A Thousand Steps

3

Matt sits on an upended red bucket in his driveway, folding and rubber-banding the Register afternoon final editions, two heavy bales of which have just been muscled to the ground by his supervisor, Tommy Amici. Tommy brings the papers no later than one o’clock and they must be delivered no later than five. If he delivers the papers later than five, he’ll get complaints, which make collections harder. Matt is enrolled in a shortened day work-study program at school to make this possible. The route earns him twelve dollars and fifty cents every other week.

Collections are the first and third Sunday mornings of the month. Sundays he doesn’t deliver: the Register morning final is too heavy for kids on bikes to throw.

And, Matt has learned, the houses that complain are less likely to pay a Christmas bonus. So he tries his best to porch the papers. Just last week Mr. Coiner had cussed Matt out for a late delivery. Ten minutes after five! A month ago, an older teenager had told Matt that his dad was sick of his paper being late, then beaned him with an orange.

Matt has come to understand that people — especially older people — want their news like, immediately. Just hours after it happens. They don’t want to wait for the evening TV. So, newspapers aren’t just important, they’re vital. And when they’re late or soggy or come apart and get blown around, the paperboy is the one to blame.

Tommy kneels, cuts the twine ties with a pocketknife, and Matt carries a thick load of papers back to his bucket.

Tommy asks what he always asks. “Jasmine home?”

Matt answers what he always answers, that he doesn’t know where she is. He sits again and begins folding today’s papers, twice over, and slipping on the rubber bands. After doing this every day for two years and four months, he barely has to think about it.

Tommy is recently arrived in California from New Jersey. He’s not one of the hippie freaks who’ve been pouring into town since last year’s Summer of Love in San Francisco, the ones Matt sees tripping on acid on Main Beach, or hitchhiking Laguna Canyon with joints in their mouths, or washing their skinny white bodies with people’s garden hoses, or hanging around the Mystic Arts World head shop, or scoring drugs across the street in front of Taco Bell, freaks for sure, all hair and tie-dye, sandals and headbands and dope, dope, dope. No, Tommy smokes cigarettes and has the Jersey accent, wears his T-shirts tight with the sleeves rolled up, and his hair in a pompadour. Drives a white Chevy Malibu with a Register logo on the door. Stares at Jazz like a hopeful dog. He’s at least ten years older than his sister, which Matt thinks is too old.

“You hear about the high school girl dead on the beach?” Tommy asks.

Matt feels so bad about Bonnie he can’t put her into words. “No.”

“Bonnie Stratmeyer,” says Tommy. “This morning the cops said she probably got caught in a riptide and drowned. Then washed up. Later they said she didn’t have any history of taking early morning swims in a cold ocean so they weren’t ruling out a fall from the cliff above where they found her. No witnesses. She’d been an official missing person for two months. The autopsy will give them a lot more to go on.”

Tommy stands and slips his knife back into his pocket then wraps the cut twine around one hand. “I got another call from Mrs. Coiner,” he says. “Try to keep the paper out of her sprinklers.”

Matt powers his Register-burdened Heavy-Duti south on Glenneyre, hitting his targets like a quarterback — the Raiders’ Daryle Lamonica maybe, his favorite — throwing four quick completions to the Heun, Parlett, Cabang, and Rigby houses before heading up Legion, around the high school, and onto Los Robles with four more completions, one of them a bomb to the very tough Murrel house, hidden behind a defensive front line of blooming bougainvillea.

Between throws he’s off the seat, zig-zagging and grinding up the hills, wiping his sweaty forehead on the shoulders of the canvas delivery bag that holds the papers. He breathes hard, his skinny legs strong as pistons from doing this for 850 straight days. Eight completions so far, forty more to go.

At the dreaded Coiner home he skids to a stop, kickstands the bike and hand-carries the paper all the way to their porch, the sprinklers watering his legs and their poodle Gigi barking furiously at him through the screen door. Then runs heavy legged back to his bike.

He works his way uphill and takes a break at his highest house on Bluebird Canyon Drive. Pants and rubs his face with a shop rag from the carrier. Heart thumping like a marching drum. Far below, the Pacific is a spangled silver mirror in this afternoon light. A distant barge and small sailboats look like toys on glass. He’d like to get that in a painting. Painting is difficult and expensive. His paintings are all ugly and he’s never actually finished one. Paints them over until he has to stop. He uses discarded house paint they save for him at Coast Hardware, ghastly colors not found in nature.

By the time he gets to Miranda Zahara’s house she’s outside washing her red VW Beetle. Brown bikini, brown skin. He stops behind the car, one foot on the ground and one on the pedal. His T-shirt is soaked through and the nearly empty canvas carrier feels like a sopping hot jacket.

She gives him a gloomy look then continues spraying the hose water along the rounded Beetle roof. “Did you hear about Bonnie?” she asks.

Matt nods, lobs the Zahara’s paper almost to the porch. “I saw her on the beach this morning.”

Miranda looks at him, the hose water sparkling into the air. “What... how did she... look?”

“Well, she was lying on one of those big rocks down off Thalia. She had a cop’s jacket over her and her hair had seaweed in it and she was dead.”

Matt feels important giving Miranda this terrible news. He doesn’t know why.

“She was cool,” says Miranda, redirecting the water to the roof. “Not stuck-up at all. I think it’s very suspicious that she would be at the beach that early, swimming. After running away from home, or whatever she did.”

“It weirds me out, too.”

“Want a drink?”

He brings the hose to his mouth at an angle, feels the cool water rushing in, gulps it down and hands the hose back.

“Where did you and Jazz go last night?” he asks.

“The ’Piper, to see Austin Overton.”

“Good show?”

“Far out. New songs. He’s such a god.”

Matt had snuck into an Austin Overton set at the Sandpiper a few months ago. Didn’t like his music and didn’t like him, but the girls in the audience sure did.

“Where’d you go after?”

“I left early and met some friends at Diver’s Cove. Jazz wanted to stay. My mom said your mom called and Jazz didn’t come home last night.”

Matt nods, wondering if one of the Sandpiper owners — brothers Chip or Chuck — might have seen Jazz leave. And if so, seen whether she was alone or with somebody.

Miranda gives Matt the hose again and he takes another long drink before handing it back. She watches him drink. “You know, that Phisohex soap works good on zits.”

He averts his eyes. Dr. Bill Anderson has recently recommended the same expensive acne cleanser. And reassured Matt that his long-aching joints are only growing pains.

“Thanks, Miranda.”

“I mean, you hardly have any, but—”

“Yeah, right on.”

Miranda folds the hose over and holds it with both hands, pinching off the flow. “Sorry. Look, Matt, we were just groovin’ to Austin Overton last night. We had a couple of beers is all. Whatever she did after, I’m sure was cool. Maybe she went down to Thousand Steps with the gang. If so, she’s probably back home by now.”

“I hope you’re right. But it’s the first time she’s not come home.”

“You’re worried.”

“Seeing Bonnie made me worried.”

“It would me, too.”