Fire Sweeping: The California Ballot Killings Book II Read online

  Fire Sweeping

  The California Ballot Killings Book II

  H. M. Wilhelmborn

  For you.

  Contents

  1. And I Missed Him

  2. In These Times

  3. Fire Sweeping

  4. Rats, Raddies, and Foreigners

  5. Letting Go

  6. Hoviaks Are A-Comin’

  7. The Trumpeter Swans

  8. Beyond Right and Wrong

  9. Vipers and Voyages

  10. Oh, Happy the Horse

  11. A Killer and a Cad

  12. They’re All Awful. Enjoy.

  13. Gatherers & Hunters

  14. Find Me a Unicorn

  15. Whatever It Takes

  16. Restraint

  17. Peace Will Follow Pain

  18. Not a Promise But a Plea

  19. I Don’t Fail

  20. Couldn’t Be Happier

  21. Utterly

  22. She’s Just Let Herself Go

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Synopsis

  1

  And I Missed Him

  And I missed him.

  I missed his gorgeous dimples, which I wanted to pinch, caress, and kiss.

  And how was he?

  Did he have an image of me in his mind, which he carried around with him and revealed only to himself in his moments of loneliness? Was I unclothed and as fragrant as a rose in the image he had of me or was I beside him, exhausted, as his thoughts wandered, and he thought of how he’d ended up in prison because of me, of us?

  Did he avoid the thought of me, and did he find himself replacing every memory of me with memories of some other woman because the memory of me was too much to bear?

  Mike Iet.

  I missed him.

  I’d met him one evening when he and a woman had knocked on our door in San Diego and had introduced themselves as members of the new political party devoted to environmental matters. The world in which he came into my life had dust storms, sandstorms, and illness.

  He told me that they were from the California Water Party (CWP), founded in 2025 by a billionaire, Jeremiah Trehoviak, and he and the woman he was with, who introduced herself as Greta O’Connor, wanted to enlist my husband, Mauru, and me in the CWP’s fight for California.

  Mike was striking, those years.

  Youth. Dimples. Double-breasted green wool blazer. Green tie with “CWP” embroidered on it. White cotton shirt. Green slacks. Loafers with green socks.

  And he had all the confidence that comes with youth and power.

  The CWP was intent on changing everything we thought about the world and about water, especially, which had become scarce. They wanted to ban products that were inefficient in their use of water. They wanted to ingrain environmental awareness, and they wanted to do this first in California, before exporting it across the world.

  I wasn’t sure I’d see him again after that first time, but he appeared in his distinctive CWP uniform at my job for the CWP’s fundraiser in May 2037. By then, many products had become scarce, and their prices reflected that reality, which made them inaccessible to many.

  The CWP’s wealth, however, made everything available to those who attended their fundraiser, which my employer, Wagon, Shui & Xebec (WS&X), an elite law firm in San Diego, hosted.

  Alcohol was served in crystal decanters from Zanzivahl, the “universe’s largest purveyor of the universe’s finest products.” A nine-course meal was served to distinguished guests, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Speaker of the House, justices of the Supreme Court of California, members of Congress, and other famous people.

  The dinner included caviar, lobster, monkfish, veal, and three dessert courses.

  Armed female guards stood at attention in their CWP uniforms, which recalled blue flight-attendant uniforms from the 1950s.

  I’ll admit something.

  CWP members were captivating in the way that the strange and menacing seizes one’s attention and doesn’t let go of it. One has two choices in response. One can mock and laugh at the novelty (which I did), or one can surrender to its unfolding (which I would never do).

  By the time of the fundraiser, Mike was engaged to Greta. She was, like him, a high-ranking member of the CWP, and I disliked her from the start.

  It’s not easy to admit that I disliked her, but I did.

  She was, as I have shared before, one of those people who are “know-it-alls . . . too beautiful to boot, with perfect teeth, perfect smiles, perfect eyebrows, perfect fingernails, perfect earrings, and the perfect boyfriend . . . the ones whose perfection hides some depravity.”

  But Mike had chosen Greta as his “First,” that is, the first of two partners permitted to all high-ranking members of the CWP.

  In time, I found out that Mike had chosen me to be his “Second.”

  How that changed my life.

  I am honest when I state that I didn’t realize how happy I was until I was no longer happy. I am also truthful when I say that, until I met Mike, I didn’t know that there had never been any great moments in my life, only small moments filled with innocuous choices, which, rolled together, formed an avalanche that eventually buried me beneath the reality of who I was.

  I had believed myself a good wife to my husband, Mauru, a teacher and the father of our four wild and delightful kids, Jon, Nate, Nathalie, and Nathaniel.

  I had believed myself a good daughter to two devoted and loving parents, who were immigrants from the Southern African Federation.

  I had believed myself a good daughter-in-law to Mauru’s parents, Anna and Giulio Virdis, whose swinging and sexual freedom I admired but would never emulate.

  I had believed myself a good sister-in-law to Mauru’s sister, Elisa Virdis, who had the worst taste in men.

