Fire Sweeping: The California Ballot Killings Book II Read online

  I got a sharp pain in my chest, and I couldn’t think.

  “Oh,” Larry said as we walked out of his office, “one more thing. Can you both come back here? Close the door again.”

  Hannah took a deep breath. We closed the door as we entered Larry’s office.

  “WS&X can’t work on any more death penalty cases,” Larry said. “The CWP will be reintroducing the death penalty—”

  “After the legislature and Governor Barrow abolished it six years ago?” Hannah was mortified.

  “Don’t act surprised,” Larry told Hannah. “Trehoviak’s always been pro capital punishment.”

  “Saying it and doing it are two different things, Larry,” Hannah responded. “Few people who say they will kill someone ever do it. It’s just a statistical fact.”

  “Politicians aren’t people like you and me, Hannah,” Larry responded. “When they tell us they want to kill, and they end up in positions of power, they kill.”

  Hannah was shaking her head, furiously. She bit her lower lip as she did so, and she shuffled about uneasily. She stared into the distance, and tears welled up in her eyes, which she fought back. She nodded.

  “Factum fieri infectum non potest,” she said.

  Larry and I were confused.

  “‘It is impossible to undo a deed,’” Hannah said. “It’s from Terence. His most famous quote is ‘I am human, and nothing human, I think, is foreign to me.’ What the CWP is doing is both foreign and repulsive to me—just repulsive. It’s also undoing the work of an outstanding former governor, who happened to be a woman, and it’s not lost on me that two women at this law firm are being sidelined because of the Hoviaks, the CWP.”

  Larry nodded and asked if I had anything to say.

  I didn’t have anything to say.

  “I must do what’s right for the business,” Larry said after a long silence. “Even if it bothers me. If it’s right for the business, then I must make that choice, and working with the CWP is good for business. It’s no secret that they’re our biggest client. I have two hundred attorneys to pay, not to mention our staff and our suppliers. The last I thing I need right now is firing employees en masse because I can’t afford them and then reading in the Herald that they’re on the streets with the Raddies and everyone else.”

  Hannah shook her head and wiped her eyes as she continued staring into the distance.

  “I’m on your side,” Larry said, “but I know what I’m talking about when I say that it’s all about the financial optics. We’re in an excellent place financially. We can absorb the costs of having you both focus on other matters.” Larry rubbed his eyes with both hands repeatedly. “It is what it is. We’ll make it work somehow.”

  “Whom should I talk to about the transfer of all the CWP files?” I asked Larry as I tried to appear impassive.

  “The CWP people down the hall have already taken care of it, Janet,” Larry told me. “As for you, Hannah, we’re going to split your work between LSD and Lawrence.”

  Hannah stared into the distance and didn’t respond.

  “I’m going to sue them,” Hannah warned us, “under their law prohibiting discrimination based on political affiliation.”

  Hannah was too angry to think clearly.

  “We’re all a little disappointed,” Larry said. “Let logic prevail, and let’s not let our emotions get ahead of us.”

  Hannah hugged me when we left Larry’s office, adjusted her glasses, and walked to Lindsey-Stella-Dominique’s office (who went by “LSD”) and Lawrence’s offices, which were on the opposite side of the building.

  I took a deep breath, and wondered if this was how it all ended: I’d be fired for infidelity, and I’d be shunned.

  I thought of Mike.

  Was he OK?

  Would I see him again?

  I took my phone, went to my car, and called Mauru. He was still in class, but Dad would pick up if he weren’t with a client. Mom was at work, and so was Maria.

  I called Dad and asked if I could come over and talk.

  “Anytime,” he said, “but you probably should wait for lunch.”

  Hannah came by my desk after she’d talked with LSD and Lawrence.

  “I’m mad as hell,” she said. “They’re taking my work away from me, and they’re giving it to neophytes!”

  Hannah went into her office and closed her door.

