When the Furniture Comes

As the bail out of 2008 neared, Tyler Hopkins, chief negotiatorfor Big Gnocchi Brothers Inc., felt the press of the white whalebeaching toward Main Street and feared the carcass implosion. Tylers BGB, Inc. foreman, Jamber, lead singer in an AC/DCcover band, is due in Family Court to remit forty-eight thousanddollars in back child support of which he is forty-two thousanddollars light. Limon, twenty-three year old American-Mexicanimmigrant, is the force of the Gotham Minors, a schist breakingdivision of Tylers company. Limon wields a one hundred andtwelve pound sledgehammer over the hands of splitting maulcradler, Umberto, a sixty-two year old Puerto Rican transplantfrom the Bronx. The third member of the crew, light barer, key manand mule, is a rebellious scholar from Merida, who distinguishesthe six mauls used by the minors to slab schist, by linking thenames of the Apostles from the New Testament with those fromthe Gnostic Gospels--unbeknownst to the romantic scholar, heis also lunch fetch. It is the task of the Gotham Minors, breakingschist below the sidewalks of Manhattan, to clear enough roomin the earth for the passage of a mans headwithout disturbingthe neighbors.