Fire Sweeping: The California Ballot Killings Book II Read online

  “They’re smooth like butter,” Dad said. “The CWP is incredibly smooth, and how they got 71 percent of Californians to vote for them still escapes me.”

  “I hate them, too, but it makes sense,” Dolores said as she reached for some Champagne from a ConfiPrice server. “People wanted aggressive action on the environment, and the CWP promised that, and now it’s delivering on that—“

  “While discriminating against Americans from other states and using inflammatory speech to describe us,” Miguel said.

  “Exactly,” Mom said. “They honestly remind me of the pastor at my church. I call him ‘President Jim.’ President Jim talks of the environment to get his way on all kinds of matters. He’s also the most arrogant, insolent, juvenile man you’ll ever meet. But I have a surprise for him. You wait and see.”

  Pastor Jim was an innocuous and often thoughtful young pastor, whom Mom despised because he was much younger than she and Dad, but he professed to speak with authority about the Bible, about God, and life. Mom believed that he was too young to know anything meaningful about the world, so she wanted him to shut up and leave.

  “There are lots of new churches popping up,” Dolores said as she savored her Champagne. “We’re not religious, but there is a church everyone is talking about called The Church of the Moral Elixir. They are a bit animated, but they are also against the CWP, and they are growing every week.”

  “I can’t do animated,” Mom said. “President Jim animates me enough. Janet needs to attend church services. It’s been a while, and it’s good for the soul. I especially worry about my grandkids, who might grow up without a moral compass and a sense of community in these times. I’d even be OK if Janet attended one of these new churches. You’ve just got to belong, you know, or you’re stuck on your own in a world with dust storms, illness, and everything else.”

  “We were in a terrible dust storm the other day,” Miguel said. “Couldn’t see a thing for miles.”

  “The car stopped,” Dolores said. “Wouldn’t go an inch further. We sat there for half an hour, listening to Almond Leather. These CWP people like to act as if California were God’s gift to America, but this state is becoming unlivable.”

  “It still has its good days,” Miguel said. “And when the dust storms relent, it’s livable enough.”

  “But it will only get worse,” Dolores insisted. “And we will always be ‘Raddies’ here. There is never a good ending for any group of people that is looked down upon by those in power.”

  “Belonging,” Dad said, “is everything. We all need to belong.”

  “Exactly,” Dolores said, as she raised her glass of Champagne as if to toast Dad.

  Hannah arrived, wearing a metallic azure cocktail dress with green pumps; she was stunning.

  “Hannah,” I said. “This is my mom, my dad, and you’ve met Miguel and Dolores.”

  Hannah offered me a bouquet of roses (my favorite), and she gave Mom a box of truffles (her favorite), and Dad some Chartreuse (his favorite).

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” Mom told Hannah. “And it’s all true. We must fix you up with someone. Are you religious?”

  Hannah looked at me.

  “She’s happily single,” I told Mom. “And she’s brilliant enough to take care of herself.”

  “Please help my daughter,” Mom said to Hannah. “She doesn’t always think right.”

  “Forgive my wife,” Dad said. “Whenever she meets someone she likes, she tries to marry them off, if they aren’t married already. Welcome, and thanks so much for the gifts. What can we get you, Hannah?”

  Hannah smiled politely, and she requested some Champagne, which Dad brought for her. As Mom and Dad showed Miguel and Dolores around their home, Hannah whispered in my ear.

  “Your Mom is even more direct than you,” Hannah observed. “But it’s a beautiful home, and—Where are your kids? Where’s Mauru?”

  “At the pool.”

  “Your parents’ have a pool?”

  I nodded.

  “The Hoviaks are a-comin’,” Hannah said with a smile. “They don’t like pools. Not in these times. Anyway, I’m always the first to arrive. I blame it on my parents.” Hannah imitated someone’s voice now, presumably her mom’s. “‘The Wellsprings of Cleveland, Ohio, are governors, judges, and scions of business. We lead by example and are never late, Hannah.’”

  When LSD arrived with her husband, Bo Lin, Hannah feigned joy. “Ah,” she said, “some of my favorite people! How good to see you!”

