“Exodus”

by Andreas Economakis

3:30 p.m. Los Angeles, California. Five months after 9/11.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of Clive’s dented, dirt-brown Cherokee, staring out the window. The West Hollywood scenery streams past me in colorful, repetitive bursts. White stucco house, palm tree, white stucco house, palm tree. Clean driveways spill into the street, beckoning the eye upwards, inwards, for a quick glimpse of the American Dream. “Armed Response” signs keep guard next to candy-colored cars and water-fattened cactuses, defending houses that peer onto the street with glassy, vacant eyes. The image lasts for just for a second or two, quickly replaced by a slight variation of the same thing. A change of car make or color. A Japanese plum tree instead of a cactus. READ MORE