They Call it The City of Angels
A New Serial Novel by Joshua A. TRILIEGI
Exclusively for Readers of BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE and
our Three sites in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City
All National & International Copy Rights Reserved to the Author
Listen to the First Ten Chapters in Audio Narrated by The Author
at The The Main Website for BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE
Chapter Nineteen: Roots
"Gimme some skin." , his Dad's friends would say as they
walked in the door. Jordan would put out his palm flat
and the dudes would slide their hands across his as they
walked past and into the living room to hang with Pops.
Jordan had lost touch with all of that in the past decade
and was now making up for it. He had ' Gone Native '.
That is what the fella' s in the park called it. Shook off
all that urban vibe and was searching deep for his roots.
He'd been dipping into his new found savings in the past
few weeks. Every time he opened the black case where
the money was hidden, he would unwrap the brown paper
that it was encased in and, like his dad often did, he
would lick his thumb and count out a few bills, than he
wrapped the money back up, in that funny paper design
and stashed it away where it couldn't be found by Wanda.
Jordan had no idea that the bundle of cash was actually
wrapped in a very precious substance that had not been
on the market for decades. It was a sheet of the purest
L.S.D. that had ever been produced, the very best.
The money had originally sat in a post office box before
the beachcomber picked it up and had been carrying it
for the past few years. So, although Jordan didn't exactly
know why he was having strange new ideas about life,
he was actually, 'Tripping - the - light - fantastic' as it
was commonly known in the old days. Every time he even
touched the paper it absorbed into his skin. He had never
partaken in anything like that voluntarily before, so he
had no reference point for what was going on. It wasn't
like he was ingesting it fully, but this stuff was so strong
that he was definitely 'Out There'. So much so that, when
he went to the pawn shop to pick up his base guitar, he
saw a ring, bought it for Wanda and totally forgot about
the instrument. Another time, he had gone down to the
park to pick up that incense she liked and ended up buying
a drum that had been made in Mali and stretched with a
real goat skin by an ancient shaman, or so he was told.
He bought a bunch of fabric and some rugs, original
bamboo tiki lamps and started digging up a fire pit in
the back yard. Wanda had seen this kind of thing before,
but she was still concerned for him. He borrowed Old
Man Withers truck the day they were cutting down an
Oak tree, grabbed a bunch of the stumps and created
what they called a tribal circle around his new drum-
circle-fire-pit. When she got home, he was in the back
yard stripped down to almost nothing, playing his drum
with a bunch of cats he had met in the park. The house
was full of new plants, a few sculptures, he had even
redesigned the living room with all of this original fabric
from the motherland. Bought a bunch of weird vegetables
that even she was unaware of, some kind of macrobiotic
root vegetables made from lotuses. When he gave her the
ring, she really got scared. It was a real diamond with
little rubies set all along the top and emeralds all along
the bottom with some kind of amber along the sides.
She hoped he wasn't doing anything illegal, getting into
trouble or messing up. Of course, she was also elated,
proud, even turned on by this new identity thing he was
going through. When she asked him where it all was
coming from, he said that one of his uncles had passed
away back East and had left him some money. "What
Uncle?" she asked. "On my Daddy's side, he had a piece
of property that they sold and I got a piece of it, just in
time too." It sure was on time, because the Transit
Authority still had him waiting for an answer. Wanda
made good money, but they depended on his income too.
During the past year, Jordan had seen a lot of weird
things and heard a lot of strange stories related to
bus driving in Los Angeles. There had been a stabbing
on Alameda, a lady had broke water up on Wilshire,
an old man had a stroke down in the Harbor. Some
times a group of people would aggravate someone,
all along the route, a different person would bump,
push, start an argument with some unsuspecting
person. The drivers were sometimes aware of it and
even worse, they were sometimes a part of it. It was
a battle ground for all kinds of people. Homeless folks
used the night lines to have some shelter, they would
ride all night, and who could blame them ? Religious
groups used it to recruit stragglers of all sorts. Drug
dealers were sometimes peddling. A Driver was some
times briefed by the Transit Authority prior to a shift,
if there had been any recent or on going incidents.
The drivers were expected to do a whole lot more
than simply drive a bus, they were expected to role
play, ask questions of certain riders and even get
information. Jordan wasn't interested in being a
soldier for the man, he simply wanted to drive a
bus, take a check and have a regular life. Half the
dudes he grew up with were being shipped out to
fight a war in The Gulf. Now he got a call to have
his vision tested again. He had already done all of
that before. The beachcomber was not even pressing
charges, it turned out that he had been missing for
years and the entire incident had reunited his family.
