Matt considers, but not for long.
“That’s different.”
“Sound judgment. See you tomorrow.”
Back home, Matt devours the Taco Bell, then showers before picking up Laurel for their evening hunt for Jazz.
Drying off, something feels wrong. Standing in his underwear in front of his mom’s mirrored closet door, Matt looks at himself and sees a stranger who has a face like his own, but a taller, bigger body. Muscles showing, and more hair on his legs and chest.
On a wall in his former bedroom there are two columns where he and Kyle used to chart their heights, weights, and dates. He gets a pencil and a measuring tape, which put him at five feet eleven — he’s grown two inches in six months. So, Dr. Anderson was right — those drastic, long-lasting aches in his joints were just growing pains.
On the scale he weighs in at 165 pounds, twenty pounds gained in those same six months.
Back in the full-length mirror he gives himself a critical once-over, then assumes muscleman poses. His stomach muscles are visible. His biceps bulge when he flexes. His neck muscles move under the skin and his always-too-big Adam’s apple looks as if it’s finally found the right person. He can’t believe how sore he is, all those eucalyptus logs up and down and up and down, and the paper route, and the walking and knocking. He could sleep a week.
He tries to find pants and shirts that aren’t too tight, but can’t. Kyle’s are still too big. Thrift shop tomorrow, he thinks, if he can find a few minutes to shop.
But he gets to Laurel’s on time and they continue their quest, which for Matt is transforming into a somber duty. Being with Laurel makes him feel strong and good, but it’s not enough to deflect his mounting doubt. His search for Jasmine makes him think of Kyle’s tunnels in Cu Chi, where all you will find is either nothing, or bad. He wonders if he’s just exhausted.
Before every knock Matt takes a deep breath and tries to jack himself up for a good presentation. Sorry to bother you, but I’m Matt Anthony and this is Laurel Kalina, and we both live here in Laguna Beach. My sister has been kidnapped...
He feels that he’s betraying Jazz with his pessimism. And maybe even belittling Kyle by comparing his search with Kyle’s, descending underground to kill or be killed.
He thinks of what Bette Page — his sophomore mythology and folklore teacher — said about the delusional Don Quixote, who imagined himself to be a knight and attacked windmills he thought were ferocious giants with a flimsy wooden sword. She said the story was intended to be funny. Matt wonders if he’s like that guy. Delusional. Funny.
No, he thinks: Jazz’s monsters are real.
After the Pageant of the Masters and a late dinner with Laurel, Matt drives her home. She’s been quiet since he told her at dinner that the job he’d done that morning was for Sara Eikenberg’s father. Parked at the curb in front of her house they kiss tenderly and for so long that Matt’s log-tortured abdominal muscles start to cramp and he has to draw back, upright into his seat.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, my ribs just hurt. It’s from the logs.”
A strange, low-grade ache comes over him.
“I feel like you’re changing,” she says.
“I’m getting bigger. Everything hurts right now.”
“No, your heart is changing.”
“I can’t stop thinking I’ll never see her again. We did fifty-nine houses today and I never had the feeling we were anywhere even close to Jazz. When that guy laughed in our faces about me chasing the kidnappers on foot, I wanted to kill him.”
“Keep the faith, Matt. God will bring her back.”
“Doesn’t that mean he took her away?”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“I’ve never believed that.”
“I do. It doesn’t mean you always get what you want. I say a prayer for Jazz every night. You should too.”
“Okay.”
“Sara Eikenberg has kind of a reputation, you know.”
“I really didn’t. She’s funny and honest about things. And trying to make herself better, at the Vortex.”
“She’s a Jokewood snob,” says Laurel.
After making sure that lights are on and the front door is unlocked, Matt gets into his sleeping bag in the garage.
He hasn’t felt this bad since the mumps when he was five. Waves of pain, dull and incessant.
He squirms within it, his mind serving up ugly half dreams: logs that turn into severed bodies and severed bodies that turn into logs. He envisions Jazz and what has happened to her and what might be happening right now. How could he have let her get away that night? Will that be the last time he sees her? He feels his irresponsibility in not even having a fucking driver’s license so he could chase after her, of not being fast and strong enough to run down that van and pull her out. He feels the weight of so many doors in town still left to knock on, while Jazz waits. And waits. He wonders if he’s abandoned his mother out in Dodge when she needs him most. He likes Sara but feels guilt for this, loves Laurel but feels her drifting away from him.
He turns on his stomach, buries his face in the pillow, and shakes.
33
He sleeps past noon and wakes up feeling better. Stronger, less pain, and ready for his labors.
First he calls Laurel and apologizes, tells her he really isn’t changing — he’s the same as ever — then goes downtown for more Taco Bell, then to the Fade in the Shade thrift shop for some bigger clothes. Shirts and shorts, two pairs of jeans, and one pair of black Converse All-Stars high-tops only a little too big — one dollar and seventy-five cents.
By one o’clock he’s in the Mystic Arts World back office with Johnny Grail, who takes an enormous toke on his desktop hookah, holds it in a long time, finally exhales a cloud of fragrant smoke. Matt declines. Grail slides a plastic-wrapped Tibetan Book of the Dead across the table to Matt, who squares it up and runs his fingers over the heavily embossed letters.
“Thanks again,” says Johnny, setting a five-dollar bill beside the book.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was for Marlon Sungaard?”
“I try to respect the privacy of my customers.”
“Well, thanks for the money.”
A conspirative smile from Grail. “Matt? I’m going to give you more than money. I’m going to give you something you might need even more someday. Come.”
Grail walks not to the door but to the far wall, which is lined with bookshelves. He pulls down a copy of the Holy Bible, and Matt thinks he’s about to get preached at by the founder of the BEL who has more than once told him that Jesus is LSD.
Instead, Grail reaches into the space where the Bible had been, and turns to Matt.
“Button on the wall,” he says. “Open, you door of perception!”
Followed by his dry cackle of a laugh, as the entire shelf swings inward, leaving an opening easily big enough for a man.
Matt follows him in.
“Lights to your right, shoulder high.”
On they come, revealing another room, probably for storage when it was designed, now outfitted with old furniture, a refrigerator, four small beds, a small kitchen and bath. Two floor heaters. No windows. Psychedelic paintings on the wall, some Christian’s and some Matt doesn’t recognize. In the back are shelves of what looks to be MAW merchandise.
“This is where you come to hide,” says Grail. “From people like, say, Furlong. We call it the Bat Cave. The kitchen is stocked and there are books to read. Nobody knows about it but us.”