He walked around town and into a diner. He found a newspaper amid the detritus of someone’s meal, and took it to the next booth. Not much there. He dug a pen out of his pack and circled a couple blocks. At the pay phone outside he found a couple addresses. He jotted them down in his notepad.
In the library, he looked through local maps in the reference section. He looked for a rugged, undeveloped spot where he might spend the night.
The next day, Armen went to the state employment office and got more leads. He took a job busing tables, and hung onto that for a week. He followed up on other leads, and got a job as a janitor at the university.
The university campus sat above town, well-spread upon three broad ridges. There were grassy slopes overlooking Monterey Bay, oak woodlands, and deep forests of Coast Redwood and Douglas Fir. Wooden footbridges crossed high over deep, shaded ravines. It reminded him of his mountains, and sometimes a lone student walking through the woods might remind him of Cindy. She might cradle a book in her forearm and have a bookpack slung over her shoulder like a quiver, and this being Santa Cruz, her attire might not be the farthest thing from that of a wood nymph. It didn’t take his eye much prompting, for one sees what one wants to see; not that he wanted to see her, but something in him did.
Armen had no problem passing as a student, especially at this particularly liberal UC campus where the only grades assigned were “pass” and “no record”. This was Santa Cruz, after all, and he had access to a custodial key ring. He could blend in enough to sneak a shower, lounge in one of the libraries, or even sit in on a lecture now and then.
One day, Armen discovered the name “Cave Gulch” on a campus map, and set out one weekend to see what that gulch had to offer, and indeed, he found a cave there, and continued to find more as he explored over the following weeks.