Holy Water

by James P. Othmer

  Madden nods and returns his gaze to the road. At the bottom of the next hill they can see the newly shingled roof of the call center. Madden stops the Range Rover some seventy-five yards from the building and says, “Why push it, right?”

  Henry shrugs. He holds out his hand, and Madden accepts it. “Getting these straws is huge, Mister Madden.”

  “I’m glad to help and glad for you.”

  “And that’s it? No strings attached?”

  “Oh, there are strings.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Well, for starters, I’d like an invite to this fancy conference for the corporate titans at the palace. Much opportunity to be harvested there.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. That it?”

  Madden shakes his head and squeezes Henry’s hand harder. “I want you to promise me you’ll keep at it, Tuhoe. You may not ever get to it. You may fall on your arse and fail. You may die. But the key is to never stop. I stopped a long time ago in just about every conceivable way, and as much as I may lead people to believe otherwise, the state I’m in, I’m fucking done, mate. But for you, I can tell, it’s not too late.”

  ~ * ~

  IV

  ~ * ~

  Rehearsing the Lie

  They do not rehearse reality.

  Instead they concentrate on depicting a short-term facsimile of it. Just enough to make Pat and Audrey believe. And the dignitaries. And the cameras.

  “If we’re not convincing enough to make people believe that this thing is going to work,” Henry is telling Maya and Mahesh, out of earshot of the others in the call center, “we at least want to prevent them from dwelling on the fact that it’s doomed.”

  “But it’s not doomed,” Maya says.

  He smiles. “You’re right. It isn’t. But it will be if we try to do too much and reveal the true situation here. If those phones were to start ringing tomorrow, for real, we’d be ruined. We have little time left to properly rehearse. For now, for the next few days, we just have to be able to demonstrate competence. Not be competent. Okay?”

  Maya nods. Mahesh twists two thumbs up and says, “You’re the boss.”

  Behind them the operators are rehearsing. To avoid overloading them, Henry split them into three groups of four and had each group memorize two basic customer service scenarios. Maya spent the morning decorating the interior walls with Happy Mountain Springs posters. A four-foot-by-four-foot logo banner hangs from the ceiling behind the worktables: the first thing a visitor will see upon entering. Outside, workers are raking the scrub lawn and setting up a small stage for tomorrow morning’s ceremony. A man on a stepladder is nailing another banner along the edge of the fence behind the stage. It reads, Happy Mountain Springs: The Purity Runs Through Us All.

  There was anxiety about the LifeStraws until they arrived, early. There’s still anxiety about whether the prince will attend, but that’s beyond their control, and they’ve been assured that someone from the palace will attend if the prince is indisposed, “not to be confused with predeposed,” Henry said to the person on the line. This was met with silence.

  Just before lunch a van drives through the gate. It’s driven by Maya’s cousin, the restaurant owner. With Madden’s help and without Maya’s knowledge, Henry contacted him and arranged for him to cater tomorrow’s event as well as this surprise luncheon for the employees.

  “Was this okayed in the budget?” Maya asks.

  He shakes his head. “I made an executive decision.”

  ~ * ~

  They gather to eat lunch under bright sunshine at a group of folding tables set beneath a row of cypress trees. Mahesh has set up a boom box playing what he’s calling an “American party mix” CD. Maya’s cousin is busy cooking over two flaming, wood-fired, halved fifty-gallon drums and two long serving tables covered with hot trays containing a half-dozen different local delicacies.

  After filling their plates, Henry and Maya sit at a table with Mahesh and three women. Maya speaks to them in Galadonian and then translates their replies for Henry. How many kids do they have. Where do they live. While they are talking a female operator named Teara approaches, lays a white lily beside his plate, then kisses him on the cheek. A few moments later Henry excuses himself, not because he isn’t interested in their stories but because he doesn’t want them to feel as if they have to perform for his benefit. He wants them to enjoy their lunch as much as those at the other tables without having to suck up to their flaky American boss.

  ~ * ~

  Alone inside the call center, he walks to the lone network-connected desktop computer and stoops to check his messages. Meredith wrote to him this morning with the latest itinerary for Pat and Audrey, from takeoff at JFK to tomorrow’s call center ceremonies, the audience at the palace, and perhaps even the hospitality cruise on the river before they catch the first flight out the following morning. Also from Meredith, under the subject heading “No shit,” is a confidential document for his eyes only titled “Audrey and Pat’s Etiquette Manifesto,” a six-page missive detailing special dietary requirements (organic, hormone-free meats, filtered, distilled water served in sterilized Happy Mountain Springs bottles) and procedural dos (nothing smaller than a town car, stick to the corporate bio when introducing them), don’ts (ask for autographs, look them in the eye), and nevers (ask personal questions, touch them, call them Ms. or Ma’am).

