Free Glass by Alex Christofi

old lamp to show them. If I could do this, I could do anything. I could clean skyscrapers. I was breathing hard. Here a man could really breathe.
    I was in the local paper the next morning. 33 There was a photo of me outstretched in the air, one hand gripping the spire, the other wielding the screwdriver as if I were a British Superman, flying in to attack the warning light at speed. Say what you like about Japanese tourists, they know how to take a good picture. I even had a suspicion that my safety rope had been photoshopped out.
    The article itself seemed to suggest that I could be likened to Jesus, because we both had facial hair. This didn’t seem like a fair comparison, although I can’t pretend I wasn’t flattered. And when they had phoned me up about it, I had asked them to mention my window cleaning, so the phone had been ringing all morning. I ended up enlisting Dad as my secretary, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had time to attend any of my appointments.
    When I came home after a long day of cleaning, I was tired. My knees and elbows hurt from the fall, and I’d hurt one of my fingers catching the ladder. To Dad’s dismay, I cancelled everything for the next day and went straight up to bed, taking a mug of herbal tea and a long list of missed calls with me.
    A lot of the people who had phoned were too far away for me to reach by foot, so I had to reject them out of hand. But I did fill up my potted schedule for the week ahead, and confirmed what I already knew: this neighbourhood was mine. If I carried on like this for a few months, I might start making enough to pay the mortgage, and if he found some work too, we could start eating into the debt.
    This had all of the characteristics of a good, solid plan, the kind of plan that a man could live by. Prudent. Except that I didn’t want to be prudent. I wanted to be way up there in the sky, close to the sun.
    As I scanned down the list, one name stuck out from the rest (possibly because my father had written it in capital letters and underlined it urgently. JOHN BLADES . I felt a searing heat run through me. John Blades had called me. John Blades OBE, the man who cleaned half the skyscrapers in London, had called me, Günter Glass, of Glass Cleaning, Salisbury. I should have whooped or punched the air, but as it was, I tiptoed across the hall and went to the bathroom. Those herbal teas go right through me.

9
    The Spinnaker Project
    The next morning, I ate some Dutch waffles and had a pot of coffee. Then I put on a pot of camomile to calm myself down. I cleared my throat and tested out various professional phrases before my dad could wake up and start goading me. Then, just as I picked up my phone to call Blades, it rang.
    I picked up. A silky voice said, ‘Open your curtains.’ Stunned, I walked across to the kitchen window and pulled a curtain aside. The window was blacked out as if the house were buried under earth. I walked through to the lounge and opened the patio curtains. The patio window was caked with thick mud. Someone had tried to seal the whole house from sunlight.
    â€˜You have eight minutes,’ said the voice, ‘to clean those windows. If you can do it, you’ve got the job.’
    â€˜What job? Who are you?’
    â€˜You know who I am, Günter. Your time starts now.’
    The line went dead, and my heart sprang to life. I hurdled the stairs three at a time and grabbed my belt from the back of my door, fairly jumped back down the whole flight and ran out to the garage, where I picked up a spray I hadn’t used before. The label was filled with orange and black warnings, skulls and crosses, and a tag line (‘wipe filth away for good’). The front said simply, GOMORRAH. I holstered it and ran out to the ladder, which I mounted faster than I’ve ever mounted anything. I took a scraper and chipped at the mud on my bedroom window, which wasn’t yet dry enough to crumble off,