“Another day in America!” Larry yelled as I stood at his door. Larry scratched his chin and shook his head. “We live in a fucking game reserve now, where we issue hunting licenses and assault rifles to anyone who wants them! You know why? Other people’s suffering is entertainment, and we can’t imagine our lives without it.”
I wasn’t political, so I didn’t say a thing.
People get themselves into a whole lot of unnecessary trouble by being political. I secretly admired my mom’s refusal to vote, which she got from my late grandmother. Their refusal to participate in the political process acknowledged that politicians are those who feast only with a select few at the main table, and the rest of us are served their crumbs. Why raise your voice about getting the crumbs if they’re just enough to get you through the day? Why make a fuss? Pretend to care just enough that you seem engaged, but not too much that you get yourself in trouble. Focus on yourself, your family, and your friends. Live a quiet and peaceful life.
I returned to my desk and responded to the e-mails I’d received.
With the burning of the Library of Congress and the assassination attempts, other news had thus eclipsed Eleena’s revelations about the CWP.
The CWP had thus regained control of their narrative.
Not that people didn’t speak of Eleena.
She found a permanent home on T-shirts, coffee mugs, caps, and stationery, smiling this time and still missing two teeth with the words beneath her memorable smile: “I’m a disgrace, and I’m proud of it.”
9
Would You Take a Bullet for Me?
Though I do not celebrate my imprisonment, I’ve come to think—and jail has made this clearer for me—that life is nothing but a collision of consequences, and we live at their intersection.
What came next happened barely a week after Eleena’s execution.
I don’t remember that particular day for how afraid I felt that my kids might never feel the rain on their skin again, but for how foreboding everything seemed, for the terror the dust storms portended, and for the fact that I felt defenseless.
I’d gotten the kids ready for the day and was shaking in the bathroom just before leaving for work. Mauru was holding me—we’d just fought about leaving San Diego—and he was asking me to tell him what he could do. He wanted to leave San Diego within a few months at most and move east to Maine, and I flippantly said, “Better the weather you know than the weather you don’t. No place is perfect, babe.”
Shortly after, I was shaking. I was terrified.
“Hold me,” I said to Mauru, “I don’t know why, but I’m just so scared. Tomorrow scares me.”
Mauru held and comforted me, telling me that it would all be OK.
When I got to work, Hannah shared that she’d met with Mike to apologize for her questions about being “open,” and he’d accepted her apology and had asked her to have coffee with him over the coming weeks; he’d be in touch.
“Ha-nnah!”
“Yes, Larry.”
“Did you see that e-mail from that foreigner, Zuva?”
Hannah didn’t respond. She pursed her lips in her office and was shaking her head in disapproval.
“Ha-nnah!”
“Yes, Larry. I—”
“Well, that piece of shit said he’s taking his business elsewhere because we’re associated with the CWP—”
“But—”
“Immigrants, man! You let them in, and they think they own the place. It’s like an infestation—”
“Larry,” Hannah responded calmly as she entered his office, “Spencer Zuva was born in San Diego, and even that’s beside the point. You’re scapegoating.”
“Well, it is the point,” Larry fumed. “Zuva is blowing a hole in my budget projections. Fucker!”
“But he isn’t the only one, Larry. Andy mentioned that Brad Mountbatten also pulled his business, so did Sequoia & Birch, a few retailers, the pharmaceutical company, and the hedge fund. It’s about Eleena.”
“All run by foreigners!” Larry shouted. “All run by foreigners! If you look at who really runs this world, it’s the foreigners! They’re everywhere! You leave the US, and you’re surrounded by them!”
“Larry,” Hannah said as she shuffled her feet, “I know you can fire me for no reason at all, but as someone who looks up to you as a mentor, I’m going to suggest, respectfully, that we end this conversation and talk about something else—”
“So, what? You don’t think they’re everywhere?”
“Larry, I’m going to work from home for the rest of the day,” Hannah said. “And let me know tomorrow if you’d like my resignation because this is not right. And that’s putting it respectfully.”
“I’m going home, too,” I said to Larry. “I’m a foreigner, too.”
Larry told us to close the “fucking door” on the way out, and a part of me wondered if I’d just been fired.
Hannah and I stopped by Amandine’s and Andy’s offices on the way out.
“I ignore him,” Amandine said, filing her nails as she asked us to close the door. “Larry just says the first thing that comes to mind when he’s mad. If he’s looking at a newspaper when he’s mad, he’ll curse at Linda Maywrot for being pro-labor. If he’s looking out his window and someone’s speeding, he’ll remember some factoid he read about people speeding and say something nasty about the DMV. My parents are immigrants. When Larry asked me to join him and found this firm, he told me that I was the most intelligent immigrant woman he’d ever met apart from his mom, who wasn’t even an immigrant, but, hey, that’s Larry for you.”
Amandine stood up, adjusted her skirt, and sat down again.
