“It’s a long shot, Julie,” says Bruce. “We know that.”
The feral boys of Dodge City whoop like warriors and run alongside the van as it putts down Woodland. They’ve got feather headbands, plastic bows, and rubber-tipped arrows, some of which stick to the windows. Matt swerves left and sends them scattering.
They get Julie in her chair over the threshold of the little red barn and into the main room. In the middle of the room she raises a hand and Matt stops.
“I love my home,” she says. “I want us to be happy here, Matt. You, me, Jasmine, and Kyle.”
“Don’t forget me,” says Bruce.
She gives him a sad look. “I didn’t.”
Matt glances at his father’s stricken expression, then stares at the dizzying fleur-de-lis pattern of the floor. He’s sick to death of his mother and father, can’t wait to get out of here.
He stands and leans over Julie, hugging her softly, counting the seconds. Are five seconds enough to signify warmth and sincerity?
“Welcome home,” he says. “There’s halibut steaks in the freezers. I’m heading out now. I got my route back as of today, so, it’s business as usual.”
Except for Furlong, he thinks.
Julie gives Bruce a frank look. “You can hit the road, too. I could use some time to myself.”
Bruce skedaddles but Matt stays put. There’s one thing he needs to know before he gets out of here. It’s been eating at him since that day.
“Mom, when you got hurt out at the festival, did you slip and fall, or did you jump?”
When his mother looks at him, Matt sees the shame on her face.
“I thought I could fly. I’m so sorry, Matt. I’ll never get like that again. Ever.”
Matt nods. “No, don’t.”
Halfway to Third Street to drop off his father, Bruce breaks the silence.
“Come on by tonight after work. We’ll stash the van in the garage, get drive-through and have a few drinks. I wouldn’t mind some company.”
“Sure, Dad.”
“I don’t blame her for hating me.”
“She wants to believe you.”
After dropping off Bruce, he hides the Westfalia in Laurel’s garage.
Sore feet or not, he’s relieved to be back on the Heavy-Duti again, delivering newspapers, doing something he’s good at. It’s nice to be earning money. His bigger muscles mean more speed.
Furlong lurks all around him, Matt knows, but something in his failure to save Jazz has lessened his fear. Furlong can throw him into Moby Cop and the DA can charge him and the judge can toss him into kiddie prison and Dr. Mary Hamilton can throw away the key. But they can’t make him twice betray someone who has trusted him, given him work when he was almost broke, even given him a Bat Cave to hide in if he needs it. Given him discounts on day-old muffins and given work to Jazz, too. As weird and mind-blown and occasionally devious as Johnny Grail and his BEL might be, they’ve stood by him.
Matt porches Coiner’s paper over the sprinklers that he knows the old fart turns on this time every day in order to mess with him. He out-pedals the slobbering St. Bernard, Hercules, down Oak Street, lofts the Reiten paper over the oleander and fires the Shostag afternoon final straight into the open garage where Mrs. Shostag wants it.
He’s just not afraid of Hercules anymore.
Furlong either.
He finishes his route early. Leaving him three hours of daylight in which to find another paper airplane from Jasmine.
Little Wing is his chance. It’s registered in his mind’s eye. He can see it clearly and perfectly, same as he saw that behemoth halibut in the shallow water or Laurel Kalina’s expression in the Gauguin tableau or Sara Eikenberg’s doubtful brown eyes. Little Wing waits inside him, the shape of hope, waiting to be filled.
He cruises the central and eastern neighborhoods, to which Laguna’s prevailing onshore breeze would carry a paper airplane. His sharp eyes scan from trees to streets, rooftops to gutters, hedges to lawns. Sidewalks and gardens, car hoods and birdbaths.
Moby Cop trundles across the intersection of Thurston and Temple Hills so he quickly slides in behind a wall of Italian cypress trees that shelters a house from the street, lays his bike and himself down on cool grass. He watches through the front spokes, and waits.
Five minutes later he’s ready to go, when Moby Cop comes up the street from behind him. Pure Furlong, to double back like that. Matt’s heart beats against the ground as the van passes by.
He gives the cops another few minutes, then gets himself back down Temple Hills Drive to Rim Rock — watching, watching, watching for the neat pale rectangle that will be Little Wing.
Later, in the fresh new dark, he sees a white shape lilting on the street near the gutter. And something round beside it. He skids to a stop and looks down at the Sunshine Inn bag and the paper beverage cup nearby.
52
Matt and his dad finish their late Husky Boys at Matt’s old Third Street home, the Westfalia stowed in the garage he’s lived in for two years.
“Try this,” says his father. He pours the Colonel Givens into the final ice of Matt’s large soft drink cup. “To Jasmine.”
They lift their cups and drink. Matt feels the fumes in his sinuses, the burn in his throat.
“Strong,” he says.
“It can give you strength and take it away.”
Matt tells his father about the bottle of wine he drank with Sara Eikenberg, how the alcohol stayed with him for hours and made him want more. Matt thinks of the gear-shifting lesson but says nothing of it. Bruce says that a restaurant serving wine to sixteen-year-olds is proof of California’s moral rot.
“She must like you to take you out to La Cave. Pricey.”
“Her dad’s an owner.”
“I imagine a successful home-builder owns a lot of things. I would like to have married rich but I married poor instead. I knew when I first saw Julie that she was the one for me. She took some convincing but I finally got her attention.”
“How did you do it?”
Bruce smiles, takes another sip of Colonel Givens. “I used flowers and poems and restaurants. They say the shortest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I’ll tell you, your mom can eat like a great white shark. Especially if you put something good in front of her.”
“I’ve seen her,” Matt says. “I cook calico bass in the skillet with butter and garlic, then bake ’em with bread crumbs. She’ll eat three, four plates, plus tater tots and canned beets.”
“And she never gains weight,” says Bruce. “I have to say she’s still the most attractive woman I’ve ever known.”
Matt sips again but he can already feel the bourbon speeding up his mind, pushing his thoughts closer together.
“I like Laurel and Sara in different ways,” he says.
“How so?”
Matt describes his sudden crush on Laurel while learning to write cursive in fourth grade, how She’s beautiful! was one of his early original cursive sentences. How he looked at her when he thought he could get away with it, and talked to her sometimes, all the rest of that year and through fifth grade too. Then, how in sixth grade he started feeling different toward her, more than friends, serious and all like that, which made him afraid to talk to her for fear he’d spoil things. Same, all the way through middle school and into his sophomore year of high school. But this weird feeling for her, growing. Until just a few weeks ago when he ran into her downtown and he looked at her under the traffic light at Forest and PCH and had this crazy burst of like, energy that made him accompany her across the crosswalk. Then she invited him to see her in the Pageant and him climbing the eucalyptus tree to see for free, and this powerful emotion that grabbed him by his insides and wouldn’t let go. And still hadn’t.