  Lawrence arrived with his fiancée, Neelam. LSD and

  “And,” Hannah exclaimed as she stared again at LSD, “I want the same summer dress you’re wearing! It’s so great!”

  To Neelam, she said, “And I’m just delighted to meet you! The photo Lawrence has in his office of you is such an understatement. And I love your necklace.”

  That’s the way to do it, I thought. Kill ’em with kindness, Hannah.

  “Bo,” LSD said to her husband, “this is Hannah, the smartest person I’ve ever met. I want to be like her when I grow up. She’s also so professional and so together. She’s the picture of excellence.”

  “Ah,” Hannah said, “that’s so kind, LSD.”

  I welcomed them all, received the gifts they’d brought (all gift cards), and I ensured that they got what they needed from the ConfiPrice servers, who seemed a little annoyed.

  Lawrence, LSD, Neelam, and Bo Lin all took a seat at a table close to Mom’s orchids. Lawrence and LSD gave their jackets to ConfiPrice servers to put away as they sat down.

  The four of them were served the drinks they requested (two local craft beers, one vodka on the rocks, and one seltzer). They also asked for pigs in a blanket, shrimp, chicken skewers, samosas, and beef sliders.

  “I honestly couldn’t sit with them,” Hannah confided in me a few minutes later, close to the entrance to the atrium. “Someone’s been spreading rumors about me at work, saying that I’m about to be fired because I misread a case on a Hoviak matter. I’ve never misread a case in my life. It’s such a basic error, and I do not make errors, basic or advanced. There’s a reason why I get the highest bonuses every year.”

  “Hannah,” I said, “play nice. Why don’t we sit with them till the other guests arrive? You’ve got to learn to smile at those you don’t like. And you don’t know it was they who spread the rumors. Lawyers are so cutthroat that anyone at the firm could have spread that rumor about you.”

  “I was just saying to Janet,” Hannah said as we approached the table where our coworkers were seated, “that we should all sit together. How are you all doing?”

  I asked for a zinfandel, which I sipped as I sat down. Hannah asked for a beef slider.

  Mike came to mind. Would our families like each other? Would he get along with my kids?

  In one of my nightmares, he’d appeared in a tuxedo, holding a baby that was asleep as he stood beside a withered cactus. He said he missed the rain. Was it raining where I was?

  “But it’s not only Australia,” Neelam said as I forced myself to stop thinking of Mike. “It’s also California. The fire season in California is now year-round. Before, you’d get one fire in January in, say, Humboldt County, north of San Francisco. Then you’d get a fire in, say, Riverside County, in April. Then it would really pick up from May through the end of the year. Now it’s year-round. California’s burning. If it’s not the sun, it’s the fires where there’s still vegetation.”

  Neelam looked at me for support, as if I were an official in the California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection, which the CWP was about to rename the “California Department of Climate Mitigation.”

  “I think Neelam’s right,” I said, as I tried to play the perfect host. “There was something on the California Homeland Channel the other night about Australia, and temperatures there are almost 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Thousands of homes have been burned, people are dying from asthma and other lung-related illnesses. Koalas are burning alive.” />
  Hannah seemed alarmed by my mention of koalas killed alive as if it were a gratuitous comment.

  “It’s kind of hard to keep up with where desertification is increasing,” Bo Lin said, “and where the hatred is omnipresent, and where the fires are, and where the floods are worse. It all just boggles the mind.”

  “Which is why we focus on the local,” LSD, his spouse, responded. “Right now, it’s getting kind of unbearable in California. The hatred’s already here, and boys are dying.”

  “Only a few,” Lawrence said. “It’s pretty easy to be discouraged by things over which we have no control. The fires are always contained—yes, a few people die—but most of us end up OK. It’s just the news blowing things out of proportion. Fire is so essential in the life cycle of things. It makes way for new growth, and the hatred can’t go on forever. Nothing does.”

  Hannah looked at Lawrence like he was an idiot, who had gotten by solely on charm and freckles.

