A Strange Recording

"...calculating eyes wrapped in sunglasses.

Ten trucks must have pulled into the labor exchange that morning and another half dozen into the lot at the post office and forty men got work. Condi[Candido] though was the first in line each time, and each time he scrambled up out of the dirt, for nothing. She watched him with a sinking feeling, his look of [eager]ness and hope [as] he disguised the hitch in his walk and tried to hold the bad arm rigid at his side, and [then] the face of rage and despair and the ravaging limp [as he] came back to her.

At 9:30 or so, the fat man wheeled into the lot in his rich long car. Ame[r]ica had been chattering away [about Tepoztlan to take Candido's] mind off the situation -- She was remembering an incident from her childhood, [a] day when a September storm swept over the village and the hail fell like stones [amid] the standing corn and all the men rushed out into the streets, firing their pistols and shotguns at the sky -- But she stopped in midsentence when she heard the crunch of gravel and looked up into the lean shoulders and predatory snout of the patrons car. She felt the living weight of the big man's hand in her lap all over again and something seized up inside her: nothing like that had ever happened to her before, not in her own country, [not in Tepoztlan,] not even in the dump in Tijuana. She was seventeen years old, the youngest of eight, and her parents had [loved] her and she'd gone to school all the way through, and done everything that was expected of her. There were no strange men, no hands in her lap, there was no living in the woods like a wild animal. But here it was. She rose to her feet.

Ame[r]ica crossed the lot in a kind of daze, picturing the bright expanse of that big room with the Buddhas and the windows that laid all the world at her feet, and the money too, twenty five dollars, twenty five more than nothing. The window of the car, threw her reflextion back at her for a moment, then it ceremonially descended to reveal the face of the patron. He didn't get out of the car, but there he was, expressionless, and the beard clipped close round his mouth to frame his colorless lips...."

This recording was left on my voicemail on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 11:19am. I thought it was funny that such a thing was recorded for two plus minutes on my phone. After listening to the voice and the voice inflection, I realized someone was reading to me. But it was too inhuman. Someone had accidentally called me while listening to a book on tape. I couldn't delete it, because it was so strange. It might mean something? A message? I thought about listening to it, transcribing it, and figuring out what it was. Like so many intentions, it was put off. But now I listened to it, transcribed it. After a bit of searching, I found that the excerpt comes from The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle. I found the actual quote and edited what my transcription showed to reflect the actual text. It's hard to transcribe the spoken word, people!

Well, I've done it. Not sure what it all means - if anything? But a fun exercise nonetheless. Maybe I should read the book, I've heard good things.