A Thousand Steps

7

Kyle’s letter arrives the next day in an airmail envelope with red and blue bars on the edges. It’s written in his aggressive, forward-leaning print, on flimsy field stationery.

Matt writes his brother right back, as always. Toward the end he thinks of mentioning that Jasmine hasn’t come home for two nights running but decides against it. He doesn’t want to burden his brother in combat. What if Kyle gets deep into one of those tunnels and gets distracted about his sister back home? Takes a bullet or catches a spear? Matt doesn’t tell Kyle about Bonnie Stratmeyer either.

Big Yellow is a two-story wooden home built in the fifties, up high in Bluebird Canyon. The house slouches due to a landslide that undermined the foundation. The site was dozed and stabilized, a new foundation was poured and the house hoisted back onto it by helicopters. Matt watched them do it. The city engineers signed off on the home as safe but it never did look quite plumb to Matt or anyone else in Laguna. Over the past several years it has become a notorious party house, loud and overrun with musicians, surfers, and of course, artists.

He has to walk his bike up the last hundred yards because the road is so steep. It’s almost eleven o’clock, and he’ll be back here in just a few hours, delivering his papers.

Big Yellow presides crookedly over the tawny dry hills and the other houses downslope. Matt can see batik curtains blowing in and out the second-floor windows, and a guy leaning on a deck railing with a guitar, no shirt, and long blond hair. A cloud of smoke hangs over him and two girls reclining on chaise lounges. Beyond, the Pacific is white-capped, blue and infinite. Matt searches the street for his mother’s VW van, last commandeered by Jasmine.

On the front porch he toes down the Heavy-Duti kickstand, parks the bike, and knocks on the door.

After a long minute he knocks again louder.

Eventually, Austin Overton opens the door. He’s the jeans and no shirt man from the deck, with two days of stubble and stoned eyes. Barefoot. Bigger than Matt remembered from seeing him at the ’Piper that one night. Overton gives Matt a hard look.

“You got the wrong guy,” he says, with a twinkle in his blue eyes.

“I’m Jasmine Anthony’s brother.”

“Meaning what?”

“I was wondering if you know where she is.”

“She was here, uh, yesterday morning and the night before. Haven’t seen her since, though. Everything cool?”

“She didn’t come home. Hasn’t come home two nights in a row now.”

“I guess I’m your prime suspect, then.” Austin Overton’s voice is strong, and sharp as a knife, and his Louisiana accent is heavier than Matt remembers.

“Suspect of what? I mean, sir, mister,” Matt stumbles with his words. “Mr. Overton, did something happen?”

“Settle down now boy — nothing unusual. But your Laguna girls do run a little on the wild side. She is eighteen, right?”

“Yes, just graduated.”

Overton rubs his stubble and shakes his head. “High school. Hell, Austin. Won’t you ever learn?”

He walks into the house and Matt follows, closing the door.

The big living room is sparsely furnished, sofas and overstuffed chairs, bean bags and amps and guitars. A few people sleeping. Beer cans and wine bottles and bulging ashtrays. Everywhere Matt looks there’s a guitar on a stand, in a corner, up on a couch. Toward the back of the room is a grand piano with a mic on a stand beside it. Concert posters on the walls. Cats everywhere.

“Kinda dead around here this early,” says Overton. “Back in the bayou they’d be guzzling frozen daquiris this time of morning. You Californians are kind of lazy to tell you the truth.”

Out on the back patio, Overton reclaims his guitar and takes a hit from the joint the girls are sharing. He introduces them to Matt: Dana and Crystal. They look about his sister’s age. Tie-dye shirts and sandals and lots of hair.

He nods and smiles but they seem to look more through him than at him.

“Ladies, what time did that Jazz gal leave? That would have been yesterday morning. I crashed hard around three, I think, and when I woke up about ten, she was gone. This is her brother and he’s looking for her.”

Dana shrugs and looks down, hair sweeping over her face. Crystal stares blankly at Matt.

“I think it was like eight,” says Crystal. “I was experiencing in the big room, working up a song on one of the acoustics. She came downstairs, went outside. She didn’t look at me or say anything. She didn’t talk much that night. We all hit the hookah and danced, then ended up in the pool. We flopped in Austin’s waterbed — your sister and me. And of course, Tarzan himself. But the acid hit me weird and I couldn’t sleep.”

Austin turns his back and picks his guitar.

Crystal offers Matt a hit and he says no thanks. “Your sister is one of those chicks who’s too cool for school, you know? Thinks she knows everything and has everything under control. She acted kind of superior. She writes songs. So what? I think she wanted Austin for herself. Didn’t she, Austin!”

He stops playing and flips her off without turning around.

“Anyway, she wanted no part of me, which Austin likes to watch. Through a window I saw her drive off in that funny old van. It smoked.”

“Was she loaded?” Matt asks.

“Everyone was loaded. I don’t know if she was tripping or not.”

It’s hard for Matt to picture Jasmine in Big Yellow, partying with the musicians and druggies. Jasmine actually is too cool for school — an A student who rarely studied, a former cheerleader who quit because she thought leading cheers was asinine, a girl with a knowing air and a sharp tongue. Maybe her better-than-you attitude had worked against her, prodded her to prove she wasn’t really that way, got her stoned and into bed with a popular musician and one of his girlfriends. Pretending to be a bad girl. He remembers something she’d said just a few weeks ago, with graduation only days away: The second I throw that cap in the air, Matt, I’ll be free. And I’m going explode on the world!

“If you see her again, tell her to come home,” says Matt.

“Right on, brother,” Austin calls over his shoulder, still picking the guitar.

Matt is climbing onto his bike when quiet Dana catches up with him.

“Hey, Matt — Crystal’s just jealous. Your sister really is cool. Good on that ukulele and she writes quirky songs. She has a sense of humor, too.”

“Sounds like her.”

“Look, she talked about these parties in Sapphire Cove. A house on the cliff, overlooking the bay. Fridays into Saturdays. She said the people were classy and smart, older guys, like professors and lawyers and doctors. They had money. Some Hollywood types, too. Thrown by a guy named Cavore, I think. So, I mean, maybe like, you could look there. Today is Saturday, so maybe it was meant to be that you find her there. Like, Karma.”

“Thank you,” says Matt.

“Give me your number and I’ll call you if I see her.”

“Wait right here.”

He gets an old sketchbook and piece of charcoal from the basket on the Heavy-Duti, writes his mom’s number on one corner of a drawing, tears it off, and runs it back to Dana.