  “Of course, she’s angry,” Larry said from his office. “But my job is to keep you all off the streets.”

  I went to Sheila Stanleyson’s office. Sheila was one of the high-ranking members of the CWP, and she was permanently stationed in our office, for reasons that would only much later become apparent.

  She had delivered the CWP ultimatum to me in January 2039, and she was Anton’s Second.

  “But you were warned,” Sheila admonished me as I closed the door to her office behind me when I entered.

  “Why punish Hannah, though?”

  “You were warned.” Sheila stood up, went to the window, and smiled. She dusted her left shoulder board. “Why are you here?”

  “Larry said I should see you about the transfer of the files.”

  “Already taken care of.” She stared at me with a scowl on her face. “First, you violate Scrimmage, our law, by sleeping with Mike. And now you order three cakes in defiance of the Law of Lavish Things. We know everything you do. It’s for your safety.”

  I stared at her, shocked.

  “I spoke up for you, Janet, when the others wanted you to learn Scrimmage. I even got Jeremiah to stop the others from firing you the day after you slept with Mike. I also got Jeremiah to stop what they’ve been doing to Mike. But you will learn. You must learn. Soon enough, you’ll understand what Scrimmage requires, Janet.”

  Sheila sat, facing me, and she was smiling. I wasn’t sure if it was a smile or a grimace offered in advance of an attack.

  “Can I see him?” I asked. “Mike. You have him imprisoned on your campus in Menlo Park.”

  “He’s being punished. Have you ever heard of a criminal taking visitors at all hours from other criminals?”

  I took a deep breath.

  Sheila looked at her phone, responded to a few messages, and stared at me.

  “I will not encourage you to break our laws any further, Janet, but we are now public servants of the State of California. You elected us with 71 percent of the vote. You like us. Our campus in Menlo Park is open to all pilgrims who would like to learn more about us, about Scrimmage, and about the Right Path. All pilgrims are, therefore, free to request a meeting with a CWP member of their choice. Whether or not the request is honored depends on several factors, weighed by the receiving officer, but all pilgrims are welcome because the California Water Party needs your advice and help. Please join us.”

  She then stared at me.

  I left her office.

  I walked to Hannah’s office. She didn’t want to talk.

  Hannah came by my desk a little later.

  “Do you think Mike’s dead, Janet?” She seemed disconsolate.

  “I think, I think he’d be in touch if he could be, Hannah.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I know that people don’t just fall off the face of the planet, Hannah. I know that there are people who make others disappear. I know that they have no conscience, and they take pleasure in seeing others suffer. And I know that I’m not going to get bullied.”

  Hannah looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “You’re even more of a conspiracy theorist than I am,” Hannah said. “You think Mike’s been abducted. I don’t think aliens took him, Janet. It’s just not their thing to take politicians. He’s also a male, and aliens like females. He’s thirty-five, and the aliens like them young. He’s also childless, which may suggest he’s either had a vasectomy, he’s sterile, or he’s not ready, and aliens have rejected men, in particular, on that basis. They’re awful eugenicists, you know, the aliens.”

  I was glad to see Hannah re
cover a bit of her former humor, and I could see now that it was probably because of me that she’d lost access to all the work that she had done for the CWP. Both of us, it seemed, were being punished for our relationship with a high-ranking man.

  “Hannah,” I said, “would you forgive someone who betrayed you?”

  “Hypothetically speaking?”

  “Hypothetically speaking, Hannah.”

  “Betrayal suggests a breach of trust, disloyalty of some sort,” Hannah said. “In the law, it’s called ‘treason,’ and ‘treachery.’ The punishment for treason under Title XVIII Section 2381 of the US Code is death or imprisonment for no less than five years, a fine of at least ten thousand dollars, and permanent disqualification from holding any federal office. Historically, you were hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason.”

  I must have looked alarmed because Hannah suddenly backtracked. “But I exaggerate,” she said. “We tend not to ask questions hypothetically, though, unless we want to shield someone else or ourselves. If someone has betrayed you, Janet, I’d say, let it go.”

