* * *
The following week felt like either a month or a day, Kevin couldn’t say which, but there he was in the council meeting again, so a week it was. Numbly he went through his paces, bored by the meeting, inattentive. It went smoothly, and near the end Matt Chung said, “We’ve got the information we need to proceed on the question of the proposal from the Metropolitan Water District, shall we use this time and go ahead on that? It’ll be item two next week anyway.”
No one objected, and so suddenly they were in the discussion. Should they buy the extra water from MWD or not?
Kevin tried to gather his thoughts.
While he was still at it Doris said, “Alfredo, what will we do with the extra water there will undoubtedly be?”
Alfredo explained again that it would be a smart move financially to pour it into the groundwater basin and get credits against their drafting from the OCWD.
Doris nodded. “Excuse me, Mr. Baldarramma, have you checked on the legality of such a move?”
Oscar nodded. “I have.”
“And?”
“Wait a second,” Alfredo interrupted, staring at Oscar. “Why did you do that?”
Oscar met his stare, said blandly, “As I understand it, my job as town attorney is to check the legal status of council actions.”
“There’s been no action on this yet.”
“A proposal is an action.”
“It is not! We’ve only just discussed this.”
“Do you object to knowing the legal status of your suggestions?”
“Well no, of course not. I just think you’re getting ahead of yourself here.”
Oscar shrugged. “We can discuss my job description after the meeting, if you like. Meanwhile, would you like to hear the legal status of your suggestion concerning the use of this water?”
“Sure, of course.”
Oscar moved a sheaf of paper in front of him, glanced at the members of the council. “Several years ago the State Water Resource Control Board responded to new laws passed by the California State Assembly by writing a new set of regulations governing water sales. The Revised California Water Code states that no California municipality can buy water and later sell it or use it as credit, unless said municipality has made the water available for consumption for the first time, and in that case, only for as long as is necessary to pay for the method of procurement. The right to buy and then sell water without using it is reserved to the state.”
“So we couldn’t sell any excess we had if we bought this water from MWD,” Doris said quickly.
“That’s right.”
“So we’d have to use it all.”
“Or give it to OCWD, yes.”
A silence in the council chambers.
Doris pressed on. “So we don’t need this water, and it won’t save us money to buy it, because we can’t resell it. And buying it would be breaking the council resolution of twenty twenty-two that ordered El Modena to do everything it could to reduce our water dependency on MWD. Look here, I move that we vote on this item, and turn it down. We simply don’t need this water.”
“Wait a second,” Alfredo said. “The discussion isn’t finished.”
But the discussion was out of his hands, for the moment. Doris kept pressing, asked for a vote in every pause, inquired acidly whether there really was anything left to be said. Before too long Alfredo was forced to call for a vote. He and Matt voted to buy the water. The rest of the council voted against it.
* * *
Afterwards, walking over to the house to celebrate, the others were in fine spirits. “All right,” Kevin said. At least something was going well. “That look on Alfredo’s face when Oscar zapped him—ha.” Fine. Fuck him.
In a deep voice Doris said, “‘Do you object to knowing the legal status of your suggestions?’” She laughed out loud.
Tom was there at the house, sitting with Nadezhda and Rafael and Cindy and Donna by the pool. Kevin and Doris told him all about it. Kevin downed most of a dumpie of beer in one swallow. “So much for messing with our hill!” he said.
“Come on,” Tom said. He laughed. “It only means they’ll have to change their strategy.”
“What do you mean?” Kevin said.
“They were trying to lay the groundwork for this development before they proposed it, to make things easier. Now that that’s failed, they’ll probably propose the development anyway, and try to convince the town it’s a good thing. If they can do that then they can say, Hey, we need more water, we need different zoning. If the general concept has been approved then it’ll happen.”
“So,” Kevin said, staring at the dumpie of beer.
“Hey, it’s still a good thing.” Tom slapped him on the arm. “Momentum, you know. But it’s a battle won, not the war.”
* * *
Four days later Kevin heard that Ramona was back in town. He heard it from Stacey down at the chickenhouse, accidentally, as Stacey was talking to Susan. That he had heard about it like that frightened him, and he jogged home with his package of breasts and thighs, desperately trying not to think about it. That she was back in El Modena and hadn’t told him, hadn’t come by his place first thing.…
He got home and called her up. Pedro answered, went to get her. She came on. “I hear you’re back,” Kevin said.
“Yeah, I just got in this morning.” She smiled, as if there was nothing unusual happening. But it was just before sunset. Her eyes watched him guardedly. “Why don’t you come over and we can talk.”
He blanked the screen, rode over to her house.
She came out and met him in the yard, and they turned and walked down the path toward Santiago Creek. She was wearing jeans worn almost white, frayed at the cuffs. A white blouse with a scoop neck.
Suddenly she stopped him, faced him, took up his hands in hers, so that they hung between the two of them. Curious how held hands could make a barrier.
“Kevin—Alfredo and I are going to get back together. Stay together. He wants to, and I want to too.”
