title: Here Is How It Happens
author: Spencer Dew
description: Spencer Dew is the author of the short story collection SONGS OF INSURGENCY (Vagabond Press, 2008), the critical study <em>Learning for Revolution: the Work of Kathy Acker</em> (Hyperbole Books, 2011), the chapbook <em>Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres</em> (Another New Calligraphy, 2010), and the novel HERE IS HOW IT HAPPENS (Ampersand Books, 2013). Dew is staff book reviewer for <em>decomP magazinE</em> and a regular reviewer for <em>Rain Taxi Review of Books</em>.
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  # One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Spencer White took a final drag on the cigarette, dropped the butt to the
  gutter and slammed the back door of his panel van.
  
  
  A muscle spasm clutched at the base of his spine as he bent over to pick up
  his toolbox. He hissed through his teeth, expelling the last of the nicotine-
  heavy smoke.
  
  
  Late frost sparkled on the pavement where the sun’s weak rays failed to reach
  into the shadows, and a biting wind tugged at the collar of his waterproof
  coat. Rainclouds threatened on the horizon, and he shivered.
  
  
  Shouldering the weight of an aluminium ladder over one arm, the toolbox
  clutched in his other hand, he waited until a single decker bus shot past him
  on the busy Maidstone street and then hurried across the road to the newly
  refurbished office block.
  
  
  He had been pleased with the call-out. The redevelopment works in the town
  centre had drawn to their natural completion, and the amount of work he was
  doing on a weekly basis started to retur