Dan Fante - Spitting Off Tall Buildings

I’d only slept an hour or two so I closed my eyes too. My brain was resting, pleased to be earning money again.

When we arrived at our stop Flash stood up and shook me awake. When he got off I got off too.

We followed the length of the dark underground platform along the block to the Twenty-fourth Street exit. He was staying below street level to avoid exposing us to the icy sidewalk and the biting air outside.

Once up the steps and on the street, steam funneling from our faces as we shuffled along, Flash talked again. He didn’t like talking but he did it as he appeared to do other necessary things: thoughtfully, with effort.

He went into what for him was a complicated deal, an explanation about his last partner. The guy had left the job to run an errand during lunch one day and never come back. When Flash got to the part about his not coming back he half surprised me by suddenly halting on the sidewalk, raising his palms and rolling his eyes, as if to say, ‘I couldn’t believe it.’

Then we walked on. Flash wanted to say more 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 hour all the exterior panes on the twelfth floor were clean.

By six o’clock I was on my own.

Watching Flash do so many sets of glass had taken away my nervousness about falling. He’d told me the secret. It was simple: never look down and keep at least one strap hooked on at all times.

I filled my bucket and started on the eleventh floor. Flash filled his and went down to ten.

Right away I realized that window washing was a tall man’s deal. I was inept by any comparison. Bumbling.

I knew that I would never be able to match my partner’s level of competence but, until I was outside on the sheer, frozen concrete landscape by myself, I hadn’t fully grasped what I’d be up against.

Flash was an aerialist, he’d bounded along easily on the ledge. Not me. My runty, short legs would scarcely stretch the distance between window frames. To compensate, instead of swinging out I had to push off the ledge I was on, grope and grab for the top of the next window with my fingers, dangle momentarily by one strap, then flip myself and the bucket on my arm to the next sill in one lunge.

For a while in the beginning I told myself that I was doing okay because what was motivating me was tallying up another three bucks in my mind after completing the outside of each set of the up-and-down panes.

But there was another awareness. Fat Johnny Murphy had warned me; the real problem was the cold. My right hand was constantly numb. As I’d be swabbing a pane with my sponge extension, the cleaning solution would flow down along my pole and soak the sleeve of my jacket. I was wearing heavy rubber gloves but the liquid ran past them. As a consequence, when I’d put the hand down the other way to re-dip the sponge into the bucket, the freezing chemical goop would drip inside my glove and numb my fingers. I tried switching hands but the problem just duplicated itself.

The result was that it took me three or four times as long as Flash to do a set of panes. And moving from window frame to window frame became even slower going too because of having to contend with the unsureness of my numb fingers. An hour into my first assignment I was frozen stiff and exhausted. I was unsuitable for the occupation. I hated the deal.

Each time I made my way back inside from the ledge to change my cleaning solution in the maintenance closet sink, I’d have to thaw my hands under the tap, gradually increasing the water temperature until the sensation in my fingers returned.

It was just after eight o’clock. I’d completed about half the outside windows when I decided it was time for a break – an interlude to settle whether I should go on working or walk off and leave the fucking job.