⚓Part Two - Snowball in the Sun / June 2024
~ Fiction ~
Roman à clef, cher.
Created A. I. free
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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June 2024
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Part Two
⭐ Snowball in the Sun⭐
Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series
BY Leonard Earl Johnson
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© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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The Wrinkle Room door swings open framing the large, well distributed proportions of Stephanie Gregory Clifford, a.k.a., Stormy Daniels, the one-time straight-A high school newspaper editor, from the northside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Her silhouette falls on the brick floor, outlined in a noonday light rarely seen inside this dim room where earlier elderly men gave folding money to young things dangling from stripper polls.
This morning, hounds of the Louisiana press following the strong odor of a good story and free food,
pack the doorway behind Stormy D.
"Perhaps a Pulitzer-worthy saga of the lost-way-found class," two cub reporters from NOLa.com tell each other.
"If not," shrugs a third cub, "free food and beer!"
Balthazar offers hunks of Muffuletta dripping olive oil in the glass of a bearded old man wearing sun glasses and a grin. The man speaks Cajun French and lights his cigar from a Zippo flame extended at the hand of Paula Jones, who is in town from Arkansas for a hairdresser's workshop at the Morial Convention Center.
"Yes, it was sex," the old man tells her, "but we all have it.
"Some trade it for fun. More accurately for dinner, a license, a home and stability. Others dicker, ever shifting, transactional for what they want more than sex ~ domination! Think of the Taliban. Hell, think of the Republicans!"
He pulls on his cigar, drinks from his glass, thanks Balthazar for the Muffuletta and hands him his card. He is a retired television evangelist, another philosopher from Ferriday, Louisiana, home of Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley, Jimmy Swaggart, and the late ABC-TV anchor, Howard K. Smith. Now, this holy man of the electronic cross lives in Baton Rouge, and is seen regularly in New Orleans at the Kelsto Club Lounge, across from Antoine's Restaurant.
Sylvia asks His Grace and Paula Jones to stand with Stormy Daniels and Gennifer Flowers as they unveil the Republican Party's answer to Climate Change: A perpetually frozen Snow Ball, like the one they passed round the United States Senate promoting the party's Non - Global Warming Theory.
Climbing on the bar amid the Muffuletta debris Stormy lifts up the clear crystal cube. A small puff of what at first looks like frost floats out of the green alligator briefcase. The puff is not frost but actually the dying gasp from the coal-dust generated freezer unit built into the green briefcase.
Condensation trickles down the outside of the cube. Inside, a growing puddle floats a small round...
"What is that?" one of the cub reporters asks.
It appears to be a small ball of ice, perhaps melted down from one of those large ice balls fashionably favored in today's upscale watering holes, lounges, and The Wrinkle Room.
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"Ah,
bless us all in our withering Final Days,"
says the elderly evangelist, raising his prayerful hands over the congregation gobbling and quaffing in communion with their unquenchable faith.
A lion of New Orleans commercial television leans into the ear of Peggy Scott Laborde, his local PBS counterpart, and says:
"I think Senator Inhofe's
is melting."
The snowball, reduced to a bit of flotsam, drips condensation on the Muffuletta wrappings and
scraps.
The three apostles of the flesh look at each other and burst into laughter. The Evangelist draws on his cigar and blows smoke.
Sylvia and Balthazar gather the briefcase and flee through the door into the light.
~ to be continued next month ~
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Lagniappe du Jour
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They are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years. .JPG) ~ ~ ~ LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world, Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER, and historically at Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans publication of the It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana |
posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 3:52 AM
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