all so wrong.