Devil’s Waltz. By: Jonathan Kellerman

Boulevard.

The northward cruise took me through a commercial crosssection: upscale

shopping plazas still pretending trickle-down economics was working,

shabby storefront businesses that had never believed it in the first

place, insta-bilt strip malls without any ideological underpinnings.

Up above Nordhoff, the street turned residential and I was treated to a

lean stretch of budget-box apartments and motor courts, condo complexes

plastered with happy-talk banners. A few citrus groves and U-pick

farms had resisted progress. Essences of manure, petroleum, and lemon

leaves mingled, not quite masking the burntsupper smell of simmering

dust.

I drove to the Santa Susanna Pass, but the road was closed for no

apparent reason and blockaded by CalTrans barriers. I kept going to

the end of Topanga, where a jumble of freeway overpasses butted up

against the mountains. Off to the right a group of sleek women

cantered on beautiful horses. Some of the riders wore fox-hunting

garb; all looked content.

I found the I-18 on-ramp within the concrete pretzel, traveled west for

a few miles, and got off on a brand-new exit marked COLLEGE ROAD.

West Valley C.C. was a half-mile up-the only thing in sight.

Nothing at all like the campus I’d just left. This one was announced

by a huge, near-empty parking lot. Beyond that, a series of one-story

prefab bungalows and trailers were distributed gracelessly over a

ten-acre patchwork of concrete and dirt. The landscaping was

tentative, unsuccessful in places. A sprinkling of students walked on

plain-wrap concrete pathways.

I got our and made my way to the nearest trailer. The midday sun cast

a tinfoil glare over the Valley and I had to squint. Most of the

students were walking alone. Very little conversation filtered through

the heat.

After a series of false starts, I managed to locate someone who could

cell me where Sociology was. Bungalows 3A through 3F.

The departmental office was in 3A. The departmental secretary was

blond and thin and looked just out of high school. She seemed put-upon

when I asked her where Professor Jones’s office was, but said, “Two

bildings up, in Three-C.”

Dirt separated the bungalows, cracked and trenched. So hard and dry

that not a single footprint showed. A far cry from the Ivy league.

Chip Jones’s office was one of six in the small pink stucco building.

His door was locked and the card listing his office hours was marked:

ALWAYS FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED.

All the other offices were locked too. I went back to the secretary

and asked her if Yrofessor Jones was on campus. She consulted a

schedule and said, “Oh, yeah. He’s teaching Soc One-oh-two over in

Five-).”

“When’s the class over?”

“In an hour-it’s a two-hour seminar, twelve to two.”

“Do they take a break in the middle?”

“I don’t know.”

She turned her back on me. I said, “Excuse me,” managed to get her to

tell me where he was, and walked there.

The building was a trailer, one of three on the western edge of the

campus, overlooking a shallow ravine.

Despite the heat, Chip Jones was conducting class outside, sitting on

one of the few patches of grass in sight, in the partial shade of a

young oak, facing ten or so students, all but two of them women.

The men sat at the back; the women circled close to his knees.

I stopped a hundred feet away.

His face was half-turned away from me and his arms were moving. He had

on a white polo shirt and jeans. Despite his position, he was able to

inject a lot of body English into his delivery. As he moved from side

to side the students’ heads followed and a lot of long female hair

swayed.

I realized I had nothing to say to him-had no reason to be there-and

turned to leave.

Then I heard a shout, looked over my shoulder and saw him wavIng.

He said something to the class, sprang to his feet, and loped toward

me. I waited for him and when he got to me, he looked scared.

“I thought it was you. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Didn’t want to alarm you. Just thought

I’d drop by before heading over to your house.”

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