A Thousand Steps

43

Sara Eikenberg’s favorite restaurant is La Cave in Costa Mesa. It’s hidden underneath the spacious High Time Liquor store, and it really feels like a cave when Matt walks in behind her. His hardly-ever-worn Sunday trousers are tight but he keeps his back straight and his stomach sucked up and his surfboard-pattern Hawaiian shirt untucked to help cover his over-snug pants.

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust: brick archways overhead, a central chandelier, dark walls hung with sconces and lanterns that look medieval. The booths are thickly padded red leather, the tables have white tablecloths and flowers.

Every table and booth is occupied. Matt’s keenly aware of being watched, and of Sara being watched. He feels as if he’s surrounded by people who notice things and keep secrets. Sara’s father has an ownership share in La Cave, which means Sara has a table whenever she wants it.

The maître d’ ushers them to a two-top tucked up against a brick archway with an iron wall sconce throwing faint orange light. He hands them menus and adjusts a standing tapestry for privacy.

“Very nice to see you again, Miss Eikenberg.” A glance at Matt. “Welcome, sir.”

“So great to be here,” says Matt.

“He works for Dad.”

“Then you work for the best. Would you like to see the wine list, Miss Eikenberg?”

“Of course, Marcus, thank you,” and Marcus is off.

Matt knows that the moment has come to say something intelligent. Something about this place and what a privilege it is to be here with her. But his mind shuts down as he looks at Sara, the hair untangled and brushed back on one side, the sleek black dress, the plum lipstick, the dark brown eyes trained on him with such casual intensity.

“How come you asked Laurel to the Summer of Eternal Love instead of me?”

“She’s my girlfriend.”

A displeased glance. “Oh. So how did it go tonight, the door-to-door?”

Matt explains the new setup — Laurel no longer with him, Bruce stepping up in his larger-than-life manner, bulldozing or charming his way into home after home, leaving dozens of pleased-to-help, puzzled, admiring, and sometimes annoyed citizens in his wake.

To Matt’s surprise, they had logged another eighty-five full searches and dismissed thirty-four houses because of bikes, skateboards, or other toys in the yards, driveways, and porches.

“Your dad sounds like quite a guy,” says Sara. “He left the family six years ago, now he’s just showed up out of nowhere?”

Matt explains his father’s return as best he can. He’s not sure what “wanting his family back” or “put this sinful world back right” really mean, and he admits he’s not clear on who his father really is, and what he’s trying to accomplish beyond finding Jasmine.

“I don’t really understand him,” says Matt.

That brown-eyed look from Sara. Same as Jazz: dubious and somehow ahead of things.

“Maybe it’s that simple, Matt. He wants his family back so his world can be right again. What’s so mystifying about that?”

“Nothing, when you put it that way. But he’s hateful of all kinds of people, and he can be violent, too. He drinks a lot and went from woman to woman before Mom and after. So when he shows up ready to continue where he left off, I don’t trust him.”

“I wouldn’t either — he abandoned you at ten years old. Your own dad. See, but that’s the whole human deal right there: people change. We have to. We evolve.”

Sara the Evolver, thinks Matt. He had no idea when he first saw her at Thousand Steps beach that day, with her pink skateboard with the white daisies, being photographed with a giant near-naked muscleman, that he, Matt, could possibly be sitting with her in one of the great restaurants of the world a few short weeks later. He feels like he’s been beamed from Earth to another planet to confront an alien being so intense and smart and simply beautiful that she takes his words away.

Strong emotions, but he doesn’t know what they are. He loves Laurel Kalina, and has told her so, though she called it lust. And although nothing about him is different except his physical size, Laurel has told him more than once that he is changing. Is he betraying Laurel right now, right here, this very second? It feels that way. Are feelings ever not true?

Sara orders a Beaulieu Georges de Latour wine from 1962 and Marcus is back soon, uncorking the bottle with a fluid brevity that Matt admires. When she tastes it and nods, Marcus leaves the cork and is gone.

“I can’t believe my dad actually encourages me to drink wine here,” she says. “Two glasses of this will put us nearly on our butts,” she says. “Do not let me order after-dinner brandies. But I am going to break my vegetarian vow tonight. The steaks here are out of sight.”

She asks Matt to drive home, a few side streets then a ten-mile run down Pacific Coast Highway to Laguna.

Matt knows the basic shift pattern from the Westfalia but he’s completely unprepared for the thrust of the Porsche and the impossible acceleration. The gear shifts come up fast, but unlike the Volkswagen’s, this clutch is deep and heavy and the transmission is decisive. It feels like every part down there is rounded and machined and polished perfectly — no edges or shearing rough spots as in the van. It’s like riding an animal made of stainless steel and a little bit of leather to sit on.

Matt steers south in the dark.

“You’re a good driver, Matt. But you do need some practice with the shifting.”

“I feel like I really have to pay attention.”

“Eighty feels like forty.”

