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
Listen to The First Ten Chapters in AUDIO Narration by the Author
on our main BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE magazine Website
All National & International Copy Rights Reserved to the Author
Chapter Eleven: Louis Junior
The day you get out of the joint, they bring you into a room,
and bust out a bag of things that were in your possession
the day you got arrested. Fifteen plus years was a long time.
He didn't even recognize the things they pulled out of the
bag, kids stuff, some cash, the keys to his car, the key to
his Mom's old house, a leather belt with his name inlaid, a
pack of smokes, they didn't even make that brand anymore.
A wallet with a velcro strap along the top, inside it, a picture
of his car, his mom and a school picture I.D. card of Josie.
He look at the wallet and tossed it back in the bag. 'F*%#'.
He walked outside and was waiting for a feeling of relief,
some moment of freedom, but nothing happened. He looked
at the sky and for the first time in a decade, he felt safe
enough to cry, so he did. That was his freedom, the ability
to show his feelings and not care who saw him. Junior had
built up his armor, he was untouchable, nobody could get to
him. He had been tested at every level. He'd been betrayed,
robbed, beat up, stabbed, lied to, yelled at, locked in the hole,
stripped naked, reprimanded, punished & poisoned, but he
had passed every test that came his waY. He learned about
loyalty, strength, inner silence, concentration, focus and to
some degree friendship. During the first few years, people
entered and left, that was difficult. He later realized that
the only people worth getting to know were those who were
doing as much time or more than you were. They'd always
be there. You had to bond with someone dependable. Not
that you could ever really depend on someone, but, having
a connection in the kitchen or laundry or yard helped out.
Most of the stuff couldn't even be understood by anyone on
the outside. He had become an animal in a human zoo. It
took him a couple hours to get use to the fact that no one
was watching him, no doors were shutting in front of and
or, behind him. It didn't matter what time it was anymore.
He had lived a life of clockwork bells, alarms, shouts and
announcements on a p.a. system from the nineteen thirties.
It was hard to fathom that he could do whatever he pleased.
Louis Junior had not been the first or only member of his
family to do time. Many of his Uncles and cousins had done
a few years, here and there. But nobody had ever spent more
than a decade. The first day in prison, he remembered a story
that his uncle Ray had told him about spending time in prison.
"The first guy who even looks at you sideways, or calls you out,
no matter what color, no matter how big, no matter how crazy,
no matter if he's a prisoner or a guard, no matter what, you
have to beat the living s+*t out of the guy, no matter what."
So that's what he did. It worked, everyone left him alone, for
a while. He eventually gave his mom permission to sell the car
when she needed some money, as long as she promised to send
him a few bucks every now and then. A guy needed things and
you had to pay someone sometimes just to get by. Years
past where he wouldn't even hear from anyone on the outside.
Not even his dad, after Juniors Mom had a stroke, things
were hard for Louis Senior, when he recovered, they began
to write each other regularly and Junior would find that the
old man had deposited a few dollars in his account. Which
meant he could buy paper, stamps, a candy bar, this type of
thing. Junior had been someone who really loved women.
He had always loved his Grandmother, his Aunts, his Mom &
of course Josie. During his stretch in the joint, it was the worst
thing in the world to not spend time with a woman or a girl.
All those years deprived of the basic and simple touch of a
woman's hand, the sound of her voice, the smell of her clothes.
Junior built up a world in his mind that was like a television
show or a film or movie that he could repeat over and over:
"The Summer of Junior and Josie". Not unlike one he saw
in school during a social studies class, the teacher wheeled
out a television and everyone watched a show that had
been produced for boston public television, he never forgot
it, it was called, "James at Sixteen", where this kid is trying
to get through life and he's in love with this girl. One night,
they steal away and spend the night together out in the wild.
He and Josie had done that, they'd gone swimming, they'd
gone to see The Shylites, they'd seen Fernando pitch for the
Dodgers, they even went to a freaky punk rock concert at
a burnt out church in Hermosa beach one night. So, in his
mind, he just relived it all, night after night, day after day,
month after month, year after year. It was like a regular
show with different episodes, a mix between "Chico and the
Man", "The Partridge Family" and "James at Sixteen".
That was how he survived it all. There were about a dozen
or so episodes & he just watched them over and over again.
Of course there was that tragic last episode & unfortunately,
he was forced to watch that one just as many times as the rest.
The one thing he realized right away was the fact that he had
no friends, knew nobody and nobody really knew him. Alone.
He had his dad, but that was not very solid. He had his sister
and now she had three girls, but all they had heard of him
was probably tainted. People feared ex-prisoners, mistrusted
them, were suspicious and often blamed them for whatever
went wrong in their lives. He had heard a thousand different
stories through the years about guys returning home and coming
right back due to some family member who dropped a dime
because something had gone wrong, a valuable item had been
misplaced or any number of things. He promised himself that
he would never, ever go back, no way, no how, no, no, no.
So as soon as he hit the street he headed straight over to the
outreach where he had been receiving letters from a priest.
It took him half the day to get over there by bus and the other
half to get back down to the harbor where his Dad, sister and
little nieces lived. The priest had explained that they needed
guys like Junior. Everything on the streets of Los Angeles was
changing. There had been a truce between several rival gangs
and guys like Junior had a place in the church. "All right
Father", he had said. " We have work for you, come back and
see me tomorrow morning, we have a lot of work to do."
