The following is an excerpt from the novel The Mover:
From the gated window I see the two of them painting this mural on the side of a tenement on Houston Street, one of those wide, trafficked New York City streets with trucks barreling through. I see his shingled van parked at the curb and the bums converging from the sidewalk and the median strip on the cars stopped at the intersection.
They brandish their dirty rags and squeegees and tote their pails of dirty water. The ritual of extortion will be enacted again and again, the drivers paying not to have their windows molested or yelling the bums off or simply succumbing to the treatment. Farther up the block I see the bar where I used to drink and two doors from there the flophouse where the bums with money can pay to stay. I live on the Bowery but it’s second-story Bowery. I live in a loft above the street fray.
My wife stands in white painter’s overalls alongside the man on the rickety looking scaffolding. At the top of the wall they have painted in bright red the head of a devil and now Marie has added his horns. The body is that of a bloated rat with a skinny tail. Several times Marie goes down and back up the scaffold. She always had this thing about her physical ability. She could climb better than me. She could work a stick shift better than me. Showing off, that’s what she’s doing. Showing off.
Download the full pdf here: The Mover