Every day he wore the same thing, red
shirt and yellow shorts. I could see him walking around outside by my bedroom
glass doors at 7 a.m. He worked as a construction worker on a work site right
next to my apartment. I called him Mr. Yellow Pants.
Every morning around 6 a.m. I would
see construction workers’ trucks rolling by the window and parking in front of
the window. The workers were remodeling a building behind my building.
Every morning a truck would come by,
and six or more construction workers jumped out the bed of the truck, including
Mr. Yellow Pants. They were moving about, yelling at each other using their
voices and their hands. I could tell a good “discussion” was going on because I
heard yelling in Italian and hands were flailing all around as the men stood
around each other.
Then the saws would start up. Loud,
piercing noises and the workers cut ceramic tile with their diamond blade saws.
Mr. Yellow Pants was a grunt worker.
He would be lifting heavy rocks, popping in and out of the various doors of the
building to fetch equipment from an adjacent
building. He looked like a jack-in-the-box wearing his red and yellow outfit,
and big belly bouncing about as he popped out of a doorway.
He
noticed me through my window one day.
He came over to look in to the window,
and I walked out of the room, avoiding him. Mr. Yellow Pants took notice and then
I could see him watching me leave the apartment the same day.
In the afternoon, I walked home from
the Viterbo main square. I usually walk home from the school, but this day I
was walking from the town, in the opposite direction.
As I walked by the building and door
on the road near my apartment, I saw Mr. Yellow Pants pop out of a doorway and stand
in my path as I walked up the sidewalk. The sidewalk was narrow, about two feet
wide. The road next to the sidewalk was busy with speeding cars.
His presence shocked me because I was
not expecting a man to jump out of a doorway like that. I looked at him to give
him a clue that I was not interested.
He looked at me and realized I was not
interested in him. So he popped back in the door as fast as he popped out.
Go back to work, Mr. Yellow Pants.
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