  Indeed, I had believed myself a good friend to my best friend, Maria Sanchez, who had lost her husband.

  Above all, I had believed myself an excellent human being, who’d never find herself embroiled in infidelity, which was something only the foolish would do because they always lacked the moral compass I had in spades.

  Even when we learned of the CWP’s corruption and violence, I didn’t avoid contact with the CWP or its people. Instead, I negotiated for a raise and more benefits, since my employer, WS&X, was the CWP’s counsel of record.

  When the CWP won the November 2038 elections, and my husband’s revulsion at them was remarkably clear, I didn’t avoid them then, either. Instead, I found myself in bed with one of the CWP’s highest-ranking members, Mike Iet, one celebratory California evening—enthralled, ecstatic, guilt-ridden, and full of shame.

  It might all seem like nothing to those who think little of infidelity—a storm, as it were, in the proverbial teacup. For them, stories like mine might seem worthless because infidelity is worthless, and finding one’s self (as I did) woven into a web of someone else’s creation is worthless.

  Infidelity, after all, is common in human history.

  It is common in men, and, as a culture, we tolerate it in men, if we don’t condone it. We believe that infidelity’s part of men’s nature, savage, and irrepressible, which makes them desire what they do not possess, and then possessing it, they use it and move on to their next conquest, which will only entice them for a moment.

  How many songs, poems, and broken hearts testify to this truth! Ah, I could write several books about it!

  Humanity, however, is rabid in its condemnation of infidelity in women.

  We abash, humiliate, and stigmatize women, especially married women who sleep with
married men. I’ve often thought of the words I’ve heard, which are tossed around to describe women like me, women who unexpectedly found themselves in a married man’s bed while his wife was out of town.

  I know the epithets by heart, and none of them captures the complexity of the moment and the contextual nuances that pushed Mike and me toward each other, which made me sacrifice everything for a man whose life was devoted to a controversial and dangerous cause.

  Context, of course, helps us understand, and I hope that it will also help those who read my story overlook many of my choices, for I am still unable to forgive myself for some of them, many years after it all happened. Maybe my story will help others, and my failures will deter others from making similar choices.

  I, too, was eventually imprisoned by the CWP, and it is from prison in San Diego, California, that I share my story in 2050.

  My sentence for breaking California’s stringent water laws (nothing to do with my infidelity with a powerful man—at least, that’s what they tell me) is a new punishment under California law known as Verdict by Ballot, under which the people of California decide, by referendum, who will die for “theft of water” in a public drowning.

  WS&X, my employer, wrote that law and all the laws that the CWP enacted, laws that Mike and his people had us discuss in meetings during which I took notes.

  I admired Mike in those meetings.

  I thought him powerful and seductive.

  I wasn’t the only one.

  Hannah Wellspring, a prodigiously gifted attorney at WS&X, also found him irresistible, and she had started dating him.

  Of course, I mocked Hannah when she revealed that they were seeing each other. I dissuaded her from dating Mike, a married man from a dangerous political party, and I looked down on Hannah with the superiority of the religious, who know that hell has many antechambers filled with fire, which all blaze bright with the souls of unrepentant adulteresses.

  Hannah was an attorney, and I was the legal secretary assigned to work with her.

  I was also her friend.

  On the night of my romantic encounter with Mike in January 2039, I lied to my husband about why I came home very late from work.

  I also concealed my truth from Hannah, even when my romantic encounter with Mike resulted in his seven-month imprisonment on the CWP campus in Menlo Park, California, for violation of the CWP’s rules, known as “Scrimmage.”

  Hannah, gifted in ways I could only dream about, had struggled to find a boyfriend, and she’d devoted her life to her career, and then Mike had appeared, looking for a Second, another woman in his life, as our law firm represented the CWP and its billionaire founder, Jeremiah Trehoviak, in all their legal affairs.

  As often happens in stories like mine, I soon found myself in an office with a high-ranking CWP member, where I was presented with a choice: either I became Mike’s Second (and joined the CWP), or me and my family would bear the consequences of my decision. That’s where my first book ended, Sands Rising.

  The pages that follow are my response to that ultimatum.

  Please allow me to admit something else.

  I’ve never been one for ultimatums (they are the preferred remedy of the weak), and I’d rather drive myself into the ground (and take with me those issuing the ultimatum) than give up my freedom.

  My heartfelt thanks, again, to Linda Maywrot, an investigative journalist with the Golden State Herald, right here in San Diego, who continues to structure, revise, and publish my story.

  2

  In These Times

  I didn’t want to celebrate my birthday in 2039.

  I didn’t want to throw a party for the wrinkles colonizing my face like little squiggles drawn by my sons, Jon, Nate, and Nathaniel. I didn’t want to throw a party for my feet, which were flattening and widening. I didn’t think there was much to celebrate. And what followed my birthday showed that there wasn’t much to be joyful about at all.

