Fire Sweeping: The California Ballot Killings Book II

by H M Wilhelmborn

  Jennifer and Dolores were cackling, and Adriana, who, no doubt, believed that ignoring silliness was the mark of high birth, turned her nose up haughtily at them and walked away, which only made the raven look like it was preparing to dart into the overhead glass panels, taking Adriana’s eyebrows and eyelids with it.

  Andy tried to play it cool.

  He wore a green blazer, a white polo, a pair of blue slacks, boat shoes, and a straw hat. He held a cocktail in one hand, like a dandy waiting to issue his first repartee of the day.

  I imagined that Andy and Adriana had had the following discussion before they’d decided what to wear to my birthday party.

  Adriana: Well, Janet asked us to dress like characters by Ambrosia Skiffles. Ambrosia has more run-on sentences that any other novelist in America. I’ve always been more of a Poe fan, myself, hence the raven. Are you wearing your straw hat, Andy?

  Andy: Of course! Can you pass me my ginger ale, please?

  Adriana: And when we stand near each other at your secretary’s party, it will look like my raven wants to lay eggs in your straw hat.

  Andy: Yes, indeed! A giant raven fascinator hat is perfect for an atrium, and it will keep them all spellbound.

  Larry attended the party with Michelle, his mistress.

  Michelle had been Larry’s mistress for years, and, as Larry’s secretary, I had been obliged to order all the expensive jewelry Michelle requested from Zanzivahl, while Albertine-Rose, Larry’s devoted and loving wife (and the mother of their two sons) remained at home and did charity work.

  Michelle was a celebrated chef, she owned a well-known restaurant in San Diego, Sequoia and Birch, and she’d won three Gourmet Critics of America awards.

  Michelle also had a habit of calling me “Jane.”

  “Oh, Jane,” she said as she walked up to me with her gift, “so good to see you again. Happy birthday. What a lovely little home your parents have.”

  “Little?” Larry said. “This place is huge.”

  “Anyway,” Michelle said, “here you go, Jane. I brought you some of my award-winning blooming jellyfish bites. Very sustainable and environmentally friendly. Enjoy.”

  I welcomed Michelle and Larry, and I thanked them for their gift.

  As I observed people move around the atrium, I couldn’t help but notice how they all remained in character.

  Larry refused to talk to the ConfiPrice servers.

  Whenever he wanted something, he motioned to the servers with his right index finger and his middle finger, simultaneously. It made me cringe, but it made Jennifer and Dolores laugh. Jennifer went up to Larry and said that the use of those two fingers was an obscene sign in some cultures.

  “Not in this one,” Larry said. “People should know their place.”

  Miguel was seated at a table with Adam and Dad, and they were talking about the Federation, about Colorado, and the weather.

  Larry didn’t sit with them. Instead, he nodded as he walked by them, and he went to sit at an open table, where all the attorneys congregated around him and Michelle.

  “Make an effort to circulate,” Larry commanded them all. “For Janet’s sake. We can’t all be around one table. It makes us all look like rubes.”

  Of course, Larry intended to hold court—with an audience around him, but he felt the need to appear polite.

  Mom’s best and only friend, Helen, had just arrived, with her son, Abraham, whose beard was biblical.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Helen told Mom. “It’s what I heard through the grapevine. It’s the CWP that’s starting all these forest fires we hear about. They’re doing it because they need to make things seem worse than they are. Just shameful, if you asked me.”

  “We’re all lambs in the fox’s den now,” Mom said as she scanned the room to make sure everyone had enough food and drink.

  “Trehoviak himself,” Helen said, “was seen igniting a forest fire.”

  Helen’s eyes, the size of full moons, were now wide open.

  “I’m serious, Gazelle,” Helen said. “I saw it on social media. There was an actual picture of Governor Trehoviak starting a forest fire. And he was smiling!”

  Helen loved gossip. The more farfetched the claim, the more she enjoyed spreading it.

  “It’s enough,” Helen continued, “to make good Christian women like us have heartburn. They were also saying that Anton—you know the tall, skinny one you always see with the governor?—is a Raddie.”