  “You’re such a beautiful and amazing person, Hannah.”

  “Can you get Mike to say that, please, and have him call me, while you’re at it?” Hannah went back to her office.

  A short while later, Hannah returned to my desk.

  “Have you heard of a group called ‘Mothers for Mercy,’ Janet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, they’re against the Hoviaks, too. These Hoviaks are arbitrary and capricious. Well, Mothers for Mercy are having their first meeting in San Diego soon. I’d go if I didn’t care about my job, but they sound really interesting.”

  I asked about Miguel and Dolores, whether they’d be OK with their B&Bs in Hawaii.

  Hannah shook her head. “They may have to shutter everything, sell it all. They could lose it all because the contract they signed favors the management company, which has just filed for bankruptcy. ”

  I entered everyone’s time into the billing system, typed out letters for Andy and Amandine, set up appointments for Larry to meet his sons’ principal, refilled Larry’s order for his antidepressants, and asked his divorce lawyer, Elizabeth Browning, to send the bill for her time so far. (Larry and his wife, Albertine-Rose, were getting a divorce, given Larry’s ongoing infidelity.)

  Overcome by her removal from the CWP cases (on which she’d spent a ton of time), Hannah was now sobbing in her office. It was the first time I’d ever seen her cry.

  She blew her nose, picked up her cellphone, and she called her mom in Cleveland, Ohio.

  “Mom,” she said, “I’m a failure. The one thing in my life I love is being taken away from me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  She tried to smile at me as she closed her door, which made her sob even more.

  “I mean, I don’t like the client, but I love the work,” she told her mom. “They’ve humiliated me.”

  Larry was on the phone with his son, Hudson, who was telling him on speakerphone that he’d been feeling exhausted, and he had migraines.

  Larry nodded as I gestured that I was going out for lunch.

  As I left the office for lunch, I received a message from an unknown number.

  “And I miss you,” it said. “I do, Janet.”

  5

  Letting Go

  As I entered Dad’s office, I walked up to him and hugged him.

  I took a seat on the tufted leather couch near his desk. On a bookshelf nearby were books marked Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 CFR, and United States Code Title 8: Aliens and Nationality.

  “I’m not sure what I did,” Dad said as he paced. “I just can’t figure it out.”

  “Have you lost your car keys, Dad?”

  “Car keys? No. They’re in the top drawer.” He ran his right palm over his eyes. He took a seat on the couch.

  “Are you OK, Dad?”

  “Some of my biggest clients just told me they’re taking their business elsewhere. I tried to arrange a meeting, but they won’t meet. They won’t tell me why.”

  My intuitive sense was that the Hoviaks had something to do with it, but I had no proof, and an allegation without evidence is nothing but a smear.

  “I’ll figure it out,” Dad said. “Clients don’t just pull the rug from under you unless something’s come up.”

  I was tempted to tell Dad about Mike and me, and the thought of doing so made me have palpitations. I took a deep breath, and, Dad, thinking that I was anxious for his predicament, told me not to worry; he’d be OK.

  He asked what I wanted for lunch, and I didn’t feel like eating, but I didn’t want to have Dad eat on his own as I watched. He’d be uncomfortable eating in front of me. Culturally, sharing a meal was a sign of reciprocal respect, but eating alone in front of someone else could come across as selfish and insulting.

  “I’m not hungry, Dad. Thanks, though.”

  “Have something small, Janet. Order a cookie, or some buttermilk biscuits, or something. It’s on me.”

  “What are you having, Dad?”

  “I want to enjoy myself, so I’m having Ethiopian food. It’s one of the oldest civilizations on the planet, and they’re proudly African, just like us.”

  Dad smiled. He was shaken by the news he’d received, and he was reaching for something historical of which he could be proud, something that reminded him that he belonged.