“Jeez.”

“There’s a place across from the Orange Inn I want to show you,” she says.

Matt pulls into the right turn lane and gets off for the Orange Inn. It’s closed now, well past midnight. The headlights rake the colorful little snack shop. They make a peanut butter chocolate shake that is, in his opinion, the finest shake on Earth. Sara directs him down the frontage strip to a rough dirt road that crosses beneath PCH, then climbs a hillock dozed flat at the top. There’s room for four or five cars but they have the view to themselves.

Matt can see Coast Highway and the cottages of Crystal Cove in the distance, and the glittering black Pacific all the way to the stars.

“Look at that moon—”

Sara turns his face and kisses him deeply and firmly. Moves her hand to his chest and hoists her knee onto his thigh. Her leg is warm and heavy and it sends a jolt of electricity through him. She’s wearing the same spicy-leathery perfume she wore that morning at Emerald Bay. He tastes wine and gorgonzola but mostly the great human life of her. Her temples are damp and he can feel her jaw muscles working.

She moves her hand down to his too tight Sunday trousers. Finds the embarrassing bulge.

“What’s this?”

“Um, you know.”

“I do know. So how about some shifting practice? Get your shift pattern down so it’s natural?”

“Okay, Sara.”

“Okay. First gear is just a short throw, pretty much straight out.”

Matt winces with pleasure as she shifts him into first.

“Then, clutch in and straight down into second.”

Matt feels helpless, like his willpower doesn’t apply. Her fingers are firm and warm and his thoughts come fast but incompletely.

“Got it.”

“Good. Now, third’s a long one up and to the right, not sharp right but a smoooooth glide up next to where first was, but further. Give it a good firm push. There.”

Matt gasps and Sara does too.

“Now, pretty much straight down into fourth, Matt. Good, I can feel you getting the rhythm. Just rest in fourth. Savor the moment and feel the speed. Okay, now let’s put her into fifth and let this race car go.”

She shifts from fourth to fifth gear and by then Matt’s eyes are squeezed shut and he’s breathing fast and loud. She keeps her hand on the shifter.

Matt feels the final urgent collapse of his self-control. Then the surge, wild, tidal, and warm. Time does a funny trick, either speeds up or slows down but he’s not sure which.

“I like fifth,” he croaks.

“You liked them all. You are so sweet. Maybe for our next test drive, I’ll steer the hippie van and you can help me shift.”

“Okay.”

“I have to get you home, Matt. I’ve got crew at sunrise at the Bay Club. I’ll drive now.”

After Sara drops him off at Third Street, Matt drives the Westfalia south on PCH. There’s no way he can sleep. He’s more than just awake; he feels alive in new ways. He feels a new kind of energy moving through him, very strong and crackling in all directions at once. He wants to do everything he likes, right now, all at the same time.

So he pulls over at Calliope, digs Jasmine’s eight-track Disraeli Gears from the shoe box on the seat, and plugs it in. He’s really hungry, so he gets Oreos from the cooler, and a can of this new Tropic Surf soda, cheap because they’re promoting it in the stores now. Actually, he would drink more wine if he had it. Tonight was the first time he’d had more than a beer to drink — two at the most — and he’d been told what a great buzz wine gives you because it’s strong. A little bit makes him want more. Now he knows why old people drink all the time.

He also wants very much to go fishing right now, but night-fishing the rocks alone is dangerous and the waves today were big.

But most of all in this cluster of desires, he wants to experience tonight’s test drive with Sara Eikenberg again, her heavy warm leg pressing against his own, her tastes and smells and the sweat on her temples and her hand and what she did for him.

He pulls onto Pacific Coast Highway and goes through the Westfalia’s humble gears, remembering.

He drives up into hilly central Laguna, where he and his father will continue their search in the morning.

The van chugs up the streets and Matt scans the houses. Cream plays Matt’s favorite, “Tales of Brave Ulysses,” as he notices white curtains lifting on the breeze through an open window on Brooks Street, Laurel’s window, her light on because she likes to write in bed at night.

I’m sorry, Laurel.

Then an hour of random streets, thinking about his sister, his heart turning heavy with the fact that she’s been missing almost three weeks now. Anything can happen in three weeks. In three minutes. They re-kidnapped her in less than that. He can’t help but feeling she’s further away than ever. He tells himself that she’s here in this town because he saw her here. If he can’t trust his own 20/10 vision, what can he trust?

Two girls stride down the sidewalk toward PCH in lock-step, arms joined, laughing. One could be Jazz but isn’t.

Suddenly tired and sad, Matt drives past Laurel’s house once more, then heads for his mother’s barn in Dodge City, wondering if Laurel will sense his betrayal.

He turns the news station up loud.

Matt turns up the volume even higher to catch the rest of the story, but that’s it for now.

He has no trouble identifying suspects: Bayott and his Interpol comrades.

Comrades of Marlon Sungaard.