Another night in paradise

[Trudy Bennett]

Ah Venice...The music, the artwork, the culture, the...guy in a speedo covered in silver paint on roller blades with a boom box playing hip hop from the 1980s as he goes by. This wasn't the old world, not that she knew anything of the old world, but she could only guess that the Venice in Italy had to be totally different than the beach town she now found herself in.

It was a strange sort of place, a spectacle, and Trudy loved every moment of it. The cool breeze coming off the ocean that was crashing against the sand nearby only added to her enjoyment. If anyone were to ever ask her why she lived in Los Angeles, this was why...a quick trip in one direction would lead you to miles and miles of coastline, the other could position a person in enough mountainous terraine to get lost in (and so many often did).

But more than all that...was the expectations. The prospects people had in mind when they moved to Southern California. Movies, music, just about any form of entertainment you could believe in and want to be a part of...you could get your start there. Of course the silly thing most of them never realized was that their start was going to be their end as well. For every success story was about a hundred or so failures. But Trudy didn't mind, the failures were far more interesting. Presently she was leaning against the front of a building (where inside one could find any assortment of "tobacco" pipes. Artwork in and of themselves), enjoying the cooler night air, listening to some boy with long dirty brown dreadlocks play an acoustic guitar as he sat with case open, accepting whatever tips someone would care to leave behind. She liked listening to others play, it quieted and often conjoined with the music she always heard in her own mind. Venice was a strange sort of place like that, so much talent without all the Hollywood pretentiousness. Of course the talent here was often accompanied by madness, either natural or artificially created...at least this boy seemed okay, if not just lost in his music...but that was alright, she could appreciate that too.

[Gino Putanesca]

Against the whimsical melody of all that was Venice Beach, there was another voice.

“...where are the fucking gondolas, eh?”

Slurred by more than just it's Italian accent, the speaker swayed a little as he walked, his footsteps beating a disjointed staccato on the pavement. A cell-phone in one hand, the other held a cigar, whose ashes fell like red-hot confetti with each over-exaggerated gesture.

“She sends me to Venice, I expect to wake up in la Serenissima.. not fucking White Men Can't Jump!”

Another long drag was taken from the hand-rolled blunt, pale blue smoke rolling out of his open mouth. Eyes drifted here and there until they fell at last upon a bench, which Gino sagged down onto with a thud, slouching with his legs spread wide enough apart that it seemed he took up the entire seat. He held the cell-phone against his ear by shrugging one shoulder.

“Izzathuckinglyoke.”

A pause then, frowning heavily, Putanesca pulled the blunt from his lips with one hand whilst the other gave his mop of hair a hard tousle.

“I said, is a fuckin' joke!”

In lifting his head to growl at the cell – as if it could be blamed – the phone slipped from his shoulder and clattered to the ground, the battery springing free and skidding out across the concrete pavement.

“Leccacazzi!”

[Trudy Bennett]

The strumming of the boy's guitar and the multitude of instruments in her own mind were reaching a wonderful peak, a polyphony that caused an overwhelming sense of entrapment, weaving around her to not block out every other noise, but only add them as accentuating pieces. Footfalls rhythmic, the multitudes of voices becoming a chorus and then suddenly there was a curse, a sforzando that caused the entire thing to break appart and the overall melody was gone and all that was left was the hum in her mind that now clashed with the novice guitar work. The colors that were being painted had suddenly had a sudden violent white wash tossed upon the entire canvas that muted everything.

A frustrated sigh left the red haired woman before she realized her eyes had been shut, and so opened them to perhaps spy what it was that had brought about the interruption to it all. A glance at first brought no answers other than the typical organized chaos that was Venice Beach. It wasn't until a soft step forward was taken to push herself off the wall that she realized something had collided with her foot. The thin zebra-print ballerina-style flats she had worn that evening would have normally left her aware of practically anywhere her feet had fallen or connected with but apparently the music had overtaken her (again.)

The woman crouched down to pick up the culprit...a...cell phone battery. How ironic. How many times had their rings caused a similar disturbance in recent days she couldn't count and now one of their components was doing the same? Reason stood that someone would be looking for the silly thing and she'd never been a cruel individual...probably why she didn't go and attempt to chuck the thing down the length of the boardwalk.

[Gino Putanesca]

“Something.. fucking fallen out of the phone,” Gino slurred into the handset, as he tried to focus enough to catch sight of whatever he had lost.

“You hear me? I said this piece of shit fallin' apart already,” he grunted and then, shooting an accusing glance at the cell, jabbed its buttons at random before pressing the speaker tight to his ear again. Hissing breath through his teeth, he pushed the blunt between his lips again and took another long drag as he shoved the phone into his pocket. “Ign'ran' co's'ckers.”

Shoving one hand back through his hair, a string of vexed Italian slipped past Gino's lips, flavored with marijuana smoke. When his eyes finally lifted, he saw a girl – woman, his mind corrected – inspecting something that looked suspiciously like the very something he had lost.

“... 'ey. You, uh.. you get that here? You find it here?” he asked, gesturing to the pavement at his feet, and then turning on his heel to wave towards the bench he had been sitting on moments ago. Still, his eyes remained sort of focused on her, brow a little furrowed in what might have been concentration.

[Trudy Bennett]

Night always seemed to bring out the weirdos. Okay, so on this particular little strip of concrete along the Pacific Ocean beachfront Trudy was pretty sure the day must have as well, but she tried to not think about that. It was hard sometimes to ignore the pains that came from the thoughts of all that she missed during those hours - the pure unappreciated talent that could have been witnessed. Regardless now there was some heavy accented guy attempting to speak to her and waving about and in general disrupting the calm that'd already been dented by the small piece of plastic now in her hand.

"Hmm...?"

She liked the way that sounded, how she could keep her lips closed and still force the sound that came out to extend the note ringing in her mind.

She forced herself to focus again on the man who had asked her a question.

"I'm awful sorry?"

Her own hinting at a southern drawl that she'd suppressed from her time away from what had been "home" came out full force and brought a hint of embarrassment that may have been seen in a soft shift in mannerisms but lacked in any pink showing in her cheeks aside from the false blush applied by a bit of makeup earlier that evening.

"Oh, you mean this little thing?"

The kid strumming on the guitar was getting to her again, forcing herself to try and really understand the situation on hand rather than go back to that place of bliss was proving to be a burden. But still Trudy managed to lift up the cell phone battery and let a small smile come to her and then a tiny forced laugh.

"Yeah, found it on the ground right here, well, really honestly it went and found me. Guessing by the fact you're asking me about it means it must go and belong to you."

The hand that held the object moved from presenting it in questioning to offering it back to assumed owner.

[Gino Putanesca]

“Unh,” he said. Grunted, rather. There was little shape to the sound, certainly not enough to tell whether he agreed or disagreed – though he grabbed the battery out of her palm regardless. Though the technology was sophisticated, Gino was not and he clapped the power cell back into place with a single, careless gesture.

It didn't fit. Mumbling, he tried – with stained fingertips and dirty nails – to wiggle it into place. The more angry he got with it, the less inclined it was to slot into place, and so the cycle continued. Still, the guitarist played on.

“Jesus,” he swore, the blunt hanging precariously limp from his mouth, the paper stuck to his lip. “Can't fuckin' think with all this noise. Hell is wrong with this place?”