She leans back against the big quilted pads hung on the walls and wishes she were up in Skinner’s room, listening to the cables creak. The floor there’s a layer of two-by-fours laid on edge; the very top of the hump of the cable, riding its steel saddle, sticks up through the middle, and Skinner says there are 17,464 strands of wire in that cable. Each one is about as thick as a pencil. You can press your ear against it and hear the whole bridge sing, when the wind’s just right.