They Call it The City of Angels
A New Fiction 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
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Chapter Fourteen : Turtles
Turtles lived a long time. Ancient and modern Native
Americans know that some turtles live over a hundred
years. In fact, if circumstances allowed, just about any
living being could live an extraordinary amount of time.
Jordan had been given a set of brushes that was his
grandfathers from the early nineteen thirties. It came
in a black leather case that housed two or three brushes,
a glass container for some type of hair tonic, a stylized
scissors and a container that might have held a bar of
soap. He had never used the family heirloom and now
that he had some time off, he unpacked it. He decided
that this would be a safe place to put this newfound
package of dollars bills he had recently acquired.
When he opened the container for soap, what appeared
to be the oldest and largest daddy long legs spider ever,
peaked from out of the soap container. It was ancient
and had a vibe to it like no other animal of its kind.
It's eyes had lids and lashes, it's face, expressed some
kind of emotions: pain, regret, loss, just plain tired.
Jordan right away knew that this was a spider that
must have been living in the kit as far back as the
nineteen thirties, when his own granddad was just a
boy . He'd heard of things like this and immediately
and quite carefully put the spider back into the soap
case, zipped up the brush kit and as far as he was
concerned, that spider actually was his grandfather.
Jordan drove up the coast to where the accident
happened, pulled over and just sat there. He began
to study the landscape from every imaginable angle
and point of view, there was the derelict in the trailer
who pulled out without looking, there was the beach
comber, there was the turtle and of course his own
point of view. He'd been having some strange dreams
ever since the thing with the turtle happened. It all
had something to do with nature and his connection
or maybe disconnection with the elements, the basics.
Maybe he just had too much time on his hands. Or,
maybe it was the money. Either way, he was noticing
things that had never meant much in the past. Jordan
had never gone to the bookstore in Venice Beach
when he wasn't driving a bus, but for some reason,
he decided to head down there. They had a whole
section on native americans and animal medicine,
he bought a book on turtles. He had been experiencing
a recurring dream of swimming with a group of turtles,
but the image was from a whole other lifetime, it was
weird, you know how dreams can be, a whole other set
of rules.
Apparently, animals had been popping up all over
Los Angeles in strange and unexpected places.
There had been a coyote sighting in the middle
of downtown, a family of raccoons had been seen
swimming across a pool which had been built for
the nineteen-eighty-six olympic games, a rattle
snake on the streets of Westwood, these were not
your run of the mill animal sightings, something
was going on. What was the deal with that turtle
and where did it go ? As he was walking out of the
store, he noticed Moon getting off the back of a
motorcycle in the front of the store. This was
probably her boyfriend and he didn't want to
make a big deal out of anything, so he just
smiled and waved, but she jumped off the bike
and pulled him over to the edge of the street.
"Hey, I want you to meet my old man, Mickey."
Jordan was a little embarrassed but felt obliged,
" Mickey, this is one of our customers ..." He
extended his hand, looked into Mickey's eyes and
said, "The names Jordan, nice to meet you." But
he was thinking, 'Damn, that's the dude who was
on the bus that day.' Mickey recognized the face,
but didn't make the connection right away, "Nice
to meet ya." Mickey drove off thinking that maybe
they had met somewhere before. Jordan drove
off thinking that life was pretty weird and getting
weirder by the day. When he pulled up to the stop
sign, he looked down at the cover of the book and
noticed that the tile on the turtles back was the
exact same shape as the stop sign, it had eight
sides. Like a Pythagorus pattern he had admired.
Some of the ancient tiled patterns through the
centuries utilized the octagon as a sacred symbol.
They hinted at the idea that we are all connected
in one way or another, the patterns of life.
He hadn't smoked anything for over a year, not
since the quartet disbanded, but he was beginning
to feel kinda, out there. He looked left, than right,
then left again, put his foot on the gas pedal and
noticed a group of fire trucks parked a block down,
they were spraying water onto a giant palm tree.
He didn't know what to do with himself, nor did he
make any decisions as to what he might do with
the money. He hadn't counted the bills but he did
peel back the brown paper, which, upon inspection
had lots of little designs and was broken up into
squares in perforated form, like a postage stamp.
They were hundred dollar bills, so he had to guess
that it was a hell of a lot of money. He got nervous
thinking about it. When the cops had showed up,
he had seen them scoop up the other packages
along with the guys other things, a bag of clothes,
a few blankets, they gathered everything into a
bag marked 'evidence' which had been dated with
a black marker. When they tossed it in the trunk
he wondered if a guy like that would even miss it.
Since then, he had been talking to some of the
more experienced drivers about incidents such as
these and several had suggested that he ought to
get a lawyer. You could never be too careful.
Jordan figured that he could definitely afford one
if he needed to and wouldn't it be ironic that he
would be using the funds to protect himself from
the very dude who he might go to court with. But
that wasn't what the other drivers meant. They
were suggesting that he get a lawyer in case the
transit authority fired him. They might just use
this as an excuse to can him, even if it wasn't his
fault. He was already the odd man out. What
his fellow drivers didn't know was that Jordan
had gained a few franklins recently and didn't
really care about his job driving a bus. He had
become fixated on the turtle. He was tripping.
THE FIRST TEN CHAPTERS IN AUDIO VERSION
NARRATED BY THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER...
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