  The food arrived, and the air rejoiced. The injera, that wonderful sourdough flatbread, made my mouth water. There was also stew and vegetables, and the spices made everything all the more redolent.

  We’d be eating with our hands, which I loved.

  Now, there are women who’re into men who read books on trains (while wearing the latest fashion in eyeglasses); women who’re into guys who’re out in public with a baby in a stroller (which is made from organic materials); and women who’re into guys who have beards (because it’s all about being natural).

  For me, a man who knows how to eat with his hands (and to do so respectfully) is attractive.

  Hands are sensual, and, as my favorite author, Ambrosia Skiffles says, “our hands are the only parts of our bodies that we allow strangers to touch as soon they meet us. We are sensual, tactile creatures, and the hands of a beautiful man are sublime.”

  As Dad and I washed our hands in the restrooms, I found myself remembering a course I’d taken as a sophomore at the University of the Finger Lakes, “The Secret History of Everyday Life.”

  In that class, I learned that in Europe, many centuries ago, upper-class guests were expected to bring their fork and spoon to meals. Forks only became widely used around that time, and, before the arrival of silverware, hands were widely used when eating, in precise ways, to denote status.

  I smiled at the memory.

  The use of the hands conveyed status. And utensils that seemed so prevalent in our time (forks and spoons) had only recently been adopted as a necessity in the Western kitchen.

  I loved eating with my hands.

  Another memory came to mind.

  When Mauru and I dined out on one of our early dates, a couple simultaneously plunged their forks into the egg yolks sitting atop their breaded chicken thighs until the yolks completely collapsed, their contents escaping all over the plate. Beneath the yolks, the breaded chicken thighs ripped open under the force of the forks. The couple then spooned the yolk back onto the chicken. With their hands, they lifted the dripping morsels of chicken to their mouths. They then licked each other’s fingers.

  “That’s love,” Mauru said as he watched them.

  I dried my hands and went back to Dad’s office.

  We ate in silence at first.

  “How’s Mauru, my grandkids?” Dad asked.

  “We’re planning a vacation, Dad. We’re thinking of visiting Maine or Alaska. Water’s supposed to be abundant there, and it would be nice to get away for a bit.”

  “Alaska’s great. The kids will like it but take some games along with you, so
they don’t get bored. As for Maine, it’s supposed to be great as well, and they’re saying that they have a whole lot more immigrants and migrants out there now.”

  Dad still seemed preoccupied, so I thought I might keep talking to distract him.

  “Jon’s having a tough time at school, Dad. Someone’s been taking his snacks for a few weeks now. And the other day, he came home with a bruise on his elbow. He told Nate that he’s being bullied, but when we asked, he denied it. I left a message for his principal today.”

  “Do you ever wish our family had remained in the Federation?” Dad asked, changing the topic. Dad had just eaten some stew, and he was reaching for some flatbread as he avoided looking at me. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like to not be the child of immigrants, for your kids not to be the grandchildren of immigrants?” Dad dropped his head again, the weight of losing clients prompting him to believe that he had failed as a parent and as a grandparent.

  I thought, for a moment, of how strange it was that we allowed our work to define us, to reach into our souls and strike all of our exposed cords. We allowed work to get to us so much that a change in our work environment was experienced as a personal defeat.

  I thought of where my family was from. Although my parents spoke with pride of the Southern African Federation (especially in front of strangers), they also spoke of where they were from with anger and disbelief (among family members).

  The Federation was still under the tyrannical rule of “His Most Excellent Excellency, President Tsotsi Kuraya, Father of the Federation and Patron of Africa and Its Isles, a genius of the highest order,” and “Her Very Excellent Excellency, First Lady Gorguessa Kuraya, Mother of the Federation and Patroness of Africa and Its Isles.”

  Of course, the titles were absurd, but a generation of monstrous rulers in the Federation believed that the accretion of titles, no matter how fantastic, increased their power and standing, over and above the violence and corruption they deployed with growing facility.