Part 2 (1/2)
GEORGE WIGGLED HIS fingers and settled his glove a little better on his hand. He reached up and grabbed the curved piece of gla.s.s. It was stuck in the frame of the big wall-to-ceiling window. The jagged point at the end made it look vaguely like an Arabian sword, one of the ones from the old Sinbad movies. A scythe? A scimitar. It was like a gla.s.s scimitar was buried in the frame.
Half the window had broken away. A collection of other gla.s.s swords and spikes hung in the window frame now, each a foot or two long. George had been doing this job long enough to know some kid-young adult-would end up stepping through the opening in the rush of moving day. And once one of them did, it would become a new doorway. At least, until someone got cut. Or worse. So his first priority was getting all the gla.s.s out of the frame.
He'd set up a few cones and signs from the dorm's supply closet and leaned a broom across them as a low barrier, but there were just too many people for it to do anything. A few hundred students were trying to move into the building, and most of them had at least one other person helping. There were close to a dozen bodies within five feet of his ladder at that moment.
The half-dozen shards on the ground had been easy. Now George was balanced on the ladder. He tried to lever the piece of gla.s.s away from the frame without breaking it or slas.h.i.+ng up his gloves. Or his hands.
He pushed down on the shard's edge and felt the gla.s.s resist. The weight of his arms settled on it, then he added his shoulders. It was slow work, but rus.h.i.+ng it would just break the gla.s.s and make a mess.
The sword-like shard tilted and slid free from the rubbery seal. George imagined it felt a lot like pulling someone out of quicksand-a slow, hesitant release. He got one hand under the two-foot piece of gla.s.s. His feet s.h.i.+fted on the ladder to keep his balance. The sword came away in his hands and he worked his way down the ladder.
George set the shard in the trash can at the base of his ladder. As he did, someone walked by and tossed a Taco Bell cup into the container. The paper cup popped open. Ice clattered and clicked down the gla.s.s.
He sighed and headed back up the ladder. The next piece was broad, stretching across the top of the frame. It probably weighed close to six or seven pounds. It also had a crack in it, which meant it would break apart when he tried to lever it out. The wide shard reminded him of a guillotine blade, waiting to drop. It would've been the first to go, but he'd needed to work out some of the big pieces around it.
He got one hand and part of his arm under the bulk of it and put pressure on the other side. That way, if it popped out or shattered, most of it should go away from the door, at least. The blade of gla.s.s resisted for a moment, then eased out of the frame.
”Hey, George,” called Mark. ”How they hanging, big man?” He dropped the sheet of plywood he'd been lugging and let it crash against the ladder. The fibergla.s.s legs wobbled and tipped, just for a second. George s.h.i.+fted his weight. His arms tensed.
The shard snapped with a bang. George heard the zip of fabric coming apart and felt the cold gla.s.s slide along his forearm. The first thought in his head was all the morbid tips he'd heard about the ”right” way to slit your wrists, going up and down instead of side to side. The huge blade whisked down across his thigh and cut off the thought.
Half of the guillotine shattered on the pavement, turning into crystal confetti that pitter-pattered across the ground. The second half hit a beat later, slowed by its pa.s.sage through George's uniform, and added to the hail of gla.s.s. People shrieked. Mark grunted in surprise. George bit back a swear and grabbed at his arm.
”Job opening,” cackled one student.
”Jesus, guy,” shouted an older man. ”There's kids all around here.”
”Be careful, for Christ's sake!”
”Sorry,” said George. ”Everyone okay? n.o.body hurt?”
A few more parents muttered at him. He shot Mark a look and hopped off the ladder. ”What the h.e.l.l?” he growled.
The other man looked at him, baffled. ”What?”
George shook his head at the plywood. ”What were you thinking?”
Mark had been an athlete in high school and college. He was one of those people who'd never quite outgrown the jock mind-set of ”the quarterback can do no wrong.” He looked from the plywood to George, then to the ladder, and then to the gla.s.s-covered ground. ”Are you saying this is my fault?”
”You threw a sheet of plywood against the ladder I was working on.”
”It's not my fault you're a wuss who freaks out three feet up in the air,” said Mark. He grabbed the broom. ”At least man up and admit you made a mistake. You're just lucky n.o.body got hurt.”
