Sands Rising

by H M Wilhelmborn

  Chief Justice Cathay’s visit was funded under federal ethics rules allowing reimbursements to sitting justices under the “personal hospitality exemption.” Larry said that Jeremiah Trehoviak’s office had also set aside a 5,700 square foot room with views of the Pacific on all sides for Chief Justice Cathay at one of Trehoviak’s exclusive resorts in San Diego: the Coronado Imperial.

  A fine china set, a print by Trehoviak’s “favorite upcoming environmental artist,” Duval McPherson, which Larry said cost at least $130,000, “and likely much, much more,” as well as a Zanzivahl diamond bracelet, were all delivered to Chief Justice Cathay’s hotel suite ahead of his visit.

  The CWP paid for the dinner, transportation, and accommodation of the Speaker of the House, Raphael Imaga, under House Rule 24, clause 5(a)(3)(G)(iii), relating to political campaign events. Imaga also received the maximum permissible donation from Larry, Amandine, and Andy in their individual capacity. His national party received the federal maximum from Larry, Amandine, and Andy in their individual capacity.

  All told, including catering, security, and all preparations and contributions, a ton of money was spent on the event. The firm and its name partners paid about half, and they expected that it would bring in “at least six times that over the next ten years in pure profit.” The rest was paid by the California Water Party.

  Larry expected Jeremiah Trehoviak to win every election in California going forward “not because he’s smart but because he has money to burn and the marketing savvy to make his BS palatable, Janet. He’s also a man of the moment,” Larry said, “who’s put his finger on a subject people care about. He’s down in the weeds in Africa and at the border. That’s the American dream, Janet. Are you an engaging con artist with enough money and marketing savvy to pull one over on hundreds of millions of people? If you are, then the keys to the kingdom are yours. We don’t want the kingdom here at WS&X. We just want its treasures.”

  Around 3 p.m., the caterers were on site. All were well-dressed, wearing aprons bearing the letters “CWP” on them: “C” in green, “W” in blue, and “P” in green. I had worked on the menu with the name partners of WS&X, and Larry had been in touch with Jeremiah Trehoviak’s office about the menu. The CWP had insisted that there be a nine-course meal in the following order: hors d’oeuvres, soup, appetizer, salad, fish, main course, palate cleanser, dessert, and mignardise.

  Before I worked on the menu, I wasn’t aware that a meal consisted of more than three courses. Larry said that, according to Michelle, if you were French, you could add baguettes and cheese as yet another course after the ninth. Of course, the French would find a reason to enjoy life a little more. I told myself I could learn from them.

  “The idea behind the event,” Larry said, “is to impress and entice so that people don’t fear that the CWP will make impossible the lives to which they privately aspire.”

  The printed menu was delivered to my desk around 4 p.m. on crisp embossed card stock with silver ink. The menu came with a separate list of guests receiving any of seven vegetarian alternatives, seven religious alternatives, and seven medically mandated meals.

  I marveled at the final menu.

  * * *

  THE CALIFORNIA WATER PARTY

  Hors d’Oeuvres

  Caspian sturgeon caviar

  Soup

  Cream of asparagus soup with roasted pine nuts and whipped cream

  Appetizer

  Steamed Maine lobster medallions drizzled with a lemon butter sauce

  Salad

  Mesclun salad with a balsamic-shallot vinaigrette

  Fish

  Roasted monkfish in a red wine sauce

  Main Course

  Stuffed veal loin with morels and herbs

  Palate Cleanser

  Sorbet of blanched limes

  Dessert

  S’mores bars with a blood orange mousse

  Mignardise

  Mini coconut and lime pastries topped with shaved coconut and candied lime peel

  * * *

  Where the CWP had sourced some of those products, I didn’t know. With falling cow numbers in California, the largest dairy producer in the country, and in Texas, the fifth-largest, dairy products had risen in price. Mauru and I had even discussed asking our bosses for salary increases if prices kept going up.

  I opened the internet browser.

  Was the caviar really as expensive as Larry had said?

  Andy had said that the menu could bankrupt a large city. The menu alone, he said, came up to around $45 million.

  “$45 million of luxurious food and drink for some really powerful people, Janet.”

  I was looking forward to the Maine lobster medallions, the roasted monkfish, and the blanched lime sorbet. I thought of leftovers and planned to take a few doggy bags home for Mauru and the kids, and maybe also for my parents and my friend, Maria Sanchez.

  Hannah walked up to my desk, flustered and somewhat annoyed. She signaled for me to follow her with a motion of her head.

  I liked Hannah. She was the only associate who regarded me as an equal. The other associates only shot me quick e-mails.

  “Janet, let me know when Larry’s back. Thx.”

  “Hi, can you order different coffee for the refreshment suites? Getting tired of the same brand. Thx in adv.”

  “Janet, come by now. Thx.”

  Some associates were felons in the making. One had forged Larry’s signature on a letter to opposing counsel, and by the time Larry found out and was yelling at him in his office, it was too late because the letter had already gone out, and Larry didn’t want clients and opposing counsel to know what had happened.

