Vision
By Jim Getz
Cassie stepped carefully onto the window-washing platform, her first time since her fall. Ninth through eleventh floors today. She attached her safety harness routinely, like a hundred times before. She took pride in that she was keenly aware without lapsing into cautiousness or, God forbid, fear.
After all, the harness did what it was supposed to do last time. After the sudden gust sent her off-balance, she fell only a few feet. The fact she smacked her head and saw stars was her own damn fault for not inspecting her hardhat first.
For a split-second upon awakening, hanging in mid-air, she had questioned quitting college before getting her business degree. Then her co-workers hauled her back into the platform and got her to the urgent care center.
Today was pure azure. Clear. Cassie perceived the double images of her own reflection — brown coveralls, blondish-brown hair pulled into a ponytail — as well as those of customers working out in the ninth-floor fitness center. She sprayed the cleaner and grabbed the squeegee.
“Happy Monday,” she murmured to herself.
++++
Cassie emerged from the elevator, strode down the worn carpeted hallway in her black pumps and business suit, purse slung over one shoulder, a bag of cleaning supplies slung over the other, briefcase in one hand.
She shoved down the handle to her 11th-floor office, Clearly Clean Window Washers, with her hip and backed through the door.
“Hi, Diane — sorry I’m late. I’m always late.” She dumped her entire load onto the sofa across from the secretary’s desk.
“You’re fine — and that haircut is soooo cute!”
In a lick of rare spontaneity, Cassie had surprised herself by popping into a salon and getting a bob over the weekend. She knew now it had been to, however briefly, take her mind off the fact that 32 was too young to have taken over her father’s company. She had no foresight on how to continue her father’s dream. Something was missing.
And she had promised a new cleaning spray enterprise she would try their “revolutionary” product. “The effect is magical!” the sales guy had spouted.
Whatever. Ever since her days as a cleaner, Cassie had vowed never to buy any product without testing it herself first. The vow was also a promise to her dad. Clear-headed business practice and all that stuff. She grabbed a bottle from the supplies bag and marched through her office door and toward the farthest floor-to-ceiling window.
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She saw Raul and Eduardo outside, hauling themselves up on their platform to her level.
++++
Cassie peered in through the 11th-floor glass to the office inside. A sudden gust side-swiped her, and she instinctively grabbed the safety rope while involuntarily squinting. “Don’t close your eyes!” she admonished herself.
She quickly recovered and tried to swing into action, but her view was curiously blurred around the edges; the frame of her eyesight was scintillating around the edges, wavy in the middle. Still, she could make out a businesswoman with a cute, bobbed cut inside, determinedly striding toward the giant pane.
Cassie steadied herself with the rope again as she recognized the face, the one she saw in her mirror every day, the one beside her own reflection.
++++
Cassie sprayed the revolutionary formula all over the inside of her office window, obscuring the view with bubbly liquid, and immediately regretted it. The odor that hit her nostrils was a cross between ammonia and marijuana, and it knocked her for a loop, her eyes stinging, her sight blurring and then refocusing.
She wiped it away with purpose and beheld not Raul and Eduardo, but a mirror image. Her jaw dropped, but she immediately pulled herself together. Slowly, she stretched her fingers to the glass. Outside, the young ponytail blonde in coveralls reached toward her. Their fingertips were separated by only half an inch of transparency.
Cassie gently closed her eyes. When she reopened them, Raul and Eduardo were staring at her. Everything was clear now.
“Diane!” she called. “Clear my schedule for one day every week. I need to be back out with the crews again!”
+++
A few hours later, day over, Cassie clambered off the platform and onto the roof. Eduardo and Raul followed.
“Enjoy your first day back?” Eduardo teased.
“Very much,” Cassie replied, pulling off her safety harness. “But I was thinking … I still might go back to school and finish that business degree.”
— JANUARY 2023
