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.