Why were they stressing me ? He wondered. He knew
drivers that were cool, but he also knew some pretty
mean dudes that, one way or another, for whatever
reason, just didn't like the job and therefor didn't like
the people and ultimately, were not good drivers.
Maybe they were just unhappy at home or were going
through a tough time or had recently had some illness.
Whatever it was, they would tend to take it out on
the passengers. If a driver was a racist, he or she
might just pass someone by, in the middle of the
night, in the rain, on the last route. Or if they saw a
mixed race couple or some regular passenger who
had once complained, they might not make a stop.
Jordan was the youngest driver and so he was most
likely the least jaded. Some of his fellow drivers had
been doing it for thirty years, they had been either
burnt out or had become excellent. He knew both
types. He wanted the certification after sticking it
out for a year, so he played along with the process.
He was told that the goat skin would eventually speak
to him. Drums were the original way that people would
communicate with, back in the day. "Get in touch with
yourself." , the dude had told him, play that skin." Skin.
Skin. Gimme some skin. Give - Me - Some - Skin. He
kept thinking about his Mom and Pop and all that sh*t
they had gone through. All that history. He had some
deep history, part Indian and part French, they had all
kinda names for it, be it didn't matter to him anymore.
He stared to get in touch with his roots, not just H-I-S
roots but the real roots, the roots of primal energy.
Sound, light, color, taste, the sky, the wind, the earth,
fire, back to the elements in a big m*%$+*@&!ing way.
His lovemaking had become absolute. Wanda had always
appreciated his attentiveness, his sensitivity and all of
that. He had once shared a story with her, the first time
they had ever stayed the night with one another. Jordan
had been just a boy, his mother was in the kitchen making
breakfast, she looked down at him & said matter of fact,
" Jordan, when you become a man, don't you ever pass
out on the woman you love." He looked up at her and
although he had no idea what she actually meant, he
looked her straight in the eyes and said, "I won't." It
was one of the few pieces of advice he had ever received
from the woman. Now that he was rediscovering this
whole new way of being, he would look at Wanda like
she was the first woman who had ever walked the earth.
The women at work noticed how she began to carry
herself. "What's up with you?", they'd ask, "Oh Nothing",
she lied. Jordan was 'up with her', sometimes late into
the night. Now that he wasn't working, he would make
breakfast, a salad for her lunch and when she got home,
he already had dinner on the stove. Not always. There
were some nights where he was off on some adventure.
He'd gone to some sweat lodge with a bunch of guys or
went walking clear across the city. He'd gotten in the habit
of using a walking stick and wore a pair of old sandals.
One day, he drifted downtown, walked into a bank, got
change for a hundred dollar bill, "Gimme-a-bunch-a-ones."
The teller gave him the change and walked the hundred
dollar bill over to her manager. She explained that she
was having second thoughts about the recent exchange.
He took down the serial number and made a call. The
bill had been put on a circulation list twelve years ago.
By now, Jordan was down on Main street handing out
dollar bills to every person on the street. People were
downtrodden all up and down that area: homeless, run-
a-ways, hungry, strung out, drop outs, stragglers, drug
addicts, the forgotten. Who knows what had possessed
him to do such a thing. Maybe the goat skin had spoke to
him. The man at the bank called the authorities and they
downloaded a picture of him walking out of the bank.
It wasn't a very detailed rendition. You couldn't see his
face. With his ancient outfit and walking stick, he looked
like Moses parting the Red Sea, one of the disciples or
even Jesus himself. The image was reprinted & sent out.
It became another item for the strange and regular events
that seemed to happen only in Los Angeles. A week later,
the photograph was reprinted in The National Inquirer,
right between an article on a recent UFO sighting and
a baby that saved a dogs life in the family swimming pool.
The headline read in bold letters, "Jesus Passes Counterfeit
Bills to Feed Homeless". They had never actually found
'Jesus' and Jordan never even knew what had happened.
He got home late that night. The Moon was full. A few
clouds had splayed across the sky. He had been reading
the clouds and the landscape like a student might read a
textbook, it all had a new meaning. One of the clouds was
shaped like a giant turtle, he smiled. After all, he had
recently found himself. Jordan had finally found his roots.
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