Size 12 and Ready to Rock (3 page)

That’s how Fischer Hall ended up with a dozen Pansy “painters” living here for the summer.

Since current NCAA regulations strictly forbid providing players with cash or gifts—and Division III players in particular from receiving athletic scholarships of any kind—this memo from President Allington’s office launched what had become known as Pansygate . . . though personally I don’t see how exchanging free room and board for painting nearly three hundred dorm rooms can be considered a “gift.”

“Those bonehead jocks can’t have figured out we’re in here,” Gavin whispers. “Please lemme shoot ’em.”

Jamie adds a heartfelt “
Please?
”

Cooper shakes his head. “
No
—”

It’s too late. As the door to the library swings open, Gavin lifts his paintball gun and shoots at . . .

. . . Simon Hague, the director of Wasser Hall, Fischer Hall’s bitterest rival, and my own personal workplace nemesis.

Simon shrieks at the Day-Glo burst that’s appeared on the front of his stylish black polo. His companion—a campus protection officer, from the outline of his hat—doesn’t appear too happy about the bright yellow paint that’s splashed onto the front of his blue uniform either.

Jamie, realizing her boyfriend’s mistake first, gasps in horror, then says almost the exact same thing to them that she’d said to me: “It comes out in warm water!”

A part of me wants to burst out laughing. Another part longs to disappear on the spot. Simon, I remember belatedly, is the residence hall director on duty this weekend, which means he must have gotten the same message I did about the unauthorized party and unconscious student.

If I wasn’t dead before, I am now, at least career-wise.

“What,” Simon demands, fumbling along the wood paneling for a light switch, “is going on here?”

Hide the beer,
I silently pray.
Someone hide the beer, quick.

“Hi,” I say, stepping forward. “Simon, it’s me, Heather. We were just doing a team-building exercise. I’m so sorry about this—”

“Team-building exercise?” Simon sputters, still trying to find the light switch. “This building is supposed to be
empty
for the summer. What kind of team could you possibly be building, and on a Sunday night?”

“Well, we’re not really empty,” I say. I hear movement behind me and am relieved to notice out of the corner of my eye that Gavin is discreetly shifting the six-packs of PBR behind the couch. “Dr. Jessup wanted us to keep the front desk open, so of course there’s the student desk staff and the mail-forwarding staff and a few resident assistants, because of the—”

—
basketball team,
I was going to say. Conscious that the college president’s favorite students were living in the building for the summer, the head of Housing had asked me to make sure that the team—who are, after all, students first, athletes second—had plenty of supervision, so I’d provided it, in the form of seven RAs, who were also receiving free housing for the summer in exchange for working a few hours in my office or at the desk, but also keeping an eye on the Pansies.

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.

“I understand,” he says, raising his voice so he can be heard over the siren—so ubiquitous in this neighborhood that he doesn’t even pause to ask what it is or wonder if it might have anything to do with our current situation—“but if this is a programming activity, what’s with this report Protection received about an unauthorized party with an unconscious student?”

“That’s a good question,” I say. Though it’s one I completely understand now that I recognize the tall, lanky frame and handsome features of the person speaking with the EMTs in the bright security lights that flood the front entrance. “Maybe it has something to do with the basketball team?”

Simon goes pale behind his neatly trimmed mustache. “You mean . . .
the Pansies
?” His voice falls into a hushed whisper. Since the siren has been abruptly shut off, his next words sound absurdly loud. “You think
they’re
involved?”

“I can’t think who else it could be.” I keep my gaze averted from Cooper’s as he crosses the room to stand beside me, even when I see him glancing curiously out the window. “The paintball war is student desk staff against the student paint staff . . . the basketball team. I thought I mentioned that before—”

“You didn’t,” Simon interrupts, tersely. “Where are they?”

“The Pansies are in the cafeteria.” Gavin is suddenly being very helpful . . . not because he thinks any of the basketball players are in trouble, but because he’s seen a way for his paintball game to continue. “Want us to show you?”

“Yes, of course,” Simon replies, spinning toward the door. “It’s nice that
someone
around here knows what’s going on. . . .”

Gavin throws me a mischievous smile; then he and Jamie follow Simon toward the door. Since Simon’s back is to Gavin, he doesn’t see the paintball rifle in Gavin’s hand.

But Pete does. He snatches the guns from both Gavin’s and Jamie’s hands, giving them each a baleful look as he does so. They slink out, looking disappointed. As soon as they’re safely out of earshot, Pete glares at me.

“Really?” he asks. “I’m supposed to follow those knuckleheads down there and let myself get sprayed a second time?”

“Well,” Cooper says, “you’re armed now. Just spray them back.”

“The ballplayers are good guys,” I say quickly, seeing the look Pete throws my boyfriend. “They’ll put down their weapons if they hear you say you’re with campus police.”

Pete tosses the paint guns onto the couch, not seeming very reassured. “Who they loading into the meat wagon?” he asks, nodding toward the windows.

I’m not surprised he’s figured out that the siren belonged to an ambulance and that the ambulance has stopped in front of Fischer Hall. Pete’s worked for New York College a long time. His intention is to stay until he can collect his benefits package and retire to his family’s casita in Puerto Rico.

“Someone from the penthouse,” I say.

Pete looks even more displeased. “What’re
they
doing here? I thought they spend summers at their place in the Hamptons. That way she can get soused on Long Island iced teas without everyone on campus knowing about it.”

Pete’s right: Mrs. Allington, President Allington’s wife, is a woman who has been known to over-imbibe. This has made living in the penthouse of a building in which they have to take the same elevator as seven hundred undergraduates an occasional challenge.

Mrs. Allington is also a woman who keeps a cool head in emergencies . . . enough so that she once saved my life. Not that she’s recognized me ever since. Still, there are few things I wouldn’t do in order to preserve her privacy and reputation.

This, however, is one occasion when she has no need of my discretion.

“I don’t think it’s Mrs. Allington this time,” I say.

Pete looks puzzled. “The president came into the city without her? That’s not like him.”

“No,” I say. “I’m pretty sure the Allingtons aren’t the ones having the unauthorized party.”

“Then who is?” Cooper asks.

“Their son.”

Chapter 3

Bank Card Lover

In the club, bodies tight

Think I may, think I might

See your face across the floor

That’s when you tell me the score