A Thousand Steps

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.

“Eight more downtown, Dad. And that one in the canyon from yesterday that didn’t answer.”

The downtown homes yield nothing.

They make the long walk out Laguna Canyon Road, where, finally, exhausted and starved, Matt comes to the last unsearched house in Laguna.

It’s the ramshackle wood-sided two-story on Sun Valley from yesterday, red with white trim, set against the creek. An enormous walnut tree keeps the entire house in shade.

Matt knocks. No toys or bikes or surfboards, just Neldra Sungaard, at the doorway with an annoyed expression.

“Oh. Matt Anthony, right?”

Matt is jolted by the sight of her, and even more by the memory of what she was doing that night at the Sapphire Cove orgy. Neldra says I might be able to visit sometime. Seeing her now is like facing a beautiful witch in the long nightmare Matt feels he is trapped in.

“Hello, Mrs. Sungaard,” he manages. “This is my dad. We’re looking for Jasmine.”

“She’s certainly not here. Just like she wasn’t at my home on Diamond. You search the most unlikely places.”

“May we come in and look?”

“Well... yes, of course. Jesus.”

She holds open the door and closes it behind Matt. She’s wearing shorts, a flannel, fuzzy bedroom slippers, and a miffed look on her face.

“I have a guest whom I do not want disturbed.”

“We’ll be in and out before you know it,” says Bruce, hat in hand.

“Too late for that, Mr. Anthony. Let me tell Danielle what’s going on.”

The living room is a replay of the Sungaard house on Diamond — Danish Modern furniture, black-and-white celebrity photos on the walls, hardwood floors. There’s a fireplace with a fluffy white fleece rug before it and the smell of woodsmoke in the room.

From down the hall Matt hears a soft knock, then voices. Muffled laughter.

Into the living room walks Neldra, followed by a sleepy, blond teenager, barefoot and clutching a pink blanket. Her calves and feet are suntanned. Matt can barely make out her features, hidden by her tangle of hair. She curtsies.

“Je suis Danielle.”

“I’m Bruce and this is Matt.”

“Nice to meet you guys, I guess,” says Danielle. “Peace, love, dove.”

Then disappears back down the hall. Matt hears the door shut.

“Go search,” says Neldra.

Bruce does.

Matt stands uncomfortably with the black-masked, red-lipped orgy hostess / art critic / millionaire and co-recipient of not one but two copies of the BEL’s Tibetan Book of the Dead, stuffed with thousands of doses of LSD. He can’t not see her again from that night, doing what she was doing amid all the naked writhing. The mask and her red lips.

“Do you live here and on Diamond, too?” Matt asks.

“We have three properties in Laguna,” she says. “And others in different states. What’s in the folder?”

“Oh, sorry, I’m not doing my job.” He takes out the copy of Jasmine’s Little Wing airplane, unfolds it into shape, explains its unique origin and design, and that Jazz has been launching them to signal where she is. He hears the hopelessness creeping into his voice. “So far, they’ve been found on Gainsborough Drive and Sleepy Hollow.”

She takes the plane and examines it. Holds it at different angles to the burnished evening sunlight coming through the windows. “Incredible.”

“I’m hoping to find more.”

“Where could she possibly be?”

“I’ve been asking myself that for over three weeks, Mrs. Sungaard. I think somewhere high. A hilltop or hillside. Maybe Alta Laguna, or Top of the World.”

“I’m impressed you can deduce so much from two paper gliders.”

“It’s just wind and elevation.”

“Why do you keep leaning from foot to foot?”

“I cut them fishing.”

Neldra studies him openly, a judicial look on her face. “Would you like to sit?”

“No, thank you. Does Danielle live here?”

“For now. She’s visiting from Vancouver. We like to open our homes to young people, Marlon and I. I’m unable to conceive.”

“That’s terrible,” he manages. “I mean, I’m sorry.” Again he pictures Neldra Sungaard from that night at Sapphire Cove.

Bruce clomps in with a defeated look on his face. Matt realizes again — fully and painfully — that they’ve just searched the last house in Laguna that might hold Jasmine.

It hits him like a boulder dropped from the sky. The hours and days and weeks. A nightmare that still hasn’t ended.

“I’m sorry, Matt,” Bruce says softly.

“I could have saved you some time and trouble,” says Neldra.

“No trouble at all,” says Bruce. “And tell Danielle we’re sorry for waking her.”

“You’ll find Jasmine,” says Neldra. “You will find her.”

Matt badly wants to ask Neldra if she saw Jasmine at the Sapphire Cove party that Friday night, and if so, what happened there and where did Jazz go when it was over? Was she alone or with someone? Did she take a look around, turn up her nose, and split? Was she not allowed to leave? Did she participate? Was she forced?

Matt and his father walk toward Bruce’s pickup truck. Sun Valley Drive is a gravel road and the rocks hurt Matt’s feet. But it hurts much more to know the dream is over, the long dream of knocking on every door until he finds what he’s looking for. The plan should have worked, but it didn’t. The falling light ignites the canyon now — the eucalyptus and oaks stand green and vibrant, the flowering birds-of-paradise are the most pure and beautiful orange he’s ever seen in his life — but inside he feels nothing but darkness and defeat. He wonders if seeing Jasmine forced into the VW van by two strong men in the fog that night was seeing her for the last time.

Fifty feet from her own front door.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says again. “It was a good plan. You can get back to your paper route.”

“Furlong.”

“He’s going to catch up with you sooner or later anyway. Maybe you should hear him out.”

“They got a cell in juvie all ready for me.”

“And enough evidence to put you there?”

“Probably.”

“Matt, you hang around those scummy Brotherhood hippies, you’re bound to pick up their stink. They’re vermin. Maybe you should help the police get rid of them. Clean up some of the rot in this town.”

“I like this town.”

But Matt can’t begin to explain his unusual relationships with Christian Clay and Johnny Grail and the others at Mystic Arts World. Can’t explain why Hamsa Luke getting killed killed something in himself.

He doesn’t even try.