  Only two weeks after my birthday, which falls on January 2, I was unfaithful to my husband, Mauru, with Mike. And roughly two weeks later, the CWP presented me with their ultimatum.

  As she heard me lament how my body had changed as I aged, and how four kids had left me with more “love jiggles” than I cared to count, Mom smiled.

  “Oh, Janet,” Mom said at my parents’ home in La Jolla, San Diego, “thirty-nine is still young. Dad and I are nearing sixty, and we’re still strong. Thirty-nine is the end of youth, but it’s the beginning of the adventure that is maturity.”

  “I guess that’s one way of thinking about it,” I said in response.

  We’d gone to Mom’s and Dad’s for lunch.

  Mom was opposed to the CWP, and she hadn’t voted for them. Dad had voted against the CWP as well, as had Mauru and my in-laws because they thought the party corrupt and violent.

  Like Mom, I had pretended to vote. That is, I had shown up at the polling station, had signed in, and had faked participating in the electoral process because it’s what Mom and I had learned from Mom’s mother, who believed that women should appear more interested in politics than they were.

  What I didn’t tell Mom, as we discussed why I didn’t want to celebrate my birthday, was that the CWP had sweeping plans for all of us, which they’d revealed when they’d visited WS&X after they’d won the election.

  Given California’s drought, now in its fourteenth year, the CWP were determined to pass a law called “the Law of Lavish Things,” which would ban an initial round of wasteful products—alfalfa, almonds, avocados, chocolate, coffee, dates, hazelnuts, mangoes, olives, and, possibly, vanilla.

  The Law of Lavish Things would also ban bathtubs, lawns, swimming pools, and it would require the installation of high-efficiency toilets, showers, faucets, and washing appliances in all new public buildings, places of public accommodation, and new residences in the state of California. It would also mandate that all leaks be repaired within fourteen days of notice.

  Larry Wagon, my boss, had scoffed as he mentioned the law. The CWP’s announcement that they were opposed to divorce because it was a “moral blight that goes against the Right Path” particularly roiled him.

  The CWP planned to roll out the new law in two parts.

  The first part, establishing a water court in California, would go entirely into effect in August 2039. Since most of the products to be banned were grown in California, Governor Trehoviak’s administration would give the agricultural industry three years from the passage of the Law of Lavish Things to cease all operations regarding those products. Agriculture accounted for about 2 percent of the state economy. The Water Court, effective from August 2039, would start by enforcing a vague legal category known as “theft of water,” and three years later, it would also implement the Law of Lavish Things.

  Neither chocolate nor vanilla was grown in California.

  Chocolate was still mainly grown in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Nigeria. Vanilla was still primarily produced in Madagascar, Indonesia, and Mexico. Due to the warming weather, production had fallen for both products, and with demand outpacing supply, prices had soared without a care.

  “If you only celebrate when you feel good about your body,” Dad reminded me, “you’ll never celebrate, Janet. We celebrate our bodies because they still exist in this world, not because we like the way they make us feel as they age.”

  Mauru, my husband, smiled.

  Jon, my eldest child, who was eight, asked if I’d throw a big birthday party. He liked birthday parties, he said, for the presents, but he didn’t like being surrounded by too many people.

  “It’s just exhausting,” he told us. “And everyone who comes has something to say.”

  “He’s his granddad’s grandson,” Dad said. “I like peace myself.”

  “Mom,” Nate, my five-year-old son, interjected, “do you and Dad want more babies? Because if you do, they can’t be like the twins. They take other people’s stuff.”

  “Um,” I said, “why don’t you ask your dad
?”

  My mom and dad suppressed their laughter.

  I asked the kids what kinds of cakes I should have at my birthday party, assuming I celebrated.

  “Lots of chocolate, Mom,” Nate said.

  “Chuck’ lit,” Nathalie said.

  Nathalie, the older of the twins by a few minutes, was a year and a half, and she had mastered her first words, “Mama,” and “like.” I, of course, did my best to encourage her to say them one after the other, preferably with the verb first.

  “Exactly, darling,” Mom said to Nathalie as she hugged her. “Chocolate.”

  Nathaniel, the younger of my twins, had also learned his first words, and he resembled his father more than he resembled me.

  “Mill!” He exclaimed. “Dada, mill!”

  Mauru went to the kitchen and prepared the milk for the twins.

  “And a frosting cake, Mom,” Jon said. “Can you have a birthday cake that’s only frosting?”

  “No,” Nathaniel said out of the blue, in response to Jon’s question.

  “I think he needs his ‘mill,’” I called out to Mauru. “You know how much Nathaniel just loves his milk.”

  If I did celebrate my birthday, I thought, my cakes would have to include three essential ingredients, which are the building blocks of any dessert worthy of the word—sugar, fat, and milk.

  A cake is a cake only in name if it lacks any of those ingredients. Ask Marie-Antoinette. That’s why she recommended cake to the masses. She knew that cake is one of the foundations of a healthy Western diet, especially in troubled times.

  Three ideas came to mind.

  Black Forest cake.