“I was born in Escondido,” she said. “Larry was also born in Escondido, and he’s the child of an immigrant. Don’t look surprised. Larry will never admit to this, but his dad is an immigrant. Larry’s dad changed the family name to ‘Wagon’ when he moved to the US in the 1970s. And don’t repeat what I’ve told you to anyone. I’ll tell you one thing, though. If I go into Larry’s office right now—In fact, why don’t I do that?”
Amandine walked out of her office. A few associates gathered in the hallway and acted like they were responding to messages from clients on their smartphones.
“Larry,” Amandine said, “I’m going to say this with the door open. This is unacceptable. Keep your stuff to yourself. We can’t afford to have associates and legal secretaries work from home because the alternative is to sue us for a hostile work environment. Now, I’m letting them go home for the day because they bore the brunt of your rage, but you need to stop this. You’re so provincial. It’s really shocking.”
Larry nodded in response.
We stopped by Andy’s office, and he yawned and asked if there was “other news.”
“Old hat,” Andy said. “My momma always says, ‘Listen to what people say, but trust what they do.’ Larry’s done nothing. He’s just said some crazy stuff, but he’s a good guy. Now, if he’d joined a paramilitary group that was surveilling the border, then I’d be interested because that’s really not good for business. Anyway, I generally don’t pay too much attention to what lawyers say outside the courtroom.”
Hannah was tapping her left foot and sucking her cheeks in, which she often did when annoyed. I didn’t know what to make of the news that Larry was also the child of an immigrant, so I set it aside. It didn’t excuse his insensitivity.
I found myself thinking of Aunt Lucy, my mom’s sister, who proudly voted anti-immigrant because “new immigrants take our jobs and make established immigrants look bad, Janet.” I recalled what Dad once said, “Who knows why we are the way we are?”
I asked Andy if he wanted his door open or closed.
“Open,” Andy said. “If I know Larry, he’ll have something to say about you two when you’re out of the office, and it will be just as funny; I want to hear it all. I need a good laugh today.”
As we walked out of the building, dust was everywhere. Some people wore mask
s as if Armageddon had arrived and they’d read in their favorite news outlet that the only thing that would save them was a face mask made from silicone or rubber. Others coughed as they passed us, and as we both reached our cars in the open parking lot, we received messages from Larry.
“Need you both. Now. CWP coming.”
I wasn’t looking forward to seeing either Anton or Mike.
The morning after the fundraiser, the Golden State Herald, San Diego’s largest newspaper with circulation of about one million, published an investigative report by Linda Maywrot titled: “Corruption. Water. Power. Inside the California Water Party.”
The article revealed that Jeremiah Trehoviak had just paid several billion to the Southern African Federation for rights in perpetuity to its coltan. It was questionable whether the payments, as they were structured, were legal, but two names kept coming up: Anton and Mike.
Anton appeared in photographs with right-wing extremists and left-wing extremists both in the US and abroad. A former member of the California Water Party, identified only as “Amanda,” spoke of how Anton had appeared with Mike and Greta at her home at around 2:30 a.m. one morning to discuss what she’d been saying on her social media pages about the California Bear Foundation’s work in Africa.
Amanda awoke to Anton, Mike, and Greta seated on her bed holding photos of her husband and her daughter, who were both out of town at a gymnastics meet. While they never explicitly threatened her, Amanda understood the implicit threat since her husband was employed by the California Bear Foundation, and it also paid for her daughter’s education.
Another witness, identified only as “Ethan,” indicated that Anton had “fined” him two months’ salary, and he’d punched him in the stomach when he’d admitted that he hadn’t memorized Scrimmage. Anton had also yelled and “kicked [him] in the nuts” when Ethan had admitted that he was dating a man outside the CWP, who had said unflattering things about the Foundation to “hacks from the tabloids.”
Ethan complained to Mike and Greta about Anton’s abusive treatment of him, and they told him, “Internal harmony requires us all to make self-sacrifices. No organization is perfect. Think of where we’ll all be in ten years and what role you want in our future. That’s what Greta and I do, and now we’re engaged.”
In response, Mike told the Herald that “no political party worth its weight in anything would ever do anything to alienate the very people whose votes it wants. The California Water Party has always condemned and will always condemn intimidation, bullying, and abuse of power of any kind. All allegations of abuse of power are vigorously investigated, and we have engaged outside counsel, Wagon, Shui & Xebec, to investigate all such complaints and recommend swift responses under California and federal law.”
The article in the Herald led to another round of national coverage of the CWP, jokes about Trehoviak on the late-night shows, and protests in Eleena’s name at the Hoviaks’ campus in Menlo Park.
Mauru read Maywrot’s article, as did his parents, as did mine.
“At some point, babe,” Mauru said, “the money means you’re getting paid to go against your values. These guys mean business, and they’re out to change everything at any cost.”
“Everyone deserves legal representation,” I said. “Everyone. I’m not representing the Hoviaks; Larry, Amandine, and Andy are. I just do as I’m told. The Hoviaks will never win any elections in California. They’re just too . . . I don’t know . . . There’s something ‘southern’ about them, like the religious fervor, which just won’t fly in liberal California, but there’s also something so ‘northern’ about them, like the supposed sophistication of it all, which won’t fly in Southern California. No one will vote them into power. A few votes here and there, sure. But that’s it.”
