The new century arrived, and the sun-drenched life by the sea fell into a pattern that it seemed would never end. In 1905 the young Walter Johnson, pitching for Fullerton High School, struck out all twenty-seven batters in a game with Santa Ana High. In 1911 Barney Oldfield raced his car with a plane, and won. In 1912 Glenn Martin flew a plane he had built himself from Newport to Catalina, the longest flight over water ever. In fact you could say that Martin began the aeronautics industry in Orange County, by building a plane in a barn. But no one could guess what would come of that kind of ingenuity, that pleasure taken in the possibilities of the mechanical. At that time it, like life itself, seemed a marvelous game, played in the midst of a prosperous, sunny peace.

And all that—and all that—and all of that—

All that went away.

Chapter 47

47

Back in OC Jim can’t shake a feeling of uneasiness. It’s as if somewhere the program and the magnetic field keeping him on his particular track have been disarranged, fallen into some awful loop that keeps repeating over and over.

And in fact he falls into the habit of tracking about for several hours each day, all his free time spent in a big circle pattern on the freeways, Newport to Riverside to San Gabriel to San Diego to Santa Ana to Trabuco to Garden Grove to Newport, and so on. While he stares out the window looking down at his hometown. Around and around the freeways he goes, stuck in a loop program that resembles a debugging search pattern caught by a bug itself. Software going bad.

Once he stops to cruise through South Coast Plaza.

Twelve department stores: Bullock’s, Penney, Saks, Sears, KlothesAG, J. Magnin’s, I. Magnin’s, Ward’s, Palazzo, Robinson’s, Buffum’s, Neiman-Marcus.

Three hundred smaller shops, restaurants, video theaters, game parlors, galleries …

A poem is a laundry list.

You wear your culture all over you.

Chrome, and thick pile carpets.

Mirrors everywhere, replicating the displays to infinity.

Is that an eye I see in there?

Escalators, elevators, half-floors of glass, fountains.

Lots of plants. Most are real, from the tropics. Hothouse blooms.

Spectrum bends, rack after rack after (mirrored) rack.

Entering Bullock’s, Magnin’s, Saks: thirteen counters of perfume each.

Perfume! Earrings, scarves, necklaces, nylons, stationery, chrome columns, blouse racks, sportswear, shoes—

You complete the list (every day).