held hostage by a group of radical leftist socialists!”
I know even before Sarah sucks in her breath that Muffy’s said exactly the wrong thing. The reporters have already lost interest—the networks have moved on to their mid-morning programming anyway, so they’ve begun to pack up their equipment. They’ll be back—maybe—for an update at noon.
But Sarah’s already rallying her troops.
“Did you hear that?” she roars at her fellow picketers. “The president’s spokesperson just called us a bunch of radical leftist socialists! Just because we want fair wages and a health care package! What do you have to say to that?”
There is some confused muttering, mostly because it seems to be so early in the morning, and no one really knows what they’re doing yet. Or possibly because no one heard Sarah properly, on account of all the noise from the news teams packing up. Sarah, apparently realizing this, jumps off the wooden platform she was standing on and heaves a megaphone to her lips.
“People,” she cries, her voice crackling loudly enough that, over in the chess circle, the old men enjoying their first game of the morning hunch their shoulders and glare resentfully over at us. “What do we want?”
The picketers, marching dolefully around the giant rat, reply, “Fair wages.”
“WHAT?” Sarah yells.
“FAIR WAGES,” the picketers reply.
“That’s more like it,” Sarah says. “And when do we want them?”
“NOW,” the picketers reply.
“Holy Christ,” Muffy says, looking at the picketers in a defeated way. I can’t help feeling a little sorry for her. The rat—which has painted-on drool dripping down from its bared, yellow fangs—does look really intimidating, as it sways gently in the soft spring breeze.
“Hang in there,” I say, patting her softly on the shoulder.
“This is because they arrested the kid,” she says, still staring at the rat. “Right?”
“I guess so,” I say.
“But he had a gun,” she says. “I mean… of course he did it. He had a gun.”
“I guess they don’t think so,” I say.
“I’m gonna get fired,” Muffy says. “They hired me to keep this from happening. And now I’m gonna get fired. And I’ve only had this job three weeks. I paid twenty grand in broker’s fees for my place, too. I sold my wedding china for it. I’ll never see that money again.”
I whistle, low and long. “Twenty grand. That must have been some wedding china.”
“Limoges,” Muffy says. “Banded. Eight-piece settings for twenty. Including finger bowls.”
“Man,” I say, appreciatively. Finger bowls. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a finger bowl before. And what does banded mean? I think, dimly, that this is stuff I better start learning about if Tad and I are going to… you know.
This thought makes me feel a little nauseous. Maybe it’s just all that whipped cream on an empty stomach, though. Or the sight of that enormous rat.
That’s when I notice something that makes me forget about my upset stomach.
And that’s Magda, hurrying out of Fischer Hall in her pink smock, and inching her way across the street through the backed-up cabs and toward the picket line, carefully balancing a steaming mug of coffee in her hands…
… which she presents to a picketer in a gray New York College security guard’s uniform, who stops marching, lowers his The Future of Academia Is ON THE LINE sign, and beams at her appreciatively…
And whom I realize is none other that Pete.
Who is not behind his desk like he is supposed to be.
Instead, he is standing in the park. ON A PICKET LINE.
“Oh my God,” I race up to him, completely forgetting Muffy, to shout. “Are you insane? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you inside? Who’s manning the security desk?”
Pete looks down at me calmly from the mug of Fischer Hall’s finest he’s delicately blowing across.
“Good morning to you, too, Heather,” he says. “And how are you today?”
“I’m just peachy,” I yell. “Seriously. Who is manning your desk?”
“No one.” Magda is looking at me with strangely arched brows. Then I realize her brows aren’t arched on purpose. They’re just newly waxed. “I’ve been keeping an eye on it. Someone from the president’s office has been sniffing around. He says they’ll be sending some people from a private security firm over. I don’t know if that’s the best idea, though, Heather. I mean, someone from a private security firm isn’t going to know about the attendants, you know, for the specially a bled students in the handicapped accessible rooms? And how is someone from a private security firm going to know it’s not okay to let the kids sign in the delivery guys from Charlie Mom’s, or they’ll stick a menu under every single door in the entire building?”
I groan, remembering my conversation with Cooper from the day before. He’d been totally right. We were going to get mob-run security and custodial replacement staffs. I just knew it.
Then I blink at Magda. “Wait a minute—how come you aren’t striking?”
“We’re with a different union,” Magda explains. “Food services, as opposed to hotel and automotive.”
“Automotive?” I shake my head. “That makes no sense whatsoever. What’s an automotive union doing, letting academics into—”
“You!”
We all jump as Sarah’s voice—made ten times louder by the megaphone she’s speaking into—cuts into our conversation.
“Are you here to socializeor make socialchange?” Sarah demands of Pete.
“Jesus Christ,” Pete mutters. “I’m just having a cup of coffee with my friends—”
“Get back on the line!” Sarah bellows.
Pete hands his coffee mug back to Magda with a sigh. “I gotta go,” he says. Then he hefts his picket sign, and returns to his place in the circle around the giant rat.
“This,” Magda says, as she watches protesters shuffle past, as animated as the undead in a zombie flick, “is not good.”
“Tell me about it,” I say. “I better go watch the desk. Bring me a bagel?”
“With the works?” Magda asks, the works being code for full-fat cream cheese and, I’m sorry to say, three strips of bacon.
“Absolutely.”
I’ve made myself at home at Pete’s desk (after removing what I can only assume is a very old and very stale doughnut and not, in fact, a door stop from his middle desk drawer… although I can’t help noticing the trash can into which I deposit it has not been emptied in some time, and realize Julio and his crack housekeeping staff aren’t around… a realization that, more than any other, depresses me), and instituted what I consider the beginning of Heather’s New World Order—All Residents Will Stop and Show ID Long Enough for Me to Examine the Photo Closely, since unlike Pete, I don’t know every resident by sight, a fact which appears to annoy them no end… but not as much as they’re going to be annoyed when I launch Throw Your Own Trash in the Dumpster Outside — when the “guy from the president’s office” Magda mentioned reappears. He’s a flunky I’ve never seen before in an expensive suit, and he’s accompanied by a much larger guy in a much less expensive, but much shinier suit.
“Are you Heather?” the guy from the president’s office wants to know. When I say that I am, he proceeds to inform me that Mr. Rosetti—the man in the shiny suit, which happens to be coupled very charmingly with a lavender silk shirt and several very attractive gold chains which lay nestled among some wiry graying chest hairs, along with multiple gold rings, one on each of the man’s not unsausage-like fingers—is going to be supplying “security” for the building, and could I please inform him of any special security concerns of which I might be aware that are unique to Fischer Hall.
At which point I kindly inform the man from the president’s office that Fischer Hall’s security needs are taken care of for the foreseeable future. But I thank him for his concern.
The man—whose name, he has informed me, is Brian—looks confused.
“How is that possible?” Brian asks. “The college security force is out on strike. I’m supposed to be overseeing getting replacements in all the buildings—”
“Oh, I’ve already taken care of that here in Fischer Hall,” I say… just as a tall, spindly kid comes rushing into
