When the Furniture Comes

As the bail out of 2008 neared, Tyler Hopkins, chief negotiator
for Big Gnocchi Brother's Inc., felt the press of the white whale
beaching toward Main Street and feared the carcass' implosion.
Tyler's BGB, Inc. foreman, Jamber, lead singer in an AC/DC
cover band, is due in Family Court to remit forty-eight thousand
dollars in back child support of which he is forty-two thousand
dollars light. Limon, twenty-three year old American-Mexican
immigrant, is the force of the Gotham Minors, a schist breaking
division of Tyler's company. Limon wields a one hundred and
twelve pound sledgehammer over the hands of splitting maul
cradler, Umberto, a sixty-two year old Puerto Rican transplant
from the Bronx. The third member of the crew, light barer, key man
and mule, is a rebellious scholar from Merida, who distinguishes
the six mauls used by the minors to slab schist, by linking the
names of the Apostles from the New Testament with those from
the Gnostic Gospels--unbeknownst to the romantic scholar, he
is also lunch fetch. It is the task of the Gotham Minors, breaking
schist below the sidewalks of Manhattan, to clear enough room
in the earth for the passage of a man's head...without disturbing
the neighbors.