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thought; the subtle way he rubs the back of his left hand with his right when he’s nervous; his stuttered laugh and his wide ear to ear smile. It’s the way he sometimes opens his mouth when he chews his food so that I have to constantly tell him to keep his mouth closed. Or the way he will, on occasion, show up to my office door after everyone else has gone home for the day; the way he’ll close the door behind him, come to me and without a word, undress me, lift me up in his arms, set me down gently on the drafting table...
    Dad loves Jordan too.
    Dad’s old school—a single parent who always wanted a son. He molds Jordan into the “super” supervisor every Harrison worker can come to respect. Because after all, it’s not unlike Jordan to jump out of his truck, grab a shovel, jump into a trench, help out with pouring a footing. Or maybe he’ll temper the mud for a mason working the line like a common laborer. Or maybe he’ll just sit down with a carpenter, share a smoke, a hard roll and coffee…shoot the shit.
    Dad and I: we’re not the only ones who love Jordan.
    That’s where the real trouble starts.
    You could see the love cooking in Diana’s eyes whenever Jordan blew into the office, the pockets on his work-shirt and Carhartt vest filled with packing slips and receipts that required processing by our accounts payable. Diana with her fiery red hair and killer bod would always request her standard five minutes of the chief super’s time—time for the University of Virginia grad to discuss in her faux south-of-the-border accent the material deliveries on any given job she might be managing. Or maybe she’d want to go over a blueprint detail that just didn’t quite jive right in the field. Maybe a corner where the copper flashing butts up against a concrete block with no possible means for moisture to escape.
    But we all knew the truth.
    What Diana wanted was a little face-time with my boyfriend who sooner than later became my husband. But that was all right by me. I was secure in my relationship with Jordan. Diana wasn’t a threat to either one of us. Like her phony southern belle voice, we’d laugh about her little crush. Besides, she was a good ten years older than the both of us. We interpreted her little infatuation as a compliment. Nothing more.
    It’s while the two of us are visiting the Tiger Lady-managed Pearl Street Key Bank rehab project when Jordan makes the mistake of his life. Instead of taking the interior stairs, he decides to climb a dozen-plus scaffolding levels to confer with Diana and to check on a newly replaced cornice.
    As always it makes me nervous when he insists on climbing hand and boot to the top of a building. But you just can’t shake the boy from the man when it comes to Jordan. You just can’t shake his need to be moving, doing anything but sitting. On that particular morning when he makes the climb, I can’t help but think that a big part of him is showing off for my benefit…For my entertainment!
    But that doesn’t make it any easier when only moments later he’s laid out on his back in the hospital, his body a train wreck of shattered bones and lacerated flesh; his brain now swelled against the insides of his skull, bleeding out the ears and nostrils. Still he tries to move, tries to get up. Having somehow survived a sixty foot fall, he’s peering up at me from the bed in the I.C.U. trauma unit, bruised eyes pleading. It’s not like he wants to tell me something. It’s like he wants me to rescue him from that hospital, as if I can simply strap a shattered man on my back, carry him out of I.C.U., out the front door of the Albany Medical Center forever…
    But then looking back on it all these years later, stealing Jordan from that hospital is exactly what I would have done, knowing then what I would come to know shortly thereafter: that he would never step out of that hospital alive.
     
     
     

Chapter 13
     
    Dott’s Garage and Used Auto Parts was located