  Other associates were in the habit of “padding their hours,” which meant that they added extra billable hours to their daily reports. One, a Condorvine grad I’ll call “Hagan,” was repeatedly overheard in the restroom telling junior associates that he counted his time “in the john” as double time because some of his most brilliant ideas that had won cases for the firm “came to me when I was pinching a loaf while reading the New York Daily Digest on my tablet.” Hagan was also known to bully other associates and use the “c-word” freely when talking about female associates he disliked.

  Larry never called associates out for padding hours. He just gave nominal haircuts on the bills that went out to clients “for services rendered.”

  Amandine yelled at associates who padded hours, told them never to do it again, and then sent the bill out with the padded hours included because “I never trust liars, and I’m not getting involved, Janet.”

  Andy had a habit of never calling a client when he could send the client an e-mail or preferably a memorandum instead. Talking to the client would only mean about ten to fifteen minutes of billable time. One way of inflating the costs billed to the client was to have a junior associate draft an e-mail after researching it, which was then sent to a senior associate, who sent it back down to the junior associate with corrections, who then sent it back to the senior associate, who then sent it to Andy.

  Andy then told the senior associate to tell the junior associate to make one last change before sending it back up again. Associates learned never to ask Andy to call a client, because he’d say, “Let’s get it all in writing first. We want our work product to be spotless before the client gets it. It’s about taking pride in your work.”

  Hannah was still staring at me, tapping her fingers on my desk as she gestured again for me to follow her.

  I stood up, straightened the stapler on my desk, and followed her.

  Soon we were down on the third floor, where the conference room was located. It sounded like a prayer was being said, and it was audible as soon as we exited the elevator.

  “They’re chanting,” Hannah said. “The Hoviaks. They’re chanting their creed in there.”

  “‘Hoviaks’?”

  “That’s what I’m going to call them now, Jeremiah Trehoviak’s people: ‘Hoviaks.’ They’re crazy, Janet. Listen.”<
br />
  “We believe in the Constitution of the United States of America, in our right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We believe in private property and in our constitutional right to defend it. We believe in the state of California, in its people, and in its need for strong moral leadership. We believe in one Right Path, one republic, indivisible, out of many, one. We believe in the seven moral postulates, delivered to put us back on the Right Path. We believe that without these moral postulates, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past and destroy our planet and ourselves. We believe that only the California Water Party has the vision to bring these postulates into being. These are our seven beliefs, and these are our seven moral postulates. We live and die by them:

  Good morals and good water are the foundation of a healthy people.

  When morals and water become polluted, we die.

  We must avoid death at all costs.

  We live by facing our moral and water issues.

  These are life and death issues.

  The Right Path wants us to thrive.

  If we fail, destruction awaits.”

  “I’ve never heard so many non-sequiturs crammed into a single prayer in my life, and I’ve heard a few,” Hannah said as she adjusted her glasses. “You’ve got to give it to these Hoviaks. Theirs is a doozy. I bet they call them ‘The Seven Commandments.’”

  I grunted in response. Sometimes a joke caught me off guard, and instead of laughing, I broke into the loudest grunt, which ended in more grunts. Mauru often held me close to him as I grunted. It was as if he were trying to protect me from something that might harm me were it allowed to continue.

  At church one Sunday many, many years ago, one of the older men bent over in his seat right in front of Mom and me. He passed gas as Mom’s mouth was open in disgust, and Dad buried his nose in his palms.

  Mom had barely gotten the word “glib” out when the older man let loose again. I was squealing and grunting as the smell hit us with full force. Mom was trying to stop me from grunting (which had attracted the attention of everyone now), and she was mumbling 2 Thessalonians 1:6-7: “Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels.”

  Hannah was right, though, about the “Hoviaks.”

  There was something hypnotic about their “prayer,” and when they had repeated their beliefs and postulates what must have been seven times, they applauded and hugged each other and spilled into the hallway. They smiled at us before heading for different parts of the building.

  Like most elite law firms across the country, WS&X had “refreshment suites” for its associates who worked through the night. Refreshment suites were essentially bedrooms, each with two bunk beds, a shower, and fully catered kitchens.

  I had brought a graphite dress, a graphite jacket, and some flats for me to change into. I needed to go to a refreshment suite to take a shower before the fundraiser.

  6

  Maine. Who Can Complain?

  If I hadn’t majored in comparative literature, I might have majored in advertising criticism if such a thing exists. In comparative literature, you think cross-culturally, and you’re compelled to treat each cultural context as if it were as complex and vital as any other.

  From what I’ve seen of advertising, you only take cultural values into consideration to the extent that they conflict with the image you’re projecting of your brand. If they do not conflict with the image you’re projecting, you ignore them.

  The year of the fundraiser, 2037, there was an attack on the tent community run by the CWP at San Ysidro. Two people were killed with a knife: one was an asylum seeker and the other was a doctor with the CWP.

  A group that benignly called itself “Only America” had run adverts about the “vermin at San Ysidro. And what do you do with vermin? You exterminate it.”