  Lawrence, not wanting to offend Hannah, backtracked. “But, of course,” Lawrence said as he downed a flute of Champagne, “we must not take life for granted. We must do our best to ensure that safety comes first—human safety, property safety, animal safety.”

  “I honestly give up,” LSD said as she took a bite of a beef slider. “This world is not what I planned for when I fell pregnant with my twins. My twins will not—“

  “Please excuse me,” I said, “I must check on my kids, who are unusually quiet.”

  Just as I stood up, Mom, Dad, Miguel, and Dolores walked back into the atrium. I introduced them to everyone who’d arrived, and Dolores, intent on making her point, told all the attorneys from WS&X that she was “both a proud Raddie and a proud American. Colorado is the most beautiful state in the country, by the way.”

  Hannah dropped her head and started smiling. She loved the random and the eccentric, and Dolores’s comment was right up her alley.

  “But let’s get to know Janet’s friends first,” Miguel said to Dolores. “Otherwise, they’ll think we’re radical Raddies, if we begin every conversation in a confrontational manner.”

  “The CWP is very confrontational,” Dolores said. “They’re the ones saying the awful things about us.”

  “I know,” Miguel responded as he requested a beef slider from a ConfiPrice server, “but this is a birthday party, and we want to keep things light.”

  “Pero es verdad,” Dolores said to Miguel. “We cannot allow these CWP people to divide us. They are some of the worst human beings in the history of our country. They ban everything. That’s what they do. Ban. Ban. Ban. They would ban their grandmothers if they could.”

  Hannah tittered in response.

  “I agree,” Mom said. “You and I are just the same, Dolores. We are mothers who worry about these Water Weirdos—the CWP—and what they are doing to all of us.”

  Dolores shook Mom’s hand, and she adjusted her pin that told us that she was both a proud Raddie and a proud American.

  “I didn’t vote for them,” Dolores told all the attorneys from WS&X, “and I will be joining Mothers for Mercy or the Church of the Moral Elixir to fight them. I have now decided. I’m not religious, but I must take up arms for the soul of my country.”

  Hannah covered her mouth again with her right hand. I hoped she didn’t burst out laughing.

  “I wonder if the price of beef will go up now,” Lawrence wondered out loud. “You know, all these terrible fires are destroying everything. But the beef in these sliders is so delicious. Did you cook these?”

  Lawrence was looking at Mom. Mom wasn’t the best cook in America, but she wasn’t the worst. When she put her mind to cooking, she made some delicious meals, but that’s as far as it went.

  “She’s the best cook in America,” Dad lied in response to Lawrence’s question. “And, yes, Gazelle made everything you see here today. I have a wonderful wife. She’s Janet’s mother, and she’s a wonderful grandmother, too.”

  “And Miguel made the wonderful cakes,” Dolores said. “Three wonderful cakes for Janet. We like her. We also like Hannah, who is helping us deal with some crooks.”

  “You’re all attorneys at this table,” Dad said as he tried to turn the discussion around. “May I ask what you all specialize in?”

  Some smiles appeared because the conversation was finally becoming a little more neutral.

  I excused myself, got a whole lot of food (and some drinks), and I asked a ConfiPrice server to help me take it all to the indoor swimming pool, where my kids were with their dad and the helpers who worked for my parents.

  “You’re all so lucky,” the server said as he and I walked to the pool. “This is a palace.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’d love to live in a place like this and be hopeful for the future. You can see the hope in everyone’s eyes here.”

  The server’s tag said his name was Barrington. Barrington dropped his head and focused on the food he was carrying.

  “Have you worked for a while at ConfiPrice?” I asked. “We love shopping there.”

  “I just started. I had to find a job, which is tough. My brother is one of the first in California to have the hatred.”

  My heart sank for him, and my first thought was to do everything I could to help him, but then I thought of those people who sign checks to the poor to lay their guilt to rest.

  “I hope he’s OK now,” I said as we neared the pool.

