The Neighbor Who Saved My Mural

The storm came the night before the final coat. I was across the city when my phone lit up: the tarp had torn and the fresh paint was about to be ruined.

By the time I arrived, a neighbour I had never met was leaning out of his fourth-floor window, holding the tarp against the wind with a broom handle and sheer stubbornness. He had been there an hour.

The mural survived because of him. His face is not on the wall — but the whole thing is, in a way, a portrait of him.