Spanish guy.(Lowest Ebb)(Dagoberto Gilb)

I've driven across three deserts from my home in El Paso, where there's no work, to Long Beach, where, I'm told, there's so much. So what if I see only two tower cranes in the skyline? At the union hall, the business agent could care less that this journeyman carpenter has arrived. But I sign the long out-of-work list and then drive out to one of the cranes and ask. The superintendent there gives me the old "check back in two weeks," which might be a kind no, but when you're not working you have to keep positive. You tell the man thank you very much, and you shake his big, crusty hand firmly.

The next two weeks I sleep on couches, imposing on friends and acquaintances. The super in Long Beach tells me twice more to check back in a couple of weeks. Keeping positive, I scan the want ads, comparing prices for a weekly room.

One fine morning, positive happens: a job. O.K., only the promise of a week, possibly two, and something's not right, because the job-hungry locals won't take it. It's on a university campus, not my usual high-rise work. Beyond the perimeter "Hard Hat Only" fence, you can see women carrying books. My crew begins with a Wally and a Dave and a Jorge and a Roger and an apprentice, Lumpy. But people keep quitting or getting fired, and Dave says that Brad, our foreman, got too much authority too young, and that's what's wrong with this job. What an incredible dickhead, he explains.

I hear Brad screaming around the site and map escapes when his hard hat approaches. On day four, I'm too slow.

"Now, why would you guys think you'd have to do it that way?" He has taken off his hard hat, running his fingertips through his old-fashioned flattop.

I want to say, "Because you so so esmart and we so so estupid." But don't. It's just me and Dave. Brad starts shaking his head. He decides to make it me.

"I told you," he says with a disgusted sneer.