“There’s also something very western about them, babe,” Mauru said. “There’s nothing more western than water rights and the environment. The Herald was saying that going back to the nineteenth century, to the California Gold Rush, water was everything out here. They needed water for gold mining, and they need it now for agriculture, industry, and oil production. And we obviously need water, lots of it, to get through our daily lives. California’s state seal and flag have the extinct California Grizzly on it. You know what else is on that seal? Water, lots of water, and the CWP knows how to appeal to western voters by talking about water and morals.
“You know which two colors are most prominent on the state seal, babe? Green and blue. The northern part of the state will like the CWP’s sophistication, and the southern part will like the attention to water. The northern part will also love the fervor about the environment, and the southern part will relate to the emphasis on morals. I’d say that the CWP will win many seats in the Assembly and a few in the State Senate.”
“Well,” I said, “I’m definitely not voting for them. For our kids’ sake, I’m hoping no one does. I’m not supposed to breach confidentiality or anything like that, but the Hoviaks also refused to feed me caviar. And look at what they did to Eleena! Can you believe it, babe?”
Hannah and I were now back in the office, and Larry was smiling.
“Great news, guys!” Larry beamed. “We’re now the attorneys for the Foundation, the CWP, Trehoviak’s businesses, and his philanthropy work. We’re gonna be hiring. Anton and Mike are coming over in about fifteen minutes. It pays to have rich friends in powerful places when others are punishing you for your rational business choices.”
Anton and Mike arrived with armed guards.
“I’ve asked Hannah and Janet to join us,” Larry told Anton and Mike, “because Hannah’s up for partner in a couple of years, and she’s our best associate. Janet’s my right hand, and she knows everything about the firm and about what we do. Amandine, Andy, and I depend on them for almost everything.”
Anton looked at Hannah and me and yawned. It was as if he’d read entire files about us, and there was nothing anyone could tell him about us that he didn’t already know.
“I’m going to ask you to do something, and I want it done well,” Anton warned Larry. “You mess this up, I’ll drive you out of business. You do this well, you’ll be making more money than you can handle.”
As Larry licked his lips, Amandine took a deep breath and ran her left hand through her hair, and Andy bit his lower lip.
“Elections are next year,” Mike said. “Our research shows that about 43 percent of all registered voters in the state like our discipline. That number is rising, even with all the lies that Eleena told before they rightly executed her. Nationally, the number is 61.6 percent solely for our image; unheard of for a fairly new party, especially a state party. People watch us because they want to be like us. Some affectionately call us the ‘Enviroblues’ for our green-and-blue uniforms. We’ll be releasing a men’s line and a women’s line, professional and casual, next month, which will be on sale at all our hotels, online, on TV, at the Foundation, and we’re opening stores in strip malls across the state to sell our products.
“We’ll run at a loss on the clothing line, but profit there is not our goal. We want the public to feel like they’re part of us. We’re also talking about what matters to people: state-funded health, the community that is California, protecting children’s wellbeing, addressing parents’ needs, and welcoming travelers from out of state. These are our tasks.
“People go to religious spaces not because they believe but because they want to believe. We’re all in the hope business in America today. We’re all marketing our brand of hope, and ours is based on morals and the environment. We’ve come a little later to the game than most, which also means that we don’t have the baggage. We are Californians. We want our fellow Californians to see themselves in us. Just as importantly, we want to address their concerns about the environment.”
“You’ve got my vote,” Larry said.
“And mine,” Amandine said.
“You always had mine,” Andy said.
Hannah and I said nothing.
“Don’t worry about the Supreme Court of California or Cathay,” Mike said. “We have our ways. Don’t worry about Congress. Our network is taking care of that. Write our Water Code based on that,” he pointed at the Southern African Federation Criminal Code, “as if you aren’t afraid of anyone’s opinion but ours. We won’t roll it out until after the election, but we need it now. A lot depends on us not being soft on water. We also want the public to have a say in the enforcement of the code, so include a public element in it.”
“I want a special water court for California,” Anton said.
“Colorado and Montana,” Amandine said, “already have water courts.”
“We know,” Mike said.
“Over forty countries have environmental courts,” Andy said.
Mike nodded. They knew.
“My water court,” Anton said, “must be consistent with Scrimmage.”
“I’ve been memorizing Scrimmage,” Larry said. “It’s just great. It makes sense.”
Hannah grabbed my hand under the table and squeezed it.
“We know,” Mike said, “people make fun of us because of Scrimmage.”
“We’d never put up with that,” Amandine said. “We are committed to pushing the boundaries for you, to turning loopholes into—”
“As you already know,” Andy interrupted Amandine, “we’re willing to lose business for you.”
“Would you take a bullet for me?” Anton asked.
Everyone at the table laughed.
Anton stared us all down.
Larry nodded. “Count me in.”
“Say it!” Anton ordered Larry.
“I, I’d take a bullet for you,” Larry said. “Whatever you need.”
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