Something New Under the Sun

by Alexandra Kleeman

  On the floor, the phone trembles, shifting an inch to the right. The little lighted rectangle flares brightly into the polyester fibers, giving them a bioluminescent glow. Cassidy picks it up. “They’ll meet with us tonight,” she says, looking at the screen. “Do you think you can drive?”

  It’s after midnight when they make the turn into the long, dark driveway of Billington Ranch. In the rearview mirror, they can still see the orange glow of the fires on the other side of the pass. If the fires get worse and the road closes, they could be stuck at the ranch all night, unable to pass back through the narrow, hilly choke point. But, for now, the winds are blowing strong in the opposite direction, gently guiding the hungry beast back north. When they stand in front of Brenda’s door, there’s only the warm scent of sage coming alive in the night air. Jay opens the door in a shawl-neck sweater, holding a glass of brown liquid. In the half-light, he looks like a different man, his nose straighter, the shape of his face leaner and tighter and unnaturally still.

  “Welcome again,” Jay says, his words and his tone forking in two distinct directions. “Can I get anyone a drink?”

  “I’ll take one,” Cassidy says, and gestures back toward Patrick. “And I’ll take his, too.”

  Jay chuckles mirthlessly and shows them in. The spotless modern foyer is not as spare and stylish as it was during the party: now there are steel boxes stacked next to the door, and dust on the sconces, signs of neglect and upheaval. Brenda drifts in, wearing cashmere trousers and a matching kimono top. She leans against the wall appraisingly as they take off their shoes and stand on the luxurious stone floors in their socks.

  “You look fantastic, Cassidy,” Brenda says in a sort of drawl. “Whatever you’re taking is agreeing with you.”

  “Thanks, girl,” Cassidy replies. “My secret is drinking eight glasses of water a day.” They laugh at the same time, but not for very long.

  On a coffee table as smooth and white as an egg, Jay sets down two tumblers of stiff brown for Cassidy and a glass of something clear and cold for Patrick, who downs it before he can remember to ask what it is. Jay walks around the other side and sinks down next to Brenda, his arm stretched out behind her.

  “Would you like to share the special news you said you had concerning our project together?” Jay asks.

  “She said it was very important,” Brenda says to him with exaggerated seriousness. They share a meaningful look.

  “Sure,” says Cassidy, taking a long swig from the first glass. “My news is that I know what you’re doing. You’re not going to cut the film. You’re not going to add in digital ghosts and wraiths and a whole CGI-haunted town. You’re never going to release this movie, and you’re never going to make a sequel. I’d be surprised if you’re still in town for pilot season.”

  Brenda laughs and sits forward. “This is just like that episode in Kassi Keene season five, where Kassi confronts Ron Nifton of Nifty Org and tells him she knows they’re selling off the Cove’s treasured public beach for the development of a members-only boating club. She goes to Nifton Castle and sits on his couch, just like you’re doing now, drinking a tumbler full of Nifty Cola.”

  “If I remember my Kassi Keene,” Jay says, “Nifton didn’t cave.”

  “And why was that, Jay?” Brenda asks.

  “Because what he was doing wasn’t a crime—not during the planning stages, at least. It was just good business.” Jay sits back and gives an easy, broad smile.

  “Your investors might not appreciate the fine distinction between a crime-in-progress and a crime with all the finishing touches applied,” Cassidy replies. “What I mean is, if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s getting press. I’ll tell them everything I know about you and Brenda, the money that’s supposed to be going into this movie. You’ll be over in this industry.”

  “Let’s understand each other,” Jay says. “We can make things difficult for you too, and it won’t take us as much effort. As much running around.”

  “All this posturing,” says Brenda, sighing, “is exhausting.”

  “Okay, here’s a question.” Cassidy polishes off the first glass and reaches for the second. “Neither of you drink WAT-R, so why do you own so damn much of it?”

  “Oh, come on, now, this is ridiculous,” Jay grouches. “We invest in growing markets. WAT-R is a growing market. The masses sure like it. And, more importantly, they need it. Which makes it an obvious add to our portfolio.”

