Simon cuts me off before I can finish. “Mail-forwarding staff?” He sounds incensed. I remember belatedly that during one staff meeting at which we were asked to brainstorm ways the college might save money, Simon had suggested cutting all the assistant residence hall director positions—my position.
He finally finds the light switch, and suddenly we’re bathed in a harsh fluorescent glow.
Simon doesn’t look so good. I can’t imagine I look any better, though. Then I recognize the campus protection officer, who looks the worst of all three of us.
“Oh,” I say, surprised. “Hi, Pete. You’re working night shifts now?”
Pete, who normally mans Fischer Hall’s security desk, is trying to wipe the Day-Glo off his silver badge.
“Yeah,” he says glumly. “I picked up a few extra shifts. The girls are going to sleepaway camp this summer. Those places are expensive. The good ones anyway.”
It’s clear from Pete’s expression that he’s regretting his decision to take on the extra shifts.
“You have students living here for free in exchange for forwarding the mail?” Simon demands, a dog with a bone he refuses to drop.
Wasser Hall is across the park, in a different zip code than Fischer Hall, and serviced by a different post office. They’re also in a new building where they don’t have to worry about asbestos being exposed and the ceiling of the room below collapsing whenever a toilet floods.
“Yeah,” I say. “Our post office won’t forward Fischer Hall’s mail, because it considers dormitories transient housing. So that’s what Jamie and Gavin are doing in exchange for free housing, in addition to shifts at the desk.”
I’ll admit I’ve been playing pretty fast and loose with the rules, basically running the building like—as Cooper refers to it—my own “Island of Misfit Toys,” thanks to the kids I’ve hired to staff it all having nowhere else to go, due to either financial or family pressures. I’m pretty sure nothing I’ve been doing would meet with Simon’s approval, and that if he knew the full extent of it, it would only confirm his conviction that I and my job should both be eliminated immediately.
“Free housing,” Simon echoes in a cold voice. Outside, a distant siren begins to sound much closer. The casement windows are cranked as far open as they can go—which is only two inches, thanks to the mandatory window-“guard” policy that the college instituted after a few too many Fischer Hall students were pushed to their deaths this past year—so every catcall and car horn can be heard with perfect clarity. Although Fischer Hall has air-conditioning, the system is antiquated.
“Free housing in exchange for forwarding the mail?” Simon’s face is a perfect mask of incredulity. “And you’re conducting team-building exercises for these mail-forwarders? At night?”
“Um,” I say. “Yes.” Out of all the hall directors who could have been on call the night I found my summer staff misbehaving so badly, why did Simon have to be the one on duty? Anyone else—Tom Snelling, for instance, who runs Waverly Hall, which houses the fraternities—would have confiscated the beer and paintball guns and kept quiet to the administration.
But no, it had to be fussy, overbearing Simon. Could things possibly get any worse?
Yes. Because I’m standing close enough to the casement windows to determine that the siren I heard belongs to an ambulance, and I can see it turning onto Washington Square West.
Of course, Fischer Hall is one of many buildings along Washington Square. The ambulance could be going to any one of them.
But what are the chances?
Simon glares at Cooper. “And who’s this?” he demands with a sneer. “Surely he’s a little old to be one of your mail-forwarding staff.”
“Cooper Cartwright,” Cooper says, stepping forward with his right hand extended. I’m relieved to see that he’s hidden the paintball gun. “Safety consultant. Heather asked me to be here to make sure all the necessary security precautions were in place for tonight’s team-building exercise.”
Safety consultant? I feel my stomach sink. No way is Simon going to fall for that one.
“I wasn’t aware,” Simon says, shaking Cooper’s hand, “Fischer Hall had enough money in its budget to hire a safety consultant—”
“Well,” Cooper says, giving Simon a knowing wink, “what with all the tragedies that occurred here this past year, I was more than happy to waive my fee. We can’t have kids calling this place Death Dorm forever, can we?”
I see Simon’s face change. Although normally I hate it when anyone says the words “Death Dorm,” Cooper made the right call bringing it up. Fischer Hall had the highest number of deaths of any residence hall in the entire nation last year, including a semester-at-sea cruise ship that experienced a freak norovirus outbreak, killing three. (Only one was a student. The other two were faculty. No one in residence life cares about faculty, really, but technically their deaths do count.)
Still, the number of students entering New York College as freshmen who asked for a transfer to “anything other than Death Dorm” after finding out they’d been assigned there has been quite high . . . nearly 97 percent. That’s part of the reason why Fischer Hall is being shut down for the summer for a makeover, so the kids who don’t get their requested transfer—which will be all of them, there being no other halls to transfer them to because all the savvy entering freshmen requested Wasser Hall—will at least have nice white walls when they check in to their room at Death Dorm.
It’s starting to look like our longest streak at being accident-free is coming to an end: the ambulance outside pulls up in front of Fischer Hall.
I am in a perfect position to see not only the ambulance but also the person who darts through Fischer Hall’s front doors—directly beneath the proudly waving blue-and-gold New York College banners above those doors—to greet the ambulance.
It isn’t anyone on the Fischer Hall staff, but it is someone with whom I’m more than a little familiar, and someone who I’m certain wouldn’t want Simon Hague poking into his business.
Simon is standing too close to the second-floor library door to see out the windows, and all his attention is focused on what’s happening inside, not outside. He seems to have softened a bit since Cooper brought up the Death Dorm thing. Simon is, after all, in this for the children, as he points out so frequently during staff meetings that Tom and I have begun keeping a running tally.