“Oh-sure.” He blew out breath. “Well, that’s a relief I just wish
you’d told me you were coming, so I could’ve scheduled some time for us
to talk. As it stands, I’ve got a two-hour seminar until two-you’re
welcome to sit in, but I don’t imagine you want to hear about the
structure of organizations. And after that there’s a faculty meeting
till three and another class.”
“Sounds like a busy day.”
He smiled. “My kind of day.” The smile vanished. Actually, Cindy’s
the one with the tough job. I can escape.”
He smoothed his beard. Today’s earring was a tiny sapphire, inflamed
by the sun. His bare arms were tan and hairless and sinewy.
“Is there anything specific you wanted to talk to me about?” he
said.
“I can have them break for a few minutes.”
“No, not really.” I looked around at all the empty space.
“Not exactly Yale,” he said, as if reading me. “I keep telling them a
few trees would help. But I like being on the cutting edgebuilding
something from scratch. This whole area’s the high-growth region of
the L.A. basin. Come back in a few years and it’ll be teeming.”
“Despite the slump?”
He frowned, tugged on his beard, and said, “Yes, I think so The
population can only go one way.” Smile. “Or at least that’s what my
demographer friends tell me.”
He turned toward the students, who were staring at us, and held up a
hand. “Do you know how to get to the house from here?”
Approximately.”
“let me tell you exactly. Just get back on the freeway-on the
One-eighteen-and get off at the seventh exit. After that you can miss
it.”
“Great. I won’t keep you,” I said.
He looked at me but seemed to be somewhere else.
“Thanks,” he said. Another backward glance. “This is what keeps me
sane-gives me the illusion of freedom. I’m sure you know what I
mean.”
Absolutely.”
“Well,” he said, “I’d better be getting back. Love to my ladies.”
The ride to the house wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, leaving
forty-five to go before my two-thirty with Cassie.
Remembering Cindy’s odd resistance to my coming out any earlier, I
decided to head over there right now. Do things on my terms, for a
change.
Each exit on the I-18 took me farther into the isolation of brown
mountains, deforested by five years of drought. The seventh was marked
Westview, and it deposited me on a gently curving road of red clay
darkened by the mountain’s hulk. A few minutes later the clay turned
to twin lanes of new asphalt, and red pennants on high metal poles
began appearing at fifty-foot intervals. A yellow backhoe was parked
on a turnoff. No other vehicles were in sight. Baked hillside and
blue sky filled my eyes. The pennant poles flashed by like jail
bars.
The asphalt tabled at a hundred square feet of brick, shaded by olive
trees. High metal gates were rolled wide open. A big wooden sign to
the left of the aperture read WESTVIEW ESTATES in red block letters.
Below the legend was an artist’s rendition of a spreading pastel-hued
housing development set into too-green alps.
I rolled close enough to the sign to read it. A timetable beneath the
painting listed six construction phases, each with “twenty to a hundred
custom estate homesites, 112 to acres.” According to the dates, three
phases should have been completed. When I looked through the gates I
saw a sprinkle of rooftops, lots of brown. Chip’s comments about
population growth, a few minutes ago, seemed a bit of wishful
thinking.
I drove past an untended guardhouse whose windows still bore
masking-tape Ks, into a completely empty parking lot fringed with
yellow gazania. The exit from the lot fed to a wide, empty street
named Sequoia Lane. The sidewalks were so new they looked
whitewashed.
The left side of the street was an ivy-covered embankment. A
half-block in, to the right, sat the first houses, a quartet of big,
bright, creatively windowed structures, but unmistakably a tract Mock
Tudor, mock hacienda, mock Regency, mock Ponderosa Ranch, all fronted
by sod lawns crosscut with beds of succulents and more gazania. Tennis