Glass by Alex Christofi Read Free Book Online Page B

small residential road. A man lifted up the shutters, and pulled out a very long, very shiny ladder. Then he got a couple of boxes out and made me sign for it all. So this was it, I had my equipment and I was all set. All I needed to do now was learn how to clean windows. I picked up the ladder and turned towards the house. I heard a clang and stopped. I turned back round. As I turned the second time, I heard another small clang and watched the tip of my ladder bump into the helmet of one of my neighbours, who was sitting stationary on his moped, eyes screwed shut, helmet slightly scratched.
    â€˜Whoops,’ I said.
    â€˜I didn’t think people like you existed,’ he replied quietly.
    â€˜I’m really sorry. You don’t make that mistake twice, do you?’
    â€˜Apparently you do.’
    â€˜Well – sorry.’ And as I turned round I lifted the ladder so it was more vertical, and he ducked just in case. At least I’d got that lesson out the way. Otherwise, it could have been very embarrassing.
    I took everything out of the boxes and cellophane and laid it all out on the bed. Then I applied my belt, holstered the scrapers and put on my old walking boots. I looked in the mirror and saw something more than myself. At a glance I may have looked like a slightly overweight twenty-two-year-old with glasses. I may have borrowed my sense of personal armoury from a childhood love of spaghetti Westerns – and now that I looked at it, the leg holster might have to go – but for the first time since my mother died, I was a man with a purpose. I felt taller, my muscles taut, hand poised over the trigger of a cleaning-fluid bottle. I had a staring contest with my reflection. I squinted slightly, as if I was looking into the sun, and set my jaw like Clint Eastwood. Waiting, waiting. Who was going to make the first move? My left index finger twitched imperceptibly over the cleaning fluid.
    Bam! I drew the bottle, sprayed my reflection, right-hand-pulled a squeegee and I was off at the top of the mirror, snaking left down right down left chasing the fluid as it trickled inexorably floorwards – but I got there first and overtook it. Now I had time to slow down, to take my time on the corners and holster the fluid, pull out a J-cloth, still crisply folded from the packet, and wipe the fluid from the frame. The outdoor windows wouldn’t need such care, but this one wasn’t just a quick cleaning job. This was me sticking my flag in my moon. I wasn’t going to be a salesman or even a Silica-Based Window Panel Hygiene and Care Co-Ordinator. I was a window cleaner. I would make houses new again, let the sun flow freely into the corners of forgotten rooms. One day, I might even clean one of those giant glass erections 27 in the big city. I wiped the last smudge on the window and looked back at my shimmering face. Canary Wharf, or Manhattan. The Big Smoke and the Big Apple. I imagined people on their lunch breaks in America, biting into ripe, chunky apples, and then I thought of London – people huddled on doorsteps smoking. Perhaps London wasn’t a city you lived in, so much as survived. But on the up side, it was only a couple of hours up the M3.
    I decided to go round the neighbourhood and clean everyone’s windows for free, and then drop my card through the letterbox. I didn’t have any cards, and the printer was broken, so I got a notepad and wrote my name and number out hundreds of times, as if I was being punished for forgetting them. I folded them carefully and put them in a spare pouch. I walked round the side of the house and got the ladder from where I had left it. Then I started out on the figure of eight I used to do as a milkman.
    At the first house I reached, the owners weren’t in. I wasn’t sure about letting myself in the side gate. I crept round to try and hear if anyone was out in the back garden. Something malevolent barked at me from behind the