  He’s still laughing as he moves on to the next e-mail, from Gerard back home, of all people. Inside is a group picture from the Son of Meat Night, a Cajun feast in Marcus LeBlanc’s backyard. They’re all there—Marcus, Gerard, Victor, and the brothers Osborne, each toasting him with what were no doubt meticulously prepared hurricanes. The note at the bottom reads: “To Tyler Dur-den, aka the Kid, aka H20, we miss your belligerent spirit! Cheers, from Sub-Bourbon Street!”

  He smiles, but only for a moment. Sentimentality is soon replaced by regret. For the way he treated them, despite the way they treated him. And for never writing that note of apology. Who did he think he was? Staring at the life he left behind, the life he rejected and disparaged and in many ways ran from, he feels like crying.

  As he reaches to click offline, a new message flashes up. Another note from Meredith, sent seconds ago, but not from her work account. It’s from Eva @ landofeeee.com and titled “EEEEnormously Entertaining New Content.” Because it’s not work-related and he should be getting back outside—it sounds like Mahesh has them doing some kind of group dance—he almost decides to ignore it. But because it’s not simply from Meredith but from Eva, who hasn’t updated her content in months, he doesn’t. And immediately upon opening it he sees that it has nothing to do with new content, or Eva, or entertainment.

  It’s this:

  Erase this as soon as you read it I did as soon as I sent it. There’s something you should know. Something I’d suspected for a week and overheard today while having drinks with a certain high-level executive one of whose brands is Happy Mountain Springs. The short story (unless you want to know the long one about this guy’s three ex-wives and Viagra dependency issues) is that the big company, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, is going to fold HMS into a larger bottled water brand. Glacial something. The one from Greenland with an umlaut. By folding it into a larger brand they mean to eliminate anything associated with HMS. Including, in a corporate, not homicidal, sense, Pat and Audrey, who know nothing about this. Also including Giffler and you and the call center and your seemingly admirable LifeStraws project. Of course you can’t tell a soul, especially Pat and Audrey, who, incidentally, are somewhere over the Pacific as you read this. Why did I tell you this? Certainly not to bum you out. I did it to give you a heads-up in hopes that it might in some way help you. Sorry about this, Henry. Be strong and stay safe.

  -M (EEEE)

  PS: Don’t bother checking the site for content. I’m actually shutting it down soon; will explain later.

  After deleting the message and clearing his digital history, he walks to the doorway. Outside, backed
by the boom box, Mahesh is teaching three rows of orange-robed women the steps for what appears to be the Cha-Cha Slide. Maya and her cousin and several other nonparticipants laugh and clap as they watch from the side. It almost would have been better, he thinks, if this had been a disaster from the start. Last night in his bed they told each other again and again that it couldn’t work. That they couldn’t work. They should be happy that they found each other at this moment and they should enjoy it while it lasts. But as they made love and talked and watched each other with astonishment as the night went on, the sentiment transformed from a joke to a warning to a plea and finally, near dawn, to a sort of sentence. They went from saying they couldn’t last but not meaning it and pretending they didn’t care to knowing that they wouldn’t and understanding it and caring more than either thought possible.

  Watching the Galadonians, almost as a punishment for indulging in the vices of hope and expectation, he is filled with, for the first time in a long time, guilt. Against his better, fatalistic judgment, he had gotten these people to depend on and, it appears, to believe in him. Even worse, he had gotten himself to believe in himself.

  He steps halfway into daylight before stopping, straddling the doorway, and wondering where to step next. Wondering what to do and what to say. What do you say to these people? What do you tell Maya?

  “Hey there, hero.” Maya, out of nowhere, alongside him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t be coy.” She grabs hold of his right arm by the triceps and begins to escort him toward the others. “Look at how happy they are.”

  He looks, thinking, The happier they are, the harder they will crash. The worse things will be. And by all signs they are pretty damned happy. Mahesh and the group have moved on to the intricate choreography of the Chicken Dance. A cappella.

  “Like this! Na-na-nenenene-neh! Na-na-nenenene-neh!”

  He feels horrible about the recent turn of events, and it is about to get worse. Mahesh and the twelve giggling Galadonians are waving him out to join them.

  “Hey now! Well, well!” Mahesh yells, stopping midflap, already walking toward Henry and away from the dancers. “He’s back! Everybody!” From three sides they begin to converge on Henry, enveloping him with thanks for a gift not yet delivered. When Mahesh begins to clap, they clap too. When Mahesh wraps his arm around Henry and begins to chant “Speech!” they do too. And when someone grabs a bench for Henry to stand on, to tease the promise of tomorrow, he begins rehearsing an all-new version of the lie in his head.

  ~ * ~

  If Sex Is Involved,

  Altruism Is Not

  If the benefits gained from an altruistic act exceed the cost of the act itself, it ceases to be altruistic. Well-intentioned, win-win PR, at best, Henry thinks. But more likely it plays out as some form of sleazy opportunism rather than the selfless helping of others. Add deception to the equation, and the fact that the so-called altruistic act may never be consummated, or that the person in charge of said act at least originally thought of it to win the attention of a woman, and it becomes criminal. At least in a karmic sense.