  The advertising company that worked with Only America had come up with the idea to superimpose a rat infestation onto video clips of the camp at San Ysidro. The ad included images of boys dying from The Hatred and the alleged sounds of foreigners clumsily whispering in foreign languages, “I’m glad our foreign sons will die and infect red-blooded Americans right here on American soil.”

  It was totally inflammatory, but that didn’t stop the advertising agency, which some said was merely a propaganda arm of Only America, from responding to the outrage by releasing another clip. The clip was purportedly of a young foreign male coughing onto an American teenager and infecting him with The Hatred while smiling and saying “payback for not giving us asylum,” which was also condemned as both false and impossible.

  The disease, after all, was not communicable from one person to another (that much was clear) but was caught through the inhalation of fungus spores carried in the dust in certain places. The rate of infection and whether a particular boy was infected at all, we were now told, likely depended upon the nature of the spores, the boy, his age, and his health; factors so complex that it wasn’t entirely clear what could be done in response.

  The advertising agency, based in New York City, knew better, of course. In the aftermath of the “Vermin Campaign,” it was revealed that the same advertising agency had made several other ads dealing with the environment that were, depending on the client, whimsical, offensive, and even beautiful.

  Ads for fresh Icelandic air: “You may not yet know what our skyr is, but you’ll feel what our fresh air does for you.” An ad for the lung diet: “Eat like a cannibal with none of the downsides. Our American-raised prime beef, lamb, and goat lungs will give your lungs just the boost they need.”

  Then that awful ad.

  “Worried about the price hikes but want some long-term peace of mind? Do you have a son? Ever thought of taking out an insurance policy against him? Call us, and we’ll make it happen for a low price each month. We care about your future. Do you?”

  Then came the utopia ads, which were gorgeous, multiracial ads for Maine, Canada’s Northwest Territories, Greenland, and even Siberia, in which people thrived, danced, and lived long and fulfilling lives because those places were “perfectly situated” geographically.

  Jon even sang the ditty accompanying the Maine ad, which had happy children chasing after each other, lobsters in hand, in the soft glow of the late afternoon sunlight, surrounded by extensive greenery.

  “Lobsters and laughter. Friends forever after. Maine. Who can complain?”

  The attacker at San Ysidro, a gaunt young man of twenty-four from San Diego named Malcolm Waife, had difficulty finding a job after he’d graduated from college with a degree in an area of the sciences in which there were now few jobs. He was his family’s sole breadwinner, his parents having both succumbed to lung-related illnesses over the previous year, leaving him with a younger sister, no other family, and no way to take care of himself or his sister.

  Malcolm had posted anti-immigrant screeds online, each of which had grown in intensity the more desperate he became for employment. Malcolm had, he said, even done some “DESPEAKABLE [sic] things a man shouldn’t have to do to make money and take care of MY SISTER.” He felt strongly that “nobody even sees me as human, not even noticing that I exist, not hearing me when I beg for work, not even caring that I matter and need food on my table for me AND MY SISTER. If the Affies give me THE HATRED, who will take care of MY SISTER? They already taken [sic] all the jobs. VERMIN. WHAT DO YOU DO WITH VERMIN? YOU EXTIRMINATE [sic] IT!”

  Whether the misspellings were intentional or the result of typing in a blind rage is, I suppose, irrelevant now. As much as I condemned Malcolm’s killings, I will admit with some embarrassment that I felt sorry for him in the way one feels compassion toward someone whose life has been more difficult than one’s own and who, no matter what he seems to do to make something of himself, doesn’t seem to get any breaks.

  Of course, knowing a little about Malcolm’s story doesn’t excus
e the horror of his violence or the lives he destroyed at San Ysidro, but I found myself admitting to Mauru that something prevented me from feeling similarly sorry for Eleena, which was strange because Malcolm hated “Affies”: people like Eleena and me. The reasons for the distinction I was able to make between Malcolm and Eleena still escape me, and they probably don’t matter now, all things considered. As Dad once said, “Who knows why we are the way we are?”

  I had Malcolm in mind as I got ready for the CWP fundraiser at my workplace. Would Jeremiah Trehoviak mention him? Would Trehoviak take advantage of the killings? It would, after all, be the first time that Trehoviak would be addressing the public after the killings. Would I like Trehoviak at close quarters? Would he even notice that I was there? Would Trehoviak look his age? The Herald said he was fifty-eight years old and Anton was forty-three.

  I thought of Trehoviak’s wealth.

  He was a billionaire ninety-three times over.

  Lists had him among the top fifteen wealthiest people on the planet, and although I pretended not to care what the rich and famous did, I always bought the tabloids on my way out of ConfiPrice, and I devoured them in a few hours.

  So that we could dream of being wealthy, Mauru and I bought a lottery ticket each anniversary of the day we met at the Dairy Flirt: July 4, 2028.

  Each Fourth of July, we went to the Dairy Flirt with our kids to pick up some stracciatella ice cream, which we enjoyed as a family.