”Yeah, well-” The sensation of the gla.s.s blade sliding down his arm and across his thigh echoed in George's mind. He felt the cool draft inside his d.i.c.kies. His pulse quickened and he glanced down.
The pants were open across his thigh, just below where the pocket ended. He could see skin and leg hair. But no blood. He'd been lucky.
He held up his arm. The s.h.i.+rt sleeve was slashed open from his elbow all the way to his wrist. It was a smooth cut. Like his pants, the fabric of the s.h.i.+rt had parted between threads without a single hitch or pull. Even the cuff of his glove was cut. The blade of gla.s.s had gone right through the doubled-over canvas hem. He'd written his name on the cuffs ages ago, and the cut went right through the A in BAILEY.
His forearm wasn't even scratched. No blood at all. He flexed his fingers and they moved in the glove without any trouble.
George wiggled his fingers again. He'd had cuts that were so clean they were almost invisible. They'd stay shut for a few moments before opening up and gus.h.i.+ng blood. He made a fist, squeezed it, and hoped his wrist wouldn't fall apart.
Nothing. And it had been three minutes since the gla.s.s had fallen. He poked at his forearm with his other hand and stretched the skin back and forth. Then he poked at his thigh.
”d.a.m.n lucky,” he said aloud.
Mark glanced up from his half-a.s.sed sweeping. ”Eh?”
George held his arm a little higher and flapped the edge of the cut.
Mark looked at the sleeve for a moment. Then his eyes bugged. ”f.u.c.king h.e.l.l,” he said. It got a couple of angry looks from parents. ”You're d.a.m.ned lucky.”
”I know.”
”Another quarter inch and I'd be using a mop right now instead of a broom.”
”I'd like to think you'd be using the truck to get me over to the Med Center.”
”Yeah, well, okay. But then I'd be mopping you up.”
George squeezed his hand into a fist again, but his forearm remained whole. The memory of the gla.s.s on his skin was so vivid, he was sure it had cut him. Maybe it had just been panic, like Mark said.
He shook his head and rolled the sleeve up. ”Come on,” he said. ”Let's pull the last of this stuff and get the board up.”
”Why don't you just knock it out with a hammer or something?”
George waved his hand at the crowd in the lobby and brought it back to the door. ”Because I don't want to put a piece of gla.s.s in someone's eye on their first day back.”
”Oh,” said Mark. ”Right.”
They boarded up the window and Jarvis had new a.s.signments for each of them. Mark had the truck, so he headed off to the far side of campus to deal with a blown fuse in another dorm. George had to go check on an abandoned couch in the middle of one of the parking lots. Day one and people were already abandoning furniture.
He found the couch right where it was supposed to be. He'd half hoped in the fifteen minutes it took him to get there some frustrated undergrad or parent would do the job for him. No such luck.
The threadbare piece of furniture had to be at least twenty years old. George understood why it had been abandoned. It was so ratty Goodwill wouldn't touch it. It sat kitty-corner along the dividing line of two s.p.a.ces. One end was far enough out to make a third s.p.a.ce awkward to use. As he walked up, one car proved that fact with an impressive seven-point turn.
”Who the h.e.l.l brings a couch to college?” he muttered. He looked at the dumpster, sitting fifty yards away at the far end of the parking lot.
He gave the couch a tug and found out why no one had moved it. It had a foldaway bed, complete with steel frame, springs, and extra mattress. On a guess, it weighed three or four hundred pounds.
George had a few more thoughts about the couch's former owner as he yanked the cus.h.i.+ons off and walked them to the dumpster. It was only a couple of pounds, but he figured every bit would help. He set them in the gra.s.s next to the steel bin on the off chance someone came running out to claim owners.h.i.+p before he threw the whole thing away.
The couch was still unclaimed when he got back to it. He sighed, bent his knees, and heaved one end up. It wasn't as heavy as he'd first thought. It went up on one end with no problem. He looked at the metal framework between the legs and wondered if maybe it was aluminum rather than steel.
A sedan beeped at him. The driver, an Asian man, gestured at the still-inaccessible s.p.a.ce. ”Can you get that out of the way,” he called out to George, ”so we can park?” The teenage pa.s.senger looked mortified. She winced and mouthed an apology through her window.
”Sorry,” George said. ”Just a second.”