“No sex though, you said.”
“Yeah. No. We make out a lot. Used to. And she let me get to second, once.”
His father takes another sip of Colonel Givens and Matt does too. Then launches into first seeing Sara down at Thousand Steps looking for Jazz, and Sara was being photographed with a huge oiled muscleman in these horndog poses where she looked like she was having some badass fun, the opposite of Laurel looking innocent in the Gauguin tableau. And how Sara invited him to her Evolution ceremony that night at the Vortex of Purity, then later gave him the job of moving twenty cut-up eucalyptus trees, eight thousand goddamned pounds of logs up and down her driveway with just a wheelbarrow. And how Sara took him out to dinner at La Cave, which is quite possibly the finest restaurant in the world.
“I’m sure it is,” says Bruce with a knowing smile. “Sex after?”
Matt shakes his head, still unwilling to confess the test drive to his father. He’s not even sure if that was sex. If not, pretty close.
“So,” he says. “I like Laurel because she’s beautiful and smart and nice. And I like Sara because she’s beautiful and smart and brave.”
“Brave how?”
“She rides skateboards and drives sports cars.”
“You’re lucky to have two nice chicks after you. Especially in this town, where drugs and perversion are tolerated. If not worshipped.”
“Yeah, I dig it.”
Bruce leans forward on the little living room couch where Julie watched her TV for years. It’s more than strange for Matt — especially with the Colonel Givens surging through him — to see his father there. Matt’s got the blue chair with the view of the street and the GTE building.
“Matt, what makes you think Mom wants to believe me, when all she does is ride me like a stolen bike?”
Matt has to think about this. He wants his parents to get along and maybe love each other again someday but look what Bruce did to her. The gap between that, and what he says he wants, seems too wide for Julie to cross.
“Has she ever said anything to indicate that to you? That she wants to believe me?” asks Bruce.
“No.”
“Just all fire and brimstone?”
“She’s protecting herself.”
“From me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I truly wish I could change her mind.”
“You could try the flowers and poems and restaurants again.”
“That’s funny, son.”
Bruce takes a swig and replenishes both cups. Matt drinks again too, his thoughts bursting like fireworks on the dark screen in his head.
“I could show you how to catch calico bass,” he says, smiling. “To cook for her.”
“I was never good off those rocks,” he says. “Scared the hell out of me.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Dads put on shows for their children. I always wanted to be your mighty man.”
They drink through midnight. Topics come and topics go. The Angels’ sorry season, Cassius Clay, the war, guns, politics, assassinations.
“Mark these words, Matt — Khrushchev says they’ll feed us little bits of socialism until America becomes communist. He says we will fall like overripe fruit into their hands. Son, anybody who doesn’t see that Vietnam, civil rights, the riots, and assassinations are all parts of the world communist conspiracy is not a man. He is a naive boob. We have nukes for a reason. Moscow should know that. President Johnson just doesn’t have the nuts to use them.”
Thoughts swirling, Matt considers nuclear war. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. Bodies and gigantic sores and deformed babies. The duck-and-cover exercises at El Morro Elementary School. The Mystic Arts World poster: IN THE EVENT OF A NUCLEAR ATTACK, PUT YOUR HEAD BETWEEN YOUR KNEES AND KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE.
“That’s why we had the bomb shelter,” Bruce says solemnly. “I’d build another one if I had anybody to look out for.”
“That’s why you want your family back?”
Bruce drinks and stands as if he’s decided something. Then sits back down.
“Yeah, it’s all linked together.”
“I love you, Dad, but I don’t think I want to live with you.”
Bruce gives him a furrowed look. Matt’s vertical hold is now on the fritz, like his mom’s RCA every October for the World Series.
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to have your family back,” Matt says. “My thoughts are coming out of order. Sorry.”
“Why don’t you want to live with me?”
“Freedom.”
“I was the same way.”
“Did you kill a lot of people in Korea?”
“Not nearly enough.”
Matt watches the GTE building blipping up and down and up again. “Man, I’m plastered.”
“First time for hard stuff?”
Matt nods, takes a small sip.
“You’ll learn to pace yourself. One good hangover is all it takes.”
“I think I’ll have one. The room is spinning.”
“Maybe crash in your old room. If Furlong knocks on the door I’ll steer him out of here.”
53
Matt wakes with first light, throws up, showers. He looks in on his father, always an early riser, sitting up in bed and making notes in a small black book.
In the dark garage Matt starts up the Westfalia and backs it into the driveway.
A white sedan pulls in behind him, blocking his exit.
Furlong, he knows. Matt knew it had to happen. You can’t vanish in a small town forever unless someone is holding you prisoner.
He curses, kills the engine, and climbs out. Leans against the van, trying to figure some way around this. He’s too hungover to run, almost too hungover to stand. The ache in his head feels permanent and he wants to go back to bed for the rest of the week. But he will surrender with dignity.
The driver’s window goes down on Brigit Darnell. She’s in street clothes, Matt sees, probably on her way to work.
“Get over here,” she says.
Matt shoves off the van, his brain sloshing in his skull, goes to the car window.
“I should arrest you.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t be an ass, Matt.”
“I won’t.”
“Lean closer.”
He does, smells coffee, looks at her frowning, pretty face, then away.
“Have you found any more paper airplanes?” she asks.
“No, ma’am.”
“I have. Cheryl Cruz, 242 Hillview. Her cat was pawing it in the backyard. She took it away, looked at it briefly, then wadded it up and threw it in the trash. Which was picked up yesterday. But she remembered the shape, and the print on the paper — musical chords and lyrics.”
“This is important.”
“I’ve been going door-to-door with the originals you gave us. In my spare time, while my husband and daughter wait for me to come home and make meals. While you hide from the police and drink God knows what. It’s still on your breath.”
“Sorry. It was a lot.”
“I could lose a promotion for helping you,” says Darnell. “Or worse. I’m in a cross fire at work, caught between cops who would pull out the stops to find Jasmine, and cops who think a missing runaway is as waste of time.”
Matt doesn’t know what to say. He looks at Darnell, feeling the tidal swoosh of the bourbon still in him.
“Matt, you shouldn’t be here. The day shift is coming on now, and someone’s going to spot you. Your sister is out there somewhere, Matt. Find her.”
Matt’s Sunday collections seem feverish and eternal. The Heavy-Duti weighs a ton. Hercules almost gets him. Matt grinds it out on willpower, water from his clients’ hoses, and pit stops at two parks to use the heads.
The only good thing is no Furlong.