Above Coldwater Canyon
Above Coldwater Canyon, the fallen angel fluttered in the warmth of soft blue air. After an eternity looking over her city, guarding it long before the arrival of the Spaniards, she faltered and then fell. At the time, none of this registered with her. It was as if...
Ajo, Arizona
Ajo, Arizona gazes at the impatient stream of cars rolling through. Most head down to Rocky Point, Mexico. Just one pulled into the Belly Acres mobile home park where the parking lot was dusty and the landlord had some work to do. None of the people in Ajo, Arizona,...
Winthrop, Washington
Winthrop, Washington was where the call supposedly came in from. Miguel Gutierrez knew it was actually from his younger brother Balbino. He didn’t take the call. He hadn’t flown up to Vegas from Veracruz for the first round of Final Four college basketball games....
Mexican Hat, Utah
Mexican Hat, Utah figured the rest of the country could do as it pleased. People in town went about their business unperturbed. In their house off Kanan Dume Road, Nick removed his laptop from an unassuming backpack. With a hand from a few covert tools, he logged...
Malibu Rocky Oaks Estate Vineyards
Malibu Rocky Oaks Estate Vineyards was just a few miles away. Nick and Cecile drove over to learn what they could about the people at the winery and bought a case of the 2019 Pinot Noir. They hadn’t learned much. It seemed like a fine place. The man in the tasting...
Nightfall In The Santa Monica Mountains
Nightfall in the Santa Monica Mountains arrived unannounced. There was nothing orderly about the way light fell into their canyon, one moment blockaded, the next full bore. The patterns appeared so insistent and random they seemed to defy time. At the kitchen table...
On Capello Way In Bel Air
On Capello Way in Bel Air only the gardeners trimming xylosma hedges heard the explosion. It’s fine to wonder why the five people seated at the corner table were not killed or maimed when the bomb in the space heater next to them went off. That’s just the way it...
In The Santa Monica Mountains
In The Santa Monica Mountains, seated on old furniture in the living room of the little redwood house off Kanan Dume Road, the five of them took stock of their wounds. They catalogued a collection of superficial, scrapes and cuts. The five agreed that when the bomb...
Monte Nido, California
Monte Nido, California fell asleep and never awoke. For most residents, this was nothing to be embarrassed by, nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing as difficult as trying to describe what it is like when a bomb goes off. People figure the sudden roar or the clutter of...
The Patio At The Hotel Bel-Air
The patio at the Hotel Bel-Air swarmed with LAPD Bomb Squad technicians. Two of them collected, bagged and labelled shards of the space heater, which had quickly been identified as the device which housed the bomb. A pair of detectives took the reserved restaurant...
Newkirk, New Mexico
Newkirk, New Mexico honored its ancestors and shrugged off its supposed problems. At the Hotel Bel-Air they went to their rooms and quickly wheeled their luggage over to the parking lot. Along with the Mercedes-Maybach GLS SUV, Caroline unlocked a second car, a Range...
At The Hotel Bel-Air
At The Hotel Bel-Air that morning every table on the patio was occupied. The demure hostess seemed flustered. They were booked up for breakfast and she wasn’t sure what to tell the people waiting how long their wait would be. That hadn’t been covered in her...
Campbell County, Wyoming
Campbell County, Wyoming wouldn’t be a good place to step onto what she recognized was a rickety soapbox. She figured they would paint her as a traitor. They would see her as a brainwashed do-gooder out to tear apart all that had been done to achieve American energy...
Tonasket, Washington
Tonasket, Washington laughs softly at the rest of the world. Just south of the Canadian border on the Okanogan River, Tonasket doesn’t have a care in the world. In another world, at the Hotel-Bel Air in Los Angeles, an otherwise reserved woman in a white dress laughed...
American Falls, Idaho
American Falls, Idaho couldn’t have meant much. Lured into a tug of war with the past, adjustments she needed to exist in the present seemed more difficult. It felt as if the past wouldn’t let her breathe. Impressions would no longer float up to the surface. They...
Mazama, Washington
Mazama, Washington felt like a hazy ride through the tunnel of love. A ride that began with good intentions never quite sailed through into daylight. Togetherness splintered like mesquite trees in a summer storm. The end of trust appeared unannounced and unaccounted...
Long Creek, Oregon
Long Creek, Oregon bends toward the warm sunlight and listens to a faraway baseball game on a scratchy radio. Just as every baseball player is a magician, every dam is a murderer. Every dam kills a river. Every one of them creates a reservoir that’s doomed. The...
North Powder, Oregon
North Powder, Oregon made out fine until the icehouse burned down back in the thirties. Blocks of ice were loaded onto Pacific Fruit Express refrigerator cars. Then everything began to break. The whole town caved in on itself like an assumption embraced without...