  Anton, of course, was no such thing, but Helen needed him to be from Colorado for what she was about to say next.

  “What!” Mom feigned surprise.

  “Of course, Gazelle! They’re all Raddies in the CWP. All of them. They attack other Raddies because they don’t want anyone to know that they’re all from Colorado, and they all moved here to steal all our resources. Then they’ll move back to Colorado with all our riches. You know how everyone’s jealous of California. Everyone wishes they lived here.”

  Abraham, Helen’s son, was staring at Maria, my best friend, who’d come with her daughter, Sacha, and her mother, Rigoberta.

  “It honestly never ends,” Helen said to Mom. “They were also saying on social media that the CWP distributes pictures of the governor to all CWP members, and the members are required to dangle the pictures in their babies’ strollers so that the babies are recruited from infancy. Can you believe it, Gazelle!”

  Mom shook her head. “Incredible,” she said. “Just incredible.”

  Maria, Sacha, Rigoberta, Jennifer, and Dolores were all seated at the same table. They all looked like immigrants waiting for their passports to be stamped so that they’d finally be allowed in.

  I went over and sat with them.

  “You look a lot like your mom, Janet,” Rigoberta said. “Where are your kids?”

  Jon and Nate were at the pool with Mauru, and the twins were asleep.

  Helen walked up to us as Mom went to chat with Larry and the attorneys from WS&X.

  Helen whispered. “Have you all heard that the governor has a dog called Lulu? He was thinking of making her the attorney general of the state of California. Yes! I read it on social media!”

  “It honestly doesn’t surprise me anymore,” Dolores said. She took a bite of a pig in a blanket and raised her eyebrows in approval. “Honestly,” she told us, “nothing those people do surprises me anymore. They’ve only been in power for a month, and the damage is already underway.”

  “At least they take the environment seriously,” Rigoberta said as Sacha sat on her lap. “We must think of the future, of our grandkids, and of what they will have. There have been demonstrations by kids about the environment. At least, the CWP takes water waste very seriously, and they are doing something about it. The Water Court will soon put all the water wasters in jail.”

  “But, Mama,” Maria said to Rigoberta, “you’ve got to look at the whole picture, not just the CWP’s water policies. We must also remember the corruption and what they did to Eleena in the Southern African Federation. They executed her on national TV. How can we forget that?”

  “I’ll never forget that for as long as I live,” Jennifer said. “It was one of the most heartbreaking and shocking things I’ve ever witnessed, and to see it live on TV was just something else.”

  “And the CWP is super-rich,” Dolores said, “and I cannot stand the rich. When have the rich ever thought of anyone but themselves?”

  “I envy the rich,” Jennifer said, “and I would gladly join their ranks.”

  “I was reading on social media that everyone in the CWP is super-rich,” Helen said. “There was even a picture of them burning stacks of hundred-dollar bills in front of the homeless. And they get all their money from the state bank accounts, which they’re plundering. There was even a picture on social media of the governor dressed as a bandit breaking into the State Bank of the California Republic. They were also saying the CWP only eat pork meat [sic]. Only bandits eat pork meat [sic].”

  Dolores
, who was enjoying another pig in a blanket, set it aside, and she glared at Helen. Jennifer, who was gobbling down mini chipolata sausages (which also contained pork), laid the chipolata sausages down on the plate in front of her, finished chewing, and coughed.

  Concerned that the conversation was getting a little too heavy for Sacha, who was almost four years old, Maria asked if we might take her to the pool, where my boys were.

  Sacha jumped into the pool in her party dress. Sacha was doing the doggy paddle, but Maria, displeased, yelled, “¡Ese vestido cuesta mucho dinero, Sacha! And now it’s all wet.”

  Mauru asked Maria how she was doing, and he wondered how the party was going.

  “It’s going,” Maria said. “Everyone’s acting in character.”

  We left the kids with Samuel and Eileen, and Maria, Mauru, and I returned to the guests.

  “You’re a lucky man,” Larry said to Mauru, as he stood up to greet him. “I’d trust Janet with my life. She keeps the office going, and she’s the backbone of all the work we do.”

  “I second that,” Andy said.