Kevin disengaged his hands from hers. “But…” He didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t think. “But you broke up,” he heard himself saying. “You gave it a try for years and years and it didn’t work. Nothing’s changed except you and I got started. We just started.”
“I know,” Ramona said. She bit her lip, looked down. “But…” She shook her head. “I don’t want it to be like this.” She looked off to one side. “But Alfredo came down to San Diego, and we talked about it for a long—”
“What?” Kevin said. “Alfredo came to San Diego?”
She looked up at him, eyes bright in the twilight. “Yes.”
“But”—a twist in him, ribs pulled in—“Well shit! You said you were going to get away from us both and think about it and that’s what I thought you were doing! And here you were off with him!”
“I meant to get away. But he followed me down there. He found out where I was staying and he went down there, and I told him to leave but he wouldn’t, he refused to. He just stood out there on the lawn. He said he had to talk, and he wouldn’t leave, all night long, and so we started to talk, and—”
Kevin took off walking, fast.
“Kevin!”
He ran. Around a corner he felt the muscles in his legs and he ran even harder. He sprinted as fast as he could for over a minute, right up Chapman and into the hills. On a sudden impulse, the instinct of an animal running for cover, he turned left and crashed up through the brush, onto Rattlesnake Hill.
He sat under the sycamores and black walnuts at the top.
Time passed.
He stared at the branches against the sky. He broke up leaves, stuck their stems in the earth. Occasionally he thought of crushing lines to say, in long imaginary arguments with Ramona. Mostly he was a blank.
* * *
Much later he tromped down through cool wet midnight air to his house, weary and heartsick. He was completely startled to find Ramona sitting on the ground outside the back door of t
he house, head on her knees.
She looked up at him. She had been crying.
“I don’t want it to be this way,” she said. “I love you, Kevin, don’t you know that?”
“How can I know that? If you loved me you’d stay with me.”
She pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “I … I hate not to, Kevin. But Alfredo and I have been together for so long. And now he’s really unhappy, he really wants us to be together. And I’ve put so much work into making that relationship go, I’ve tried so hard. I can’t just give all those years up, don’t you see?”
“It doesn’t make sense. You tried hard all those years, right, and it didn’t work, you were both unhappy. Why should it work now? Nothing’s different.”
She shivered. “Things are different—”
“All that’s different is you and I fell in love! And now Alfredo is jealous! He didn’t want you, but now that I do.…”
She shook her head, hard. “It’s more than that, Kevin. He was coming over on my birthday to say all the same things he said afterwards, and he didn’t even know about us.”
“So he says now.”
“I believe him.”
“So what was I, then? What about you, what do you want?”
She took a deep breath. “I want to try again with Alfredo. I do. I love him, Kevin, I’ve always loved him. It’s part of my whole life. I want to make it work, so that all those years—that part of me—my whole life…” Her mouth twisted. “He’s part of what I am.”
“So I was just a, a, a kind of crowbar to get Alfredo’s thinking straight!”
Tears welled up in her eyes, spilled down her cheeks. “Not fair! I didn’t want this!”
Kevin felt a grim satisfaction, he wanted her unhappy, he wanted her as miserable as he was—
She stood. “I’m sorry. I can’t take this.” She started to walk away and he grasped her arm. She pulled free. “Please! I said I’m sorry, please don’t torture me!”
“Me torture you!”
But she was the one running away now, her white shirt a blur in the darkness.
His satisfaction dissipated. For a while he felt bad. Surely she hadn’t wanted things to come to this. She hadn’t planned it.
Still, he got angrier and angrier at her. And Alfredo, going down to San Diego to find her! Fucking hypocrite, he hadn’t cared for her when he had her, only when he didn’t, only when it looked like he might lose her. Jealousy, nothing more; jealousy. So she was a fool to go back to him, and he got even angrier at her. She should have sent Alfredo away when he showed up in San Diego, if she wanted to be fair! Instead a talk with him, many talks, a reconciliation. A happy return to some San Diego bed.
* * *
He couldn’t sleep that night. A dull ache filled him. Other than that he couldn’t feel anything.
* * *
Two days later the Lobos had a game. Kevin showed up late. He coasted down to the field and dropped his bike. Ramona biked in right behind him, and everyone else was already paired off and warming up, so without a word they put on their cleats and walked out to the outfield, to throw a ball back and forth. All without a word.
* * *
And so it comes to this: out on the far edge of a busy softball diamond, two people play catch, in silence. A man and a woman. The evening sun casts long shadows away from them. The man throws the ball harder and harder with every throw, so that it looks like they’re playing a game of Bullet. But the woman never says a word, or flinches, or steps back. She puts up her glove and catches each throw right in the pocket, on the thin leather over her palm. The ball smacks with a loud pop each time she catches it. Right on the palm. The man only throws the ball harder. The woman bites her lower lip. She throws the ball back almost as hard as it comes, with a smooth violent snap of the wrist. And the man only throws harder.
And so back and forth the white ball flies, straight and hard, like a little cannonball. Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack.