  “What they don’t tell you is that the disease kills your brother, but the cost of care kills your family. When Michael got the beet-red eyes, we took him to the emergency room. The doctors didn’t know what they were doing. We were there for twelve hours. At the end of it, they told us he had the flu, and they sent us a bill for $25,500 because we don’t have healthcare. There was a facility charge of $18,500, testing fees of almost $5,500, and the ER doctor charged us $1,000 for ten minutes of his time to tell us Michael had the flu. I work three jobs now. I am a janitor from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., then I work at a drive-through car wash from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., and then at ConfiPrice from 6:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., and all day on weekends.”

  For a moment, I was inexplicably seized with terror.

  I considered taking the tray of food from Barrington and disposing of it because I didn’t want my kids to be contaminated by the possibility of illness. Then I recalled that the hatred wasn’t a communicable disease. You needed direct exposure to infected sands, which were rising in great dust storms across California and the world.

  I regulated my breathing and calmed down.

  We arrived at the pool.

  Jon and Nate hopped out of the pool and sat on towels beside Samuel and Eileen, the helpers, and ate. We’d brought beef sliders, beef wellington bites, caprese bites, cocktail meatballs, creamed kale toasts, herbed chickpea bruschetta, pigs in a blanket, shrimp tostada bites, and buttermilk biscuits.

  I’d also taken a pitcher of cold lemonade (Nate’s favorite) and a pitcher of orange juice mixed with sparkling water (Jon’s favorite).

  Mauru asked me to help him take the twins to one of the guest rooms; they were falling asleep.

  “Are there pools in Alaska?” Jon asked as I carried Nathalie. “Will we be able to go swimming when we go there on vacation, Mom?”

  “Have you been to Alaska?” Nate asked Barrington.

  I thanked Barrington for helping me, and Mauru and I took twins to the guest room.

  I heard Dolores burst out laughing in the atrium, joined by Hannah. Dolores’s laughter was so distinctive that it almost sounded like she was crying. I also recognized Jennifer de Jongs’s laughter in all that. Jennifer de Jong was my neighbor in Rancho San Antonio. She was also from the Federation.

  Something had happened.

  7

  The Trumpeter Swans

  Andy, one of the co-founders of WS&X, had arrived with his wife, Adriana.

  Adriana wore the biggest fascinator hat I’d ever seen. With it, she wore a red crushed-silk blouse, black slacks, and
red pumps. (I’ll admit that it was the first fascinator hat I’d ever seen in person, and Adriana’s was incredible, both for its height and its subject.)

  The hat was shaped like a giant raven.

  The raven looked like it was about to attack Adriana’s scalp and run away with her hair, and the weight of it prompted Adriana to pause and stare at you as if she and the bird were one, and movement was only possible if Adriana and the giant raven were in total agreement.

  Dolores and Hannah were laughing. Hannah, however, had to be careful because Andy was her boss (as he was mine).

  Jennifer de Jong, my neighbor, who had come with her husband, Adam, was also laughing at the raven, which she told me was “really quite absurd in these times, Janet. Where would she find that thing, given a collapse in the bird populations, hey?”

  Jennifer had traveled the world, and Adam was Jennifer’s second husband. It hadn’t worked out between Jennifer and her first husband, who was German.

  “It’s just a masterpiece, man,” Jennifer said sarcastically as she congratulated Adriana on the hat.

  Jennifer requested some shrimp, which she munched on as she gazed at the hat.

  “It’s like one of those masterpieces you find at the Museum of Natural History, and you want to touch it, but there’s a big, old sign right there in front of it saying, ‘Do Not Touch the Taxidermy Pieces Or the Feathers Will Fall Right Off.’ So, you just stand right there and take a long, hard look, and you say to yourself, ‘How did they even achieve that kind of effect with that dead bird that it looks so real, hey, and yet it’s clearly beyond this vale of tears, but it’s also as lifelike as ever, isn’t it?’”

  Jennifer knew Dolores and Miguel from our complex, and Jennifer asked Dolores if she’d ever seen anything like Adriana’s hat.

  “Not even the surrealists could come up with something like that,” Dolores said as she asked Barrington for some shrimp on toasted bread.

  “My goodness, Dolores!” Jennifer exclaimed. “Every time Adriana turns her head, it looks like the bird is about to remove her forehead!”