  “Me, too,” Amandine said.

  Amandine, the other co-founder of WS&X, wore a tropical smock jacket that reached below the knees, and her husband, Joshua, wore a tan T-shirt beneath a seersucker jacket, with seersucker shorts that sat at least three inches above his hairy knees, as well as silver sneakers.

  The WS&X attorneys and their spouses had put three tables together, and Larry had ordered the food and drinks for everyone.

  “Janet’s not only trustworthy,” Larry continued, “she’s also completely loyal, and she’s devoted to the task at hand. And she has sound judgment. Better than some of the attorneys on my payroll.”

  “She wasn’t always an easy child, growing up,” Mom said as she walked up to us. “Girls can be headstrong, and Janet was no different.”

  There were nervous smiles around the table.

  “We think the world of her,” Hannah said.

  Larry asked if he could propose a toast. Mom and Dad were delighted at the idea.

  “To Janet!” Larry said as he raised a glass of white wine.

  “To Janet!” The rest of the room responded.

  “Janet,” Larry said as he faced me, “when Amandine, Andy, and I opened WS&X on September 1, 2027, and you came through that door, I told Amandine and Andy that you were different. I felt that I knew you from the start. I could see what a fantastic employee you’d make and what an asset you’d be to WS&X. Your sense of judgment and discretion are unimpeachable. You know what to prioritize and why, and you do it without complaint. You also have a great sense of humor, and I look forward to many more years of working with you. We, your WS&X family, are also delighted to be here with your other family and your friends. But they should be warned: we value you, and we need you more than they do, and we don’t like sharing. To Janet!”

  “To Janet!” The room responded.

  Dad went up to Larry and shook his hand.

  “Janet knows me even better than my own wife,” Larry told Dad. “Janet knows where all the bodies are buried.”

  Michelle asked Barrington, the ConfiPrice server, for some bruschetta with tomato and basil. As Barrington gave Michelle the bruschetta, I couldn’t help but hope that he was infecting her with the hatred.

  Michelle bit the bruschetta, which disintegrated in loud sounds under the force of her jaws. The sound and sight of Michelle eating bruschetta prompted Jennifer, who was now staring at Michelle, to say out loud, “the masticating gums of life!”

  Jennifer then roared with laughter, and some chipolata sausage tumbled from her mouth to the ground as she cried while laughing. She tried to apologize, which only made her roar more loudly with laughter.

  “She’s. . .” Jennifer pointed at Michelle and laughed some more. “It’s too much, Adam. Oh, my goodness! It’s just too much! Michelle’s got manly muscles in her jaws!”

  More laughter followed and finger-pointing in Michelle’s direction.

  I tried to change the topic by talking about strelitzia, snapdragons, and orchids, but Jennifer wasn’t having it.

  “So, when I was married to Helmut,” Jennifer explained as she reached for a napkin, “my German husband, whom I was married to before I met Adam, we traveled quite a bit, hey. Our neighbor in Dubai, Robert, who was from—Oh, I don’t even remember where Robert was from, hey. Anyway, Robert had a habit of saying, ‘How are the masticating gums of life treating you today, Jennifer?’ Yes, that’s really and truly what Robert said every day! Imagine! What an image, hey! The masticating gums of life! And Helmut and I just burst out laughing each time Robert said it.”

  Jennifer stared at Michelle. “Michelle, over there, has some real masticating gums of life with more muscles than an Olympic weightlifter! Perfect for a famous chef, who does all that chewing!”

  Jennifer burst out laughing again, and Adam and Dolores joined her.

  Dolores, however, seemed to laugh at Michelle because she was a rich and famous chef, and Dolores wasn’t in the mood to deal with either, maybe because their B&Bs in Hawaii were in trouble. The more Dolores tried to stop herself from laughing, the harder she laughed, so she excused herself and asked where the restroom was.

  Larry, who felt protective toward Michelle, responded.

