Recession

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From “Wipe the Code”

Raul sat cross-legged in his hard hat, smoking a cigarette and observing office workers going into the strip mall to eat lunch. To Theo, who was sitting next to him, they looked inconsequential: they were pale and walked stiff in undersized office shirts, their doughy guts bulging over belted plain-coloured trousers. Yet, Theo’s boss Raul looked at them intensely as he sat on the lowered tailgate of his pickup truck, and who knows what he thought about them. Raul was an ignorant man who had never worked in an office.

After the break they drove the truck around the mall and got back to installing air conditioners for the mall. They had begun putting up asphalt-coloured aluminum siding in early spring, then upgrading the HVAC system. They had even repainted the big white letters on the roof that spelled the mall’s name: “Horseshoe Plaza.” The air conditioner units were the final piece of work. They were placed in the deserted back of the mall, across from a McDonald’s dumpster with a peculiar fast-food stench. Theo hated the stench, not so much because it was foul, but more because it reminded him of that job. They had been hauling and fixing aluminum sheets and airway ducts up on the outer walls and the roof for weeks.

The oppressive heat and hard labour made the whole crew edgy. Raul talked incessantly about the construction industry and current affairs. He was an opinionated angry man. His anger had the practical side-effect of spurring his crew to work, for which, admittedly, it was impossible to find any positive inspiration. Raul’s world was filled with puppet masters who pulled all the strings. Their identity shifted every day, but it was generally rich people that Raul had heard of or even worked for, but never anyone he actually knew.