  They are in Maya’s truck, returning from an after-lunch visit to her old river village. She’s driving. It is almost dark, and for the second time this week a rare post-monsoon rain falls on the empty highway and pounds the hard-chalk earth on both sides of the road. Henry is in the passenger’s seat, with his head tilted back and eyes half closed, and four children, including Maya’s nephew, are singing a song that he has never heard in the back row and hatch area. They headed for the river right after the party this afternoon; to ensure that her village would be included in the LifeStraw program, Maya was determined to have it represented at tomorrow’s ceremonies.

  He didn’t think it possible, but seeing the river and the base of the mountains and the kids again, exchanging high fives with her admiring nephew, makes him feel even worse. At one point on the ride over he considered telling Maya about Meredith’s note, but she was so happy, so exhilarated, he didn’t have the heart. Or the balls.

  ~ * ~

  Near the end of the return trip from the river, Maya asks, “Everything okay?”

  After a moment during which he reconsiders and again rejects the idea of coming clean to her, he answers, “Yeah. I’m fine. Just a little exhausted.”

  “Well,” Maya says, resting a hand on his thigh, “you have every right to be. You’ve been amazing.”

  They don’t speak again until they pull into his driveway in USAVille. She drops him off first because his place is the first they come upon. The plan is for Maya to leave the children to spend the night at her cousin’s home, and after running some errands she’ll be back, around nine, for the night. He stands in the black drizzle, watching her taillights disappear, then heads up the walk to Madison Ellison’s house. Maybe she can help. He rings the bell. Knocks. Walks around her darkened house. No one’s home.

  ~ * ~

  Shuffle gives him “All the Wine” by the National.

  Big wet bottle in my fist, big wet rose in my teeth

  Over the kitchen sink is a death threat on a Post-it note. A cartoon figure of a man hanging from a prayer flag. Hardly welcome, he thinks, taking it down. But using the Post-it note as a medium somehow diminishes the threat.

  . . . I’m a festival, I’m a parade

  Upstairs, papers are scattered on the office floor. Torn, shredded, and apparently pissed upon. The desk is flipped up on its side, and the top of the laser printer has been smashed into a mosaic of gray plastic shards. He doesn’t pick any of it up. Just shuts the light and heads back downstairs.

  He calls Shug on his sat-phone and asks if he would be interested in spending the night at the call center, for double salary,

  watching out for vandals.

  Shug agrees, then says, “Have you heard the news?”

  Henry thinks. Shug couldn’t know about the pending sale of an American bottled water company. Then again, who knows what Shug knows. “No, Shug. I don’t think I have.”

  “The . . . king . . .,” Shug says with difficulty, then pauses. Henry’s fairly sure he hears sniffling on the other end. “The king has died.”

  And all the wine is all for me. . .

  He wonders if the old man was dead when he saw him being handled like a mannequin during the photo shoot. He wonders if this is good or bad for the prince and his plans, and for Happy Mountain Springs and its plans.

  ~ * ~

  He calls Sirajh, thinking that if he can get him to agree to a transfer of the money from the HMS account into Sirajh’s, the deal would be considered complete, and then, for a year at least, they could help several thousand rather than a hundred Galadonians for a month. But Sirajh doesn’t pick up, doesn’t even give him the opportunity to leave a message.

  He checks e-mail. Nothing from Meredith, or Giffler. He visits Eva’s Web site, only to find an announcement saying that it has been shut down. He keeps thinking of Madden’s tenet: To get anything done around here, you need to know all the wrong people. Madden’s phone rings and rings. Henry puts his phone on speaker and lays it on the table, still ringing, as he begins to tap out a message on his laptop. When he’s done, he presses Send, rises, and pours himself a tall glass of ara.

  ~ * ~

  Maya doesn’t return until after ten. He gets up from an uneasy sleep on the couch.

  “Sorry I’m late, but I had to stop at the spa.”

  “My spa?”

  She nods as she reaches back to undo the red scrunchie that holds her hair in a ponytail. “Our friends have arrived.”

  “They weren’t due until much later.”

  Maya shakes her head. “Apparently they were able to catch a flight to Seoul on the corporate jet.”

  Good luck catching one back, he thinks. “Is everything okay? Were they looking for me?”

  “They were too busy fighting with each other to look for anyone. I spoke under condition of anonymity with their same-sex-marriage counselor. Separate ro
oms. Separate buildings.”

  “The purity runs through us all.”

  She smiles. “I told them we’d meet for breakfast in the morning and go to the event together.”

  Henry pours them each a glass of wine. “Have you heard about the king?”

  She accepts the ara, sips it, and squints one eye. “How did you find out?”

  “Shug.”

  “I don’t even think they’ve officially announced it. Some say they never will. At one time this is exactly what the prince wanted, but with the way things are now . . .”

  “What do you think is gonna happen?”

  Maya thinks about this, takes another drink of wine, then steps forward and leans against him. She rests her head against his neck and whispers, “I don’t know.” Then she steps back, takes his hand, and begins to pull him toward the stairs. “Let’s just go to bed, okay?”