  “One of the things I’m glad for,” Larry said to the WS&X attorneys around him, “is that my sons will never get the hatred. Global warming is for the poor, and only the poor have to worry about where they can go and what will happen to them in these times. For the rest of us, it’s business as usual. Like, right now, my son, Hudson, has the flu. I have the best doctor in San Diego on call. That doctor will show up when requested because I’ll sue his ass for medical malpractice if he doesn’t. These diseases that everyone’s worried about are not American. They’re foreign, unmanly diseases that only go for those who’ve done nothing with their lives. I have my business, and Michelle has her restaurant. What do others have?”

  Larry, you’ll recall, was the son of an immigrant, which only a few of us knew. It was something of which Larry was ashamed, especially since his dad, an immigrant, had run off with a man and had left Larry and his mom to fend for themselves.

  Visibly uncomfortable with the giant raven on her head, Adriana stood up and attempted to stretch, but the bird moved left and right as if it were trying to find its footing on her scalp, and Adriana exclaimed, “Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus!”

  Adriana asked Andy to help her “secure” the bird, which he did by ensuring that it was adequately fastened in place.

  Jennifer, who a moment prior seemed bothered by Larry’s comments about foreigners and poverty, was cackling again with Dolores (who had returned from the restroom), and Maria and Rigoberta joined in.

  Jennifer checked to see if Michelle was still “masticating” something, and when she found that Michelle was incorrigibly chewing more bruschetta, Jennifer buried her face in her palms and laughed so hard her shoulders shook. Between the raven and the masticating gums of life, Jennifer kept herself entertained until the end of the party.

  “I hope they don’t intend to round us up,” Dolores said. “The CWP. It wouldn’t surprise me if they rounded us Raddies up.”

  “It would never happen,” Rigoberta said. “The CWP takes care of migrants from everywhere. They even have those camps near the border at San Isidro, where they provide free food, housing, and medical care to all who need it.”

  “Not to those from Colorado,” Dolores said. “It might seem like a joke, but politicians always tell you what they’re going to do before they do it. And now you have the crazies from E Pluribus attacking Raddies and foreigners. It’s no joke.”

  Abraham, Helen’s son, whose interest in Maria was becoming more apparent, had spent most of the evening on his own, trying to see where he might fit in.

  He gradually inched toward the table at which Maria sat, and he smiled at her. He asked if he could get her and everyone else something to eat
or drink.

  I welcomed him to join us, smiled at Maria, and, noticing that I’d spent too much time at one table, went to sit with the attorneys from WS&X.

  “Oil means more business and more bonuses,” Andy instructed the attorneys. “And we need more of both.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Larry said.

  Neelam, Lawrence’s fiancée, wasn’t exactly sure what they were talking about. So she asked what the oil talk was about.

  “Oil in San Diego,” Hannah said in response to Neelam. “They’ve found oil here. Didn’t you hear?”

  “Isn’t oil a Texas thing?” Neelam asked.

  “California has oilfields,” Larry said. “We’re the nation’s third-largest crude oil producer. There are oil fields up in LA, but most are in the San Joaquin Valley, and they’ve just started producing shale oil up in Monterey.”

  “More oil means more jobs,” Amandine interjected, “and all the homeless around here could use those jobs.”

  “It’s about priorities,” Michelle told us. “When I arrived in California from Fairfax City, I had nothing. But I worked my ass off, got myself some investors, and I opened Sequioa and Birch. The problem today is that everyone wants a free handout, and they want us to pay for it. I already give the leftovers from my restaurant to a food bank, and that’s all I’m willing to do. I’m not going to encourage the spread of dependence.”

  Larry nodded.

  “But it’s also about health care, right?” LSD said. “People are getting sick. They estimate that every time a dust storm comes through, visits to the ER spike by 25 percent, and at least half of the people don’t have any health insurance. That’s not even talking about the hatred, the fact that there’s no cure, and the inflated costs of dealing with that.”

  Barrington, who was clearing away some of the empty plates, glanced at me and looked away.

  “Whose fault is it that they don’t have health care?” Larry asked. “We pay such high taxes in this state that I don’t feel guilty about people who are irresponsible and have nothing. People should get off their asses and get jobs. Flip burgers. Scrub floors. Do whatever you need to do to get by. I’m getting a little annoyed by people blaming others for their misfortune.”