Piccadilly Arcade was a small shopping center due east of the security office.
Grocery with a post office and ATM, dry cleaner, two clothing shops leaning toward golf togs and velour jogging suits. A sign outside the second said the movie tonight was Top Gun.
My drive to Jersey took me past perfectly appointed public buildings-the clubhouse, the spa-tennis courts, swimming pools. The houses looked better from a distance.
They varied in size by development. Essex was the high-rent district-detached split-levels and two-story hacienditas on postage-stamp lots, some landscaping, lots of Cadillacs and Lincolns, a few satellite dishes. Clear views of the lake.
Fit-looking white-haired people in activewear. Further inland, Yorkshire was mock-adobe town houses clumped in fours and fives. A little skimpier in the flower-and-shrub department, but still immaculate.
The lake was obscured, now, by peppers. The trees were hardy, drought resistant, clean. They’d been brought into the San Fernando Valley years ago by the truckload, taking over the chaparral and contributing to the death of the native oaks. A quarter-mile of shaded road before Jersey appeared.
Mobile homes in an open lot. The units were uniformly white and spotless, with plenty of greenery camouflage at the base, but clearly prefab. Just a few trees on the periphery and no direct access to the lake, but majestic views of the mountains.
The few people I saw also looked in good shape, perhaps a bit more countrified.
Parked in front of the mobiles were Chevys, Fords, Japanese compacts, the occasional
RV The road that split the subdivision was freshly asphalted. No-frills, but the overall feel was still cleanliness, good maintenance, seniors settled in contentment.
I parked in one of the ten public spaces at the end and found Charing Cross Road easily enough-first street to the right.
Jacob and Marvelle Haas announced ownership of their Happy Traveler with a wood-burned sign over the front door. Two vehicles-a Buick Skylark and a Datsun pickup-so maybe someone was home. Some improvements had been added to the unit: green canvas window awnings, an oak door that looked hand-carved, a cement porch stacked up to the entrance. Potted geranium and cactus at the top, along with an empty fishbowl still housing a carbon filter. The door knocker was a brass cocker spaniel. Around its neck hung a garland of tiny cowries.
I lifted the dog and let it concuss against the door.
A voice called out, “One minute.”
The man who opened was younger than I’d expected- younger than any of the residents
I’d seen, so far. Sixty, if that, with iron-gray hair brushed straight back, and very acute eyes the same color. He wore a short-sleeved white knit shirt, blue jeans, black loafers. His shoulders were broad, but so were his hips. A lip of fat curled over his belt buckle. His arms were long, hairless, thin except at the wrists, where they picked up some heft. His face was narrow, sun-spotted in places,
cinched around the eyes, and sagging around the bone lines, but his skin had a sheen, as if someone had buffed him lovingly.
“Dr. Delaware,” he said in that same hearty voice. But his expression didn’t match-cautious, tentative. “Got your message. Jacob Haas.”
When we shook hands, his grip seemed reluctant-bare contact, then quick pressure around my fingers before he pulled away and stepped back inside.
“C’mon in.”
I entered a narrow front room that opened to a kitchenette. A window air conditioner hummed. The interior wasn’t cool, but the worst of the heat had been kept at bay. No knotty pine, no framed homilies, no trailer-park cliches. Deep gray berber carpeting floored the mobile. White cotton sofa and two matching easy chairs, glass-and-brass coffee table, blue-and-white Chinese garden bench serving as a perch for daffodils in a deep blue vase.
Picasso prints hung on panel walls painted pale salmon. Black lacquer bookshelves held paperbacks and magazines, a thirty-five-inch TV with VCR and stereo setup, and a skinny black vertical rack full of CD’s. The Four Seasons, Duane Eddy, the Everly
Brothers, Tom Jones, Ferula Clark.
Rock and roll was old enough to retire.
The room smelled of cinnamon buns. The woman on the sofa got up and said, “Marvelle