8
In a camp in Virginia. Interned. Big mistake to antagonize that immigration officer. That a single official’s enmity can result in this! But it’s more than that, of course. A tidal wave of fear. Lawyer says private tests all negative, so this is just a ploy to hold me while they put together a case under the H-G Act. False positives. Meanwhile here in a kind of camp. Wooden dormitory barracks in rows, dead grass, dirt baseball diamonds, benches, fences. Barbed wire, yes. City of the dying. False positives, those bastards. Actually a lot of people here make the same claim. Some of them obviously wrong.
Summer in Virginia, hot, humid. Thunderstorms black with hail and lightning. The daily blitzkrieg of the news. War spilling into the Balkans like a bad summer re-run. TV apocalypse. Four planes blown up in transatlantic flights, and international flights soon to be severely curtailed. Pam will have to return by ship, if she can get home at all. World getting bigger as it falls apart. I can’t write any more.
* * *
As Tom had predicted, Alfredo was now forced to go public with his plans for Rattlesnake Hill. He and Matt took time on the town talk TV channel in the dinner hour before the Wednesday night council meeting, and they announced their proposal, walking around a large architect’s model of the hill after it had been built up according to their plans. The model was covered with little dark green trees, especially on top—the copse already there would be allowed to remain, at least in part. And the structures were low, built around the hilltop in a sort of crown, stepped in terracelike levels and in some places, apparently, built into the hillside. The buildings were of pale blond brick, and what was not building was lawn. It was a beautiful model, attractive as all miniatures are, ingenious, detailed, small.
Matt went through the town finances, comparing El Modena’s shares to those of the surrounding towns and discussing the downturn they had taken in the last ten years. He went over charts showing how the new complex would contribute to the town income, and then moved on to show briefly where Heartech and Avending would get the financing to build the complex. Timetables were presented, the whole program.
Finally Alfredo came back on. “In the end it’s your town, and it’s your land, so you all have to make the decision. All we can do is make the proposal and see what you think, and that’s what we’re doing. We think it would be a real contribution to El Modena, the restaurants and shops and promenades up there would really make the hill used, and of course the restaurants and shops down below would benefit as well. We’ve made proposals on the council concerning zoning and water resources that would make the project feasible on the infrastructural level. The environmental impact report has been made, and it says pretty much what we’re saying here, that the hill will be changed, sure, but not in a degrading way. Nearly a quarter of the town’s land is parkland just like the hill, immediately behind it—we could easily afford that hill, and use its prominence in Orange County’s geography to make a stronger profile for the town as a civic and financial unit.”
“Fuck,” Kevin said, watching his screen. “What babble!”
Tom laughed. “You’re catching on, boy.”
Alfredo and Matt ended by asking those watching to spread the word, because few townspeople would be watching, and to speak to their council members in favor of the proposal, if they were so inclined. More detailed messages and plans and updates and mailings were promised.
“Okay, it’s in the open,” Tom said. “Time to start asking the hard questions in the council. You can still stop the whole thing right in council if the zoning proposal doesn’t pass. If people want it then they’d have to elect a new council, and at least you’d have bought some time.”
“Yeah, but if people want it, the council will probably go for it.”
“Maybe. Depends on the council members—they don’t have to pay any attention to polls if they don’t want to, it’s representative government after all, at least in this part of things.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Kevin could barely talk about
it. The truth was, since his talk with Ramona he just didn’t care very much, about the hill or anything. He was numb. No more new worlds of feeling; just withdrawn, in a shell, stunned. Numb.
* * *
One night Tom got a call from his old friend Emma. “Listen, Tom, we’ve caught a good lead in this Heartech case you’ve put us on. We haven’t followed it all the way yet, but it’s clear there’s a really strong relationship between your company and the American Association for Medical Technology.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, basically they’re an umbrella organization for all the old profit hospitals in the country, with a lot of connections in Hong Kong.”
“Ah ha!” Tom sat up. “Sounds promising.”
“Very. This AAMT has been implicated in a number of building programs back on the East Coast, and in essence what they’re up to is trying to take over as much of the medical industry as they can.”
“I see. Well—anything I can do?”
“No. I’ve passed it to Chris, and she’s going to be going after it as part of her federal investigations, so it’s coming along. But listen, I wanted to tell you—we broke cover to get the opening on this.”
“They know they’re being investigated?”
“Exactly. And if Hong Kong is part of it, that could be bad news. Some of those Hong Kong banks are rough.”
“Okay, I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“You do that. I’ll get back to you when I have more, and Chris may be contacting you directly.”
“Good. Thanks, Em.”
“My pleasure. Good to have you back on the map, Tom.”
* * *
Doris was angry. Mostly she was angry at herself. No, that wasn’t quite true. Mostly she was angry at Kevin. She watched his evident suffering in the affair with Ramona, and her heart filled with pity, anger, contempt. Stupid fool, to fall so hard for someone clearly in love with someone else! Kind of like Doris herself, in fact. Yes, she was angry at herself, for her own stupidity. Why care for an idiot?
Also she was angry at herself for being so rude to Oscar Baldarramma, that night in the hills. It had been a transference, and she knew it. He hadn’t deserved it.
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