When he looks at his mother, she’s asleep sitting up, head back against the well, the chopsticks pushed forward like antennae, almost far enough to fall out. She’s mouthing something, softly. Matt picks up the container, bag, and fork. Touches her shoulder and startles her awake.
“Oh, jeeeez,” she slurs. “Weird scenes in my head.”
“Time for bed, Mom.”
Julie rises and drifts back to her room. The door shuts and the music comes on. In the kitchen Matt tosses trash, rinses the fork and checks to see what she put in the drawer: a small pipe, glass and stainless steel, thick with residue. Puts it to his nose and gets that strong pitchy reek that’s new to him.
He sets it back, next to a wrinkled foil package about the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Inside is a crumbling half sphere of what looks like black mud wrapped in a thick gray skin. The smell is heavy and strong. He’s heard that the Brotherhood of Eternal Love smuggles hashish to Laguna from Afghanistan, pounds of it at a time, some as dragon balls — powerful hashish frosted with opium from the famous Afghan poppies. He’s never seen one until now, if that’s what it is. People say that dragon balls are the best euphoria possible. They say that Orange Sunshine, the BEL-supplied LSD, opens your mind to new realities. But dragon balls make you feel like you’re floating on a cloud having orgasms one after another. Matt imagines that. Bums him out that his mom is using this stuff. He’s tempted to flush it down the toilet.
He shuts the drawer and resumes his vigil on the living room couch. Dozes awhile. Has strange dreams: a pale girl in a yellow bikini standing on a rocky beach and waving at him while an enormous wave comes at her from behind; the Mystic Arts World meditation room in flames and he can’t find his way out; Kyle gaunt and bearded, with the body of a dog. Matt wakes in a sweat, ears thrumming.
Listens at his mom’s door — music off now.
Considers his sister’s quiet bedroom.
Looks into his and Kyle’s old room. Wonders if he should move back into it. Keep a little closer eye on Mom. But with Kyle coming home in a little over a month he’d have to move back out. Too cramped in here for both of them, and no space at all for his art supplies, records, and books. It was always more Kyle’s room than his, anyway. On the dresser is a photo of Kyle in his U.S. Army dress uniform. Matt knows it’s only in his own head but the closer Kyle gets to coming home, the less confident that face in the picture seems to get.
From the garage he fetches a sketchbook and a piece of charcoal, takes it back to the living room. Dashes off a sketch of Furlong questioning him down at Thalia. More caricature than portrait; but the details are telling. Then of Miranda washing her Beetle.
Matt stares out the window a moment, then starts in on the streetlamp, tentatively at first, then begins to feel it and speeds up until he’s slashing that hippie girl into being, then her dog with its lifted leg, even the pee dancing off the pole in the lamplight. He carves darkness in around the cone of light and the two figures, so everything is black except for them. His strokes are angry and hard and the drawing is a violent mess. He’s tempted to rip out the page, wad it up and chuck it, but there’s the clean backside and you can’t waste supplies. He tosses the sketchbook onto the blue chair.
Around nine thirty, Matt quietly panics, suddenly sure that Jazz isn’t coming home tonight. What can he do but go get her and bring her back? She’s only been really missing for less than twenty-four hours but his heart tells Matt that she needs him.
Right now. He’s sure of it. She needs him.
Back in her room he takes his pen-and-ink sketch of her off the wall, puts the thumbtack back in its hole, and folds the drawing into his back pocket.
Start at the Sandpiper, Matt thinks — the last place where anybody he knows has seen her.
He’ll pick up her trail and follow where it leads.
6
Which is easier said than done because they won’t let him into the nightclub this late, fake ID or not.
Chuck just shakes his head and points Matt back outside. Coast Highway is buzzing with cars, windows down and their tape decks blaring against the music throbbing from the ’Piper.
Four very loud Harleys with four gnarly looking riders fart past in an accelerating wake. He’s heard about a new motorcycle club in Costa Mesa, just a few miles from Laguna — badass guys who stand up to the Hells Angels. Matt sees the vest patches on the men as they disappear south.
Sidewalks still busy. Moby Cop, the white prisoner van, comes north toward the police station and all the people gathered outside the Sandpiper wave and yell fuck you, Furlong, pigs eat shit! though Matt can’t see if he’s in there or not.
He shows his sketch of Jasmine to the people loitering at the nightclub door and to everyone coming out, but nobody saw his sister last night. It’s a good likeness of her, too, but most of the folks he talks to weren’t even here the night before.
Until two older T-Street Surf Boys spill out and come his way. Matt recognizes them from this morning, two of the surfers gathered at the top of the Thalia Street steps looking down on Bonnie Stratmeyer. They’re talking as surfers do, their voices slow and their words drawn out as if their lips are numb. They don’t even stop walking as Matt approaches, holding out the pen-and-ink sketch. But the taller one takes it and Matt falls in beside them.
“I know Jazz,” says the surfer. “Total fox. She left the ’Piper last night with Austin Overton.”
“Which direction?”
The surfers finally stop and the taller one hands the drawing back to Matt. “They ran across the traffic about right here. Holding hands. Overton had his guitar case, like The Sound of Music. Headed downtown, the last I saw.”
Matt runs back to his bike, pushes it across Coast Highway to a chorus of horns, then pedals to Mystic Arts World. But it’s closed. Loitering near the entrance, a woman in a tattered Stars and Stripes T-shirt with a big beaded bag over one shoulder offers Matt a joint and he says no thanks. Realizes how hungry he is again. He shows her the drawing and she shakes her head.
Then north on Coast Highway to the crowded White House Tavern, where a loud Buffalo Springfield — like band strums away, guitars jangly and loose. The food smells more than just good. The bouncer won’t let Matt in but he snatches the drawing, studies it, and shakes his head. “Familiar,” he says, “but tonight or last night? No. Beat it.”
Just a few blocks up at the Jolly Roger nobody has seen Jasmine in over a week. Matt doesn’t even need to show the picture because of Julie’s long tenure here. They all know who he is and Matt detects concern in the way they look at him. A waitress passes in front of him, hands and arms laden with plates. Matt’s gut rumbles and turns. Even the parsley looks good.
Then down to the Marine Room Tavern on Ocean Avenue, where another stout bouncer studies the drawing and shakes his head.