  “Even if it’s killing people?” Cassidy asks, her brow arched in full Kassi Keene mode. “We know about the link between WAT-R and ROAD, and it all leads back to you two.”

  “It isn’t ‘killing people,’ it’s ‘hospitalizing a certain segment of the population who share common demographics and risk factors,’ ” says Jay, correcting her.

  “He looks ill,” Brenda observes, glancing at Patrick.

  Sitting in the soft, armless, eggnog-colored chair, Patrick can feel his worldview listing to one side, then the other, like a boat in uncalm waters. The boat is a good metaphor for the conversation happening in front of him. In the metaphor, Brenda, Jay, and Cassidy are on the boat talking, while he floats, suspended, very far below the water’s surface. When he kicks his legs, he moves in some direction—maybe up, maybe down, who knows. When he concentrates, focusing his mind with superhuman energy on the voices above him, he can hear the lumps of words and phrases passing dully by him, like currents in the water—now a little warmer, now a little colder. He hangs in the water, not breathing, not drowning, not doing anything at all. And in the metaphor there are fish: long, sinuous snakelike fish with flickering silver fins, octopoids with only two tentacles and six childlike human hands, and a fish with sad, feminine eyes that can’t breathe the water. The fish turns toward him with its long eyelashes fluttering and gestures toward its gills, indicating that something is wrong. Patrick feels tears coming to his own eyes as the fish’s pain becomes his own; the tears leak seamlessly from his face and join the water around them. He takes the fish in his hands and examines the gill flaps, which turn out to be lines painted on the side of the smooth, gapless fish body. At that moment, he knows exactly what he needs to do. He lines his thumb up with the flank of the sad, sexy fish where the hole should be. Then he pushes it in, the fish flesh warm and alive, the fish screaming like a little girl, thrashing wildly in pain. A dark-red vapor rises up into the clear water. He can’t believe he never bothered to learn more about the ocean, when all Nora used to talk about was becoming a marine biologist someday.

  “Come on, Patrick, we’re leaving,” says Cassidy, her voice hot and angry. His eyes refocus. “And we’re going on TV to tell the world that Jay Arvid and Brenda Billington are defrauding their investors and WAT-R rots your mind and people like them are getting paid twice: to sell the sickness and to warehouse the people they made sick. We’ll drive down Sunset and see if we can find some paparazzi interested in listening to my story.”

  “You can’t do that, Cass.” Brenda’s voice is smooth and even. “Think about this. What alternative do people have? They can’t buy the real stuff, like you or me, and even if they could, the black market would never support all the demand. They’re going to have to keep drinking the stuff, but this time with fear. Can’t you see how cruel that is?”

  “When people are dying of thirst, they’ll drink gasoline,” Jay says, “even if they know it’ll kill them. And it’s their right to do that.”

  “Can’t you just sit down for a minute and breathe and listen?” Brenda says.

  Cassidy grips Patrick by the hand, tries to haul him to a standing position. He looks up at her and smiles.

  “Come on, Cass,” Jay says. He fills her up one more time. “Sit down. Finish your drink. Then we’ll help you carry Hamlin to the car. It’s cute how you guys are working together on this. It’d make a great series.”

  “We should get them some sn
acks,” Brenda murmurs. “They might be hungry.”

  “They don’t want snacks, they want moral comfort. They want to do the difficult thing and know that, even though it doesn’t feel right, they were right to do it.” Cassidy watches Jay massage the back of Brenda’s neck in slow, comforting circles.

  “You know, even if they did get to the media, I don’t think anyone would pick up the story.” Brenda speaks quietly now, as if to herself. “What would be the point, they’d say. It would cause mass panic. It would be irresponsible. And there’d be the immediate problem of what people could drink instead. They’d mull it over and decide to sit on it.”

  “Or they’d mull it over and decide there’s just no proof,” Jay says. “If everyone in Southern California is drinking WAT-R and still only a few thousand are being treated for ROAD, what does that say about the people who are doing just fine?”

