The hound turned and ducked into the old Los Angeles depot near 7th & Main, and bottles rolled and rattled across the back once more, signaling arrival.
Upon waking in his seat in downtown Los Angeles, Armen stepped into the city. He walked to the Republic Liquor Store, up to the Nickel, and then circled around to Skid Row and then walked along 6th to Wilshire Boulevard. He wandered west down Wilshire past Good Samaritan Hospital, MacArthur Park, and then Lafayette Park. He propped himself against a fence, and fell asleep.
A rangy, neglected tea tree reached through the diamonds. He heard something rustle behind him. He turned and leaned over get a better look. It was a small, sudden, squirrel-like sound. He smelled the omnipresent stale urine, but no particular body odor. Then he spotted a fat little animal. It looked like a little porcupine, or a hedgehog, only with a long narrow beak. It was dark in complexion, so he could barely see it, even as he looked directly at it.
He jumped slightly, and muttered, “is that a bird?”
“That’s a beud,” came the casual reply from under the tea tree.
“Sheesh, and it talks!”
“It talks.”
“What kind of b-bird? Are you some kind of parrot?”
“A beud of paradise.”
“That’s a plant.”
“Not this beud. This beud’s a beud.”
It spoke in a peculiar dialect of the Queen’s Commonwealth that Armen couldn’t quite place. He asked, “say, where are you from?”
“Paradise.”
Armen woke as someone tripped over his feet. He continued to Rancho La Brea, and waited for the tar pits to open.
That day, he visited all the ice age beasts of Pleistocene Southern California. After he bade them all farewell, he caught a bus to the Employment Development Department, and from there got on board at a supermarket across town.