The hippies regard him without getting up from their beach towels and sleeping bags and their Mystic Arts World Afghan rugs. Flame shadows move on their faces and their cheeks hollow when they hit the joint. They’re hairy and young and dressed for a different age — the Medieval maybe, Matt thinks — or maybe a whole different planet.
Two of the men are older than the others and they have sharp, un-stoned eyes. They remind him of Longton, his Diver’s Cove mugger.
“I’m Matt. I’m going to sleep on that flat spot over there tonight. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Then just don’t bring any. Basic Karma, bro.”
“Hi, Matt.”
“Peace, Matt.”
“You look too young to be a narc, Matt.”
“I am too young for that,” he says. “It’s been a long day. Good night.”
He climbs a gentle rise and settles onto the flat spot. Unrolls his pad and sleeping bag and wads up a jacket for a pillow. He’s got a good downhill view of the canyon and Dodge City and Laguna Canyon Road. He can see the cars backed up near the Festival of Arts grounds and the Irvine Bowl amphitheater and he thinks about how long ago it seems that he was perched in the eucalyptus tree, eating peanuts and gazing down on Laurel in her tableau. He knows she was crushed when his father removed her from the Jazz Anthony search posse that Laurel had helped create, but Matt couldn’t see then — and still can’t see now — how having her around Bruce and his gun and three probably dangerous kidnappers would be a good idea.
Turning to look behind him he sees the lights of Top of the World and the houses scattered on the upper flank of the canyon and the blue-domed bell tower of the Vortex of Purity rising well-lit in the night.
Matt hears a boom like artillery. A white firework rises into the western sky and bursts, reaching mightily into the black, then the million sparks arch and settle into the ocean. Another big thump, then a red explosion, suddenly overlapped by an enormous blue blossom that hangs in the sky for a few seconds before melting. Matt watches, wishing he could get some of that beauty onto his sketchbook but knowing he probably can’t. Maybe someday, he thinks, when he’s a master of color like Van Gogh, and has the best paints and brushes money can buy.
He lies back on the sleeping bag and adjusts the jacket/pillow. To keep his soaked wallet safe from nighttime thieves like the Longton-esque creeps around the campfire, he pushes it all the way down into the front pocket of his jeans. Since getting three gallons at the Chevron on PCH, his wallet now contains three dollars and sixty-five cents, his driver’s and first fishing licenses, and high school grad shots of Kyle and Jasmine. He figures the pictures might be ruined but the rest will dry out in time.
When he closes his eyes he feels the rise and fall of the ocean he spent nearly an hour in today. Hears the whump and pop of fireworks. A cold eddy ripples down his back. He knows he was foolish to follow that fish but he’s glad he did it and he’d do it again, though maybe not in the near future. He has enough fish to last two weeks, even sharing it with Laurel and his dad.
He thinks of Hamsa Luke, and if Luke was really a drug kingpin and even if he was why they had to shoot him. He was trying to escape? Don’t they always say that? Darnell would know how it happened. She might tell him if he called. But how long can you talk to a cop before they trace the call and bust you?
He’s more tired than he can remember. More tired than mumps. More tired than doing his paper route with a cold so bad he could hardly breathe, coughing in pain on a winter afternoon that was dark at five o’clock. More tired than hauling eight thousand pounds of logs up- and downhill eight hours straight for Sara Eikenberg.
Again he feels that great ocean lifting and lowering, inhaling and exhaling, and the pitch and roll of his body within it. Remembers from freshman biology that his blood is fifty-four percent salt water. He feels the wild fish inside him and knows he’ll wake up strong in the morning.
Jazz.
Laurel.
Sara.
Mom.
Donuts with Dad at six.
Only a few more doors to knock on...
50
Side by side on swiveling stools at Dave’s Donuts, Matt and his father ponder the color-coded graph paper maps. Bruce’s Stetson is on his knee. He has apologized to Dave for calling him a boy but his loud voice turns the apology into another embarrassment for the man. Dave’s locals look at Bruce with silent superiority.
On the maps, Matt sees that most of the remaining houses are in the hills of central Laguna and downtown, a few in the canyon. South and north Laguna are pretty much a wrap except for a few “nobody-homes” and three “come-back-laters.” Laurel has let him park the Westfalia in her garage, though she seemed less happy to see him than usual. She said the Pageant was beginning to bore her, and her writing was going poorly. Matt blames his test drive with Sara, but how could Laurel know?
With his van hidden away in her garage, they’ll use Bruce’s pickup truck, a dented black F-150 with Oklahoma plates. Matt wonders, if Furlong comes to arrest him, can his father, as a former lawman, protect him? And would he? Bruce isn’t happy about his son running away from the law.
“A lot of these places are close together,” Matt says.
“How are your feet?”
“Sore.”
“I still can’t believe you’re dumb enough to jump in after that fish. Get us a couple more peanut-chocolates to go, Matt. I’ll wait outside.”
Bruce stands and tips his hat to a glowering young man, then his boot heels sound on the hardwood floor and out. Matt puts the graph paper maps into his folder, goes to the counter, and orders the donuts. Dave rings him up in silence. Matt wants to apologize for his father but knows it would just make it worse all over again.
“These are the best donuts in the world,” he says.
“Feel free to not come back anytime you like.”
With Matt’s paper route temporarily abandoned, he and his father press the search straight through the afternoon.
Bruce is inspired and persuasive. And their increased rate of skipping homes occupied by families, the elderly, and the otherwise harmless speeds everything up. Bruce is fast about the searches, too, clomping down hallways, throwing open doors and slamming them shut, talking cheerfully to himself or anyone within earshot the whole time, clomping back to Matt with that let’s-get-moving set to his jaw.
By four in the afternoon they’ve knocked on eighty-one doors, gotten zero refusals. Which leaves thirty-two residential doors unknocked-on in the whole city.
Only sunset — nearly four hours from now — can stop them.
“We can do this, Dad,” says Matt, wondering if he’s cheerleading his father, or himself.
They knock and talk and plead and search.
But for the first time since this plan took shape with Laurel, Matt is catching whiffs of a real possibility that they’ll walk away from that last house without Jasmine. He won’t quite admit it, but sees that it’s almost certainly going to happen that way.
Meaning she’s not in Laguna anymore at all, unless she’s stashed in the back room of someone’s business.
Meaning he’ll have to knock on every door in California, America, perhaps the entire world.
In Laguna! I’m in the...
They leave house after house without finding Jasmine, or even a hint of Jasmine. One man offers his condolences, saying a girl gone that long isn’t coming back. His words hit Matt like a punch he sees coming but can’t slip.
In the evening sunlight he consults the tattering map tablet.