The Arrival

For years on end I have been sitting here
Impatiently awaiting potency; some explosive revelatory surge
That will carry me away and permit no looking back.
But this moment of deliverance has not arrived,
And I have done nothing to hasten it.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Perhaps I wasn’t meant to do anything:
In which case, I have succeeded admirably.

Read Part I at ForthMagazine.com/Charlie-Thomas

Not involving himself in the mess of reporters frothing over Tony Growen upon his release from the hospital—a local miracle by any standards—Chester Goldsmith focused rather on the young man standing next to the newly awakened coma patient. Seventeen-year-old Tony stood now in front of cameras and questions, bright-eyed and freshly recovered from his head injury, while his friend Daniel Rogers was quietly ushered to the outskirts of the frenzy by a woman in large sunglasses, pulling the teenager by the hand. Chester squinted from a distance, trying to make out the face of the woman. Ah yes, he smiled. That was her indeed—Daniel’s mother, Bobbi, to whom Chester hadn’t spoken in several years, not since the release of his book on Daniel…the Wonderchild. While the ignorant local press affiliates drooled over their supposed miracle boy, Chester slipped back into his car and carefully followed Daniel and his mother away from the scene.

Editor’s Note:
Welcome to the color-rich dusk of Los Angeles Literature and Art, where “we are all shadows in the night,” as Marco Mannone reminds us in his feature story. Certainly the idea of being alive though shadowesque is a common theme throughout this issue of Forth. Of course, the motif resonates in Marco’s “Shadowscene” piece about cover artist Ellei Johndro, who has her photographic eye on the electrode of an underground art-party collective, not only documenting, but also creating a young art phenomenon in the hills of Hollywood and beyond. And W.C. Jennings, in his investigation of California’s spending problems, …

SYNOPSIS
Journalist, James Stanley, is faced with the imminent birth of his child. Having decided to forego the test that would determine whether his child is carrying the all-important “Super-S” gene, which differentiates the genetic makeup of a superhero from that of a normal person, James sets out on a quest to interview forty-five super-powered individuals in the hope that their experiences may better prepare him for the birth of a child that is potentially gifted with extraordinary abilities. On his journey, he encounters characters from all walks of life; from single mothers struggling to raise gifted children, to rebellious super-teenagers, all the way through to those reaching the end of their lives. But what starts as a voyage of personal discovery becomes something far more ominous when he crosses paths with an organization known as XoDOS.

“Tricky Dick won. Close, but no squeaker. Carlos threw a bash. His mock-Roman suite, mobsters and Mormons, election returns on TV. Call girls told I-blew-JFK stories. Farlan Brown said [President Nixon] was no headman. He was more like an S&M slave. He’d get stinko and bomb some Third World shit-hole. He’d fry some kids and get all misty then. He’d bring in a sick chick with a whip to retool him.”

- James Ellroy, Blood’s a Rover