The Father gave him five dollars for bus fair home, they shook
hands and Junior walked back out into the street, a bit blinded
by the light. He'd been living in dark grey hallways and closed
quarters for years now, all this sunlight and open sky was new.
He wasn't ready to see his old man and hadn't seen the old
neighborhood where they had grown up, so he made it a point
to check it out. When he got there, the house was gone, in fact
the entire block was gone, it had been razed by the city and
nothing at all had been built on it, just a chain link fence.
Then he remembered hearing about how the local chemical
factory had been polluting the fields directly behind their home
and had to pack it in. They bought out anyone who could prove
that they or their property had been damaged. They had never
even owned the property and by the time his mother found out
she had ddt in her blood a year had passed and it was too late
to collect. She had been visiting a sister in Texas when it all
went down, never even heard about until after the fact. "Mom",
he said out loud. He stared at the open field & look above him.
A red tailed hawk circled over his head several times, it landed
on the only tree left in the entire field and screeched at him.
The bus dropped him off in the harbor well after dark, he had
been given the address and knew it was blocks away from
where his Mother was buried. His old man had written that
he would walk to her grave all the time. When Junior found
their house, it was fully lit. A big house out of an old movie.
He could see the table set for dinner through the windows
and what must have been his nieces bicycles and toys splayed
across the front yard. Music could be heard from the house
next door and then he saw his sister Celia in a white cotton
dress and what must have been her new husband, bringing
food from the kitchen into the living room. The house glowed
with a picturesque energy that looked like something he couldn't
relate to. It was almost too perfect to the point where, it seemed
fake to him. He became scared that maybe he would say the
wrong thing. What did he have to talk about ? Junior realized all
of this was happening too soon, he wasn't ready for this at all.
He walked back down the street toward the waterfront and stared
at the water for the next few hours. When it got past midnight,
he strolled back up the hill, opened the front gate and found a
yard chair under the tree in the backyard. He didn't really sleep
anymore, so he just rested, looked at the stars and wondered what
he would do with his life. After all the planning and scheming to
stay alive and out of trouble while inside, Junior hadn't had much
time to plan what to do when he finally got out. Well, he had his
appointment with the Father tomorrow morning, guess he'd
just take it one day at a time, as those dudes in the program say.
Then, he couldn't help it, just like clockwork, he decided to watch
an episode from "The Summer of Junior and Josie". The one where
she cant stop laughing at his stupid jokes and they end up asleep
in each others arms. When Junior awoke , it was morning, his new
brother-in-law handed him a cup of coffee in a big white mug
that said ' Support Your Local Police ', he looked kind of familiar.
LISTEN TO THE FIRST TEN CHAPTERS IN AUDIO VERSION
NARRATED BY THE AUTHOR AT OUR MAIN WEBSITE :
HTTP://www.BUREAUofARTSandCULTURE.com
CONTACT : JOHNNYMILWAUKEE@EARTHLINK.NET
READ NEW CHAPTERS DAILY AT OUT THREE BLOG SPOTS:
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Editor and Publisher of BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE
Announces a New Experimental Serial Novel about Los Angeles.
Mr Triliegi will write a chapter a day for the next few weeks and
post the results in various languages at the three blog spots that
regularly showcase Art, Theater, Music and Community events.
" I thought it would be a good writing exercise to simply write
about what I see and hear everyday on the streets of the city.
To simply create a chapter a day based on the people and things
going on in Los Angeles. Since we all come from so many back-
grounds, styles, cultures and languages, I decided to structure
the multi character novel to represent all of Los Angeles. I simply
write a chapter a day by allowing the characters to unfold & the
story to reveal itself based directly on the things I see and hear."
" Its pure fiction based on generalities. For instance, Chapter Three,
which was inspired by a girl I saw on the bus earlier in the day, she
had a sketch book with some nice artworks and I thought about her."
Or Chapter One, based on a conversation I had with a guy who was
entering back into society from a long stretch in the penitentiary.
I thought about what other people in his life may have been thinking."
" Its a challenge to simply introduce a character and follow the
creative
line as it flows into something structured and complete. I usually know
the beginning and the end of each Chapter, and simply let the middle
fill itself out. I like the daily discipline as well as the audience
being
in on the process. In this particular case, I don't really take notes.
I just start with an idea and let it flow. This is not a normal novel by
any means, but it is a new and interesting challenge for both the
writer and the readers. Were publishing it in three cities and a wide
variety of languages, English, Italian, French, Chinese, Armenian,
Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese & Korean so far. Its been a lot of fun
I hope the people of Los Angeles and the world will follow it out as
it reveals itself. As the writer, in this particular case, I am just as
curious as the reader as to what will happen and how things will go.
The cool thing about this project is how quickly the characters began
to take on a life of their own. "
" Its an interesting way to work. I am putting together several other
writing projects and decided that this would be a good warmer upper.
We get anywhere from a 50 to 400+ views a day on our website for
our Articles, Reviews and especially our Audio Interviews, so this
particular literature project should be good exercise and at the same
time, allow people to see how a novel is actually created day by day."
Joshua A. Triliegi's BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE Magazine New York Edition an Affiliate of BUREAU of Arts and Culture NETWORK. We originally Delivered Paper Editions Now With BUREAU Magazine Sites in New York, MidWest, South, Seattle, LA, Santa Barbara, San Diego, The Literary + NEWS Site. Office 323 . 734 . 2877 Download The 300+ Page E Edition Read by Millions Worldwide.
