Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,22

words about why the guy had left, perhaps advance a theory, but his syllables began mixing with the steam coming from his mouth, then stopped, cautious to interrupt the stillness of the early-morning air.

New York State’s deal with Red Ball was that no disbursement would be authorized until the whole job was complete. Flash and the last guy, Lawrence (he pronounced the name Low-rinse), had spent three days on the building but, before they’d finished up doing all the glass on the administration floor, Lawrence had done his disappearing thing. Now, in order to receive the eight hundred dollars that the company had technically already earned, to get paid, Flash had to complete the admin windows.

It was still half an hour before dawn. Ben Flash tapped with his keys on the building’s glass entrance door until the night security guy, who knew him, heard us and let us in. We took the service elevator to twelve.

We got off and I followed Flash down the hall to a door labeled ‘Maintenance.’ Inside, the room had a deep sink and mops and a shelf of tools and two or three aluminum ladders and more cleaning equipment and overalls for the other service people working in the building.

Whatever Flash did he did in ponderous slow motion, as if he were an imbecile who’d rehearsed himself again and again to avoid error. He turned on the hot tap full blast, then stood for a long time staring hypnotized at the running water. Then, with his pail in the sink, he measured out and poured in what looked like way too much ammonia and stinky cleaning solvent.

As the bucket was filling he explained about the proportions. Using this strength mixture, he said, the solution would take longer to freeze when we began doing the outside glass. I was instructed on the best way to tighten a cap on a plastic bottle, the way to wipe the excess ammonia off the container, what rag to use. On no account should I ever fill past the third mark from the top on the bucket.

When he’d completed his, my bucket was next. We repeated what we’d just gone through, including the stuff about the plastic caps and the ammonia bottle. I knew the lesson was important because Flash had used up at least a hundred words.

Finally, we rolled our buckets single file over to the exterior access window where we would begin work. Flash stared at the window for a while, then looked at me, then back at the window. I was beginning to be able to read him. I could feel when he was preparing to speak. ‘Your job,’ he said, ‘for the first hour is to watch me and pick up what I do. Okay?’

I nodded. ‘Okay. Sure,’ I said.

He climbed out the window onto the ledge. It was an older building and the windows were tall and sealed. Each pane was five feet by three feet, one on top of the other.

Window washing was where Flash became an artist. An acrobat.

First, to get to where he’d left off, he had to work himself a quarter of the way around the outside of the building in the frozen air. He glided from window to window with the bucket hanging from the crook of his arm. Like a gymnast he hooked his belt onto the thick spiked nipples protruding from the sides of each window frame and bounced effortlessly along the ledge.

In less than a minute he’d vaulted his way to his leave-off spot. Then he clamped on and pushed backward as far as possible to take the slack out of his harness. His body was almost at a right angle to the building. A spider on a wall.

Then he began cleaning, swaying, like the sax player in the old Johnny Otis Blues Band, washing two sets of the up-and-down panes at a time. For the top sections he used a six-foot wooden extension.

He’d squeegee the glass on the left, then unhook and flip himself to the next frame while the panes were still wet, bouncing out and clamping on in one fluid motion. Window ballet.

He did the next two panes and the next two after that until he had to hop back around the building because the cleaning solution in his pail was dirty.

Arriving back at the access window he motioned and I handed him out the second bucket, my bucket, and watched him bound his way back and start cleaning again. In less than an