  “I don’t know if you can even say a threat is something that exists out there in the world the way a house or a tree does.” Brenda smooths her hair and resettles it so that it hangs over her opposite shoulder. With one long, slender hand, she strokes it as if it were a cat. “In fact, I think it may be one of the most subjective concepts in our modern culture. If you perceive a threat in the world—a mountain lion crouched before you on a rock, for example—is the mountain lion the threat? How about when that mountain lion is off just being a beautiful creature in nature with not a soul around to see it? Is it still a threat then?”

  “It’s a conundrum,” Jay says.

  “It really is,” Brenda says, nodding.

  “Cassidy,” says Jay with sudden warmth, “another drink? You look like you could use it.”

  Sitting rigid and stiff in her armchair, Cassidy is holding her glassful of whiskey in her hand and staring straight forward. She’s crying silently, motionlessly. At her side, Patrick’s head lolls vaguely forward, as though he’s falling asleep with eyes wide open.

  “Brenda,” Jay says, placing his hand on her shoulder. “The mood in here is deeply blue. We need to let in some air. Why don’t you tell us the story of how your great-great-grandfather bought the ranch?”

  Brenda sighs and crosses her arms. “I don’t know, Jay. He was such an asshole. We Billingtons don’t come off so well in that story.”

  “It’s a great story, bunny.” He nods encouragingly.

  “Well, okay,” she replies. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She takes a long, careful sip of her drink and places it on the table before her.

  “So—my great-great-grandfather Eugene Tillington is twenty-seven in 1851, three years after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending hostilities between the Mexican and American governments.”

  “Tillington?” Jay asks with mock confusion.

  “I’ll get to that,” Brenda says, rolling her carefully lined eyes. “Anyhow. He’s twenty-seven, and a lawyer trained in Boston, he’s been traveling west doing work for the railroads and even setting up some town charters in the Dakotas, and he comes over to California because he’s heard there’s a lot of money to be made there. And for him, there absolutely is. The Hidalgo agreement declares that property rights preceding the treaty should be upheld, but the question is how to establish who has owned what property. The government is a bunch of amateurs, they don’t really have records, and a lot of people were given property in strange ways, by verbal decree from the governor and things like that. Landowners need lawyers to establish that they really own their land, and my great-great-grandpa Eugene charges his clients half their property as a fee for securing their little span of heaven. Soon he’s got parcels all over Southern California, beautiful pieces of land with ocean views and citrus. But all those parcels are no good to him, because the land he wants to live on is owned by an old Mexican ranchero named José Benítez.

  “It really is a fantastic parcel of land, it’s got a good stream and a great view, it’s located in just the right part of the hills, where the fog from the sea comes up to visit in the mornings, and so it never dries out all the way and won’t catch on fire. Maybe that’s why Benítez didn’t want to sell. Eugene made him offer after offer, but the stubborn old guy didn’t bite, so he had to think of some other strategy. He realized that, in the California Land Commission’s eyes, proof in the present meant more than any secondhand anecdotes or documents from the past. So he decided, even though he was a fairly rich man already, that he was going to become a squatter. This was possible because the property was very large, and Benítez was too old to patrol it regularly. He built a little house on the edge of the man’s land, and he started raising goats. Goats because he knew they pretty much take care of themselves, and because they leave a trace of their presence—you can see when a place has been grazed by goats.

  “So, for months, my great-great-grandfather lives in this little house, when he has a bigger one just seven miles away. He lives like a cowboy, on beans and cornmeal and hot coffee in the mornings, cooked over an open fire. And he grazes his goats, and they disperse themselves throughout the property, munching on the brush, gamboling in the trodden-down fields, getting closer and closer to Benítez’s home, where he’s got chickens and a couple horses and a little light gardening. And then, one day, Benítez looks out his window and the place is overrun by goats. They’re going after the beans in his garden, the chicken feed, anything they can get their teeth on. And then Eugene walks up calmly and tells him these are his own goats, and this is his own land, and now they have a property dispute going on.

