PodCastle

* Author : José Pablo Iriarte
* Narrator : Karlo Yeager Rodríguez
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Previously published by Strange Horizons.


Rated: PG-13, for harsh memories not one’s own.
Life in Stone, Glass, and Plastic
by José Pablo Iriarte
Cleaning up graffiti was an everyday job for Sergio, pero esto . . . Could you even call this graffiti? Graffiti normally was spray-painted. Wait — that wasn’t true. Indoor graffiti typically was done in permanent marker. Or gouged into wooden surfaces with pocket knives or keys, so the only way to remove some gang symbol or racist slur or throbbing penis was by sanding it down.
Come to think of it, if anybody was an expert, he was.
And he’d never heard of mosaic graffiti.
But there it was, on the side of the Westchester Building. Marbles, reading glasses, fichas de Monopolio, a key, all cemented onto the crumbling old plaster, maybe eight feet across. Only when he took a step back could he see it formed the shape of a woman and her two kids, carrying suitcases away from a house while a grim police officer stood by with his arms crossed. Probably not the image the tenant behind that wall — AAAfordable Lending, Inc. — would want to be associated with.
He pushed back his USS Oklahoma City ball cap and wiped his brow with his sleeve. Carajo, this must have taken hours. Days. No windows peered into the shadows between this building and the next, but Sergio himself walked this alley once a night, dragging a full garbage canister to the dumpster out back. How could he possibly have missed it?
He inched closer to the vent for the Dominican panadería inside the neighboring building. The alley between the buildings was poorly lit and a favorite spot for rats and winos, but when the neighbors baked the next day’s treats you could take a deep breath and imagine you were in heaven. He closed his eyes and let the scent transport him to better days. Before Carolina had to stop working. She used to make magic like this in her kitchen.
Estúpido. They paid him to work, not to stand around reminiscing. He shook his head and blinked. Time to do his job. He headed inside, to the custodial closet, and searched for an appropriate tool. He dropped a narrow putty spatula, a chisel, and a hammer into his tool apron, and grabbed a drill too, just in case. He picked up a heavy duty flashlight as well, since the sun already hung low in the sky when he came in for the equipment.
Back in the alley, he dragged a trash cart over, leaned the light on it, and directed the beam at the artwork. What were the odds the plaster or whatever would still be loose and come off quickly? He reached into the pocket of the tool apron and closed his right hand around the handle of the spatula. He’d only used it once before, when the building’s management decided to retile all the bathrooms. By the time he finished that three-week job, his hands ached constantly and he’d hoped never to hold the damn thing again.
Ah well. Así era la vida.
He raised his left hand to the mosaic to feel the objects on the wall, get a sense for how firmly they were att —
— he stands on the street holding a woman’s hand she is his mother she pulled him out too fast for him to put his shoes on and little rocks in the sidewalk are digging into h...