  “Eugene knows the workings of these cases very well, and he has connections in the government, well-placed friends who’ll testify to having come over to the little house on the property to visit Eugene and his goats. And he has the smarts to get a surveyor who’s new to the area, all the way from Ohio, and who doesn’t speak any Spanish. So, when the time comes, the surveyor shows up to get everything on record, and both Eugene and Benítez are there to greet him. But Benítez is angry, he’s old, and Eugene is smooth. Eugene shows the surveyor around Benítez’s house, shows him the chickens and the horses and the goats, shows him how the goats have groomed the terrain as far as you might care to walk. Tells him the names of all the goats and shows how the little bells around their necks play a perfect on-pitch F natural, the starting note for a familiar union hymn. And he says Benítez is the old caretaker he hired, mostly senile, but at the end of his life and therefore entitled to small mercies. Though Benítez is protesting, trying to make himself heard, the surveyor is buying it all, marking things down just the way Eugene wants. It’s a victory for Eugene Tillington.

  “And then, right as he’s leaving, the surveyor notices the metal ‘B’ on the gate to the property. ‘B’ for ‘Benítez,’ of course. But he turns to Great-Great-Grandpa Eugene and asks him, ‘What’s with this “B” on the gate? What does it stand for?’ And Eugene acts all surprised and looks at the papers in the surveyor’s hands and tells him, ‘Oh no, there’s been a mistake. You have my name down as Tillington here, but it’s spelled with a “B.” Billington. Eugene Billington.’ And there you have it. That’s how we got our name, and how my great-great-grandpa got his land with the help of some friendly goats.”

  * * *

  —

  In the van on the way back to Secret Sunset, Cassidy drives and Patrick curls up in the passenger seat, finally able to string a few words together. She’s talking to Patrick, but she doesn’t know if he is really aware of what she’s saying, so she’s talking to herself. She says they need to find a scientist, a doctor, someone who can figure out how drinking WAT-R is causing people to lose touch with reality. They need the medical words, the scientific words. Nobody is going to believe Cassidy Carter if she gets on TMZ in a tube top and says all this. Nobody except maybe the Kassi Keene forum freaks, half of whom will say this is the prophesied moment, hallelujah, and the other half of whom will say she’s a false-flag siren bitch. She says she
needs to find a way to get in touch with her sister, tell her not to drink the WAT-R, tell her to stay safe and get out of town. She says she needs to figure out where her sister is living these days. She says she needs to get Patrick back to his family, back to the people who love him. She says not to worry, she won’t just unload him at one of those freaky Memodyne human warehouses. She says she’ll get him safely back home, no matter what.

  As they clear the security gate and take the first turn onto the north wing of the subdivision, Cassidy has the awful feeling that Secret Sunset doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to. It’s too bright for this time of night, and the sky has a strange closeness to it, like something thickening, a ceiling rather than the vast openness of atmosphere. As she turns onto her street, Patrick sees her face begin to glow orange at the edges. He feels his own face and forehead growing warm, inexplicably, like a sudden fever. Little glowing insects come drifting through the air in lackadaisical flight patterns, but it’s not insects, it’s ash and particles of inflamed ember. As they crawl inexorably forward in the air-conditioned van, toward the smoke and the fire and the scent of carefully chosen interiors going up in flames, Patrick claps his hands tight over his ears to keep out the sound of her screaming.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  “Today we bid farewell to the Hula painted frog, a creature that took joy in its life in the Hula Valley, where Israel drained marshes in the 1950s to drive away the mosquitoes.” Linden reads from a clipboard in a clear, strong voice, her double braids making her look like a returning camper just promoted to counselor. “Presumed extinct for decades, in 2011 it showed itself to mankind at midday, ten meters from a small pond. Now, with the Hula wetlands toxified and turned to desert, let us say goodbye forever to this rare amphibian, an animal that rose from extinction and then returned to extinction, a living fossil now no longer living.”