“I’m sorry,” he panted, pumping violently. “But … uh…” He took a hand from the frame to pat her shoulder, briefly. “Maybe … um…”
“It’s okay,” she said, hands over her face, rubbing hard. “Sometimes I can’t help it.”
“Uh huh.”
She looked up. “Shit, we’re about to run into Redhill!”
“Um, yeah.”
“Why didn’t you say something!”
“Well…”
“Oh Kevin!”
She laughed, sniffed, reached over to peck his cheek. Then she started to pedal again, and turned them towards home.
Kevin’s heart filled—with relief, certainly—but also with affection for her. It was a shame she had been hurt like that. Although he had no desire to see her and Alfredo achieve a reconciliation. None at all. He said, very cautiously, “Maybe it’s better it happened now, if it was going to.”
She nodded briefly.
They circled back in toward El Modena’s little gliderport. A Dragonfly ahead of them dropped onto it, heavy as a bee in cold weather. Skillfully Ramona guided them in. The afternoon sun lit the treetops. Their shadow preceded them toward the grassy runway. They dropped to an elevation where the whole plain seemed nothing but treetops—all the streets and freeways obscured, most of the buildings screened. “I fly at this altitude a lot,” Ramona said, “just to make it look like this.”
“Good idea.” Her small smile, the trees everywhere—Kevin felt like the breeze was cutting right through his chest. To think that Ramona Sanchez was a free woman! And sitting here beside him.
He couldn’t look at her. She brought them down to the runway in a graceful swoop, and they pedaled hard as they landed, as gently as sitting on a couch. Quick roll to a stop. They unstrapped, stood unsteadily, flexed tired legs, walked the plane off the strip toward its berth.
“Whew,” she said. “Estoy cansada.”
Kevin nodded. “Great flight, Ramona.”
“Yeah?” And as they stored the plane in the gloomy hangar, she hugged him briefly and said, “You’re a good friend, Kevin.”
Which might have been a warning, but Kevin wasn’t listening. He still felt the touch. “I want to be,” he said, feeling his voice quiver. He didn’t think it could be heard. “I want to be.”
* * *
El Modena’s town council had its chambers in the area’s oldest building, the church on Chapman Avenue. Over the years this structure had reflected the town’s fortunes like a totem. It had been built by Quakers in 1886, soon after they settled the area and cultivated it in raisin grapes. One Friend donated a big bell, which they put in a tower at the church’s front end; but the bell’s weight was too much for the framing, and in the first strong Santa Ana wind the whole building fell down, boom! In similar fashion grape blight destroyed the economy, so that the new town was virtually abandoned. So much for El Modena One. But they changed crops, and then rebuilt the church, in the first of a long sequence of resurrections; through the barrio and its hidden poverty (church closed), through suburbia and its erasure of history (church a restaurant)—through to the re-emergence of El Modena as a town with a destiny of its own, when the council bought the restaurant and converted it into a cramped and weird-looking city hall, suitable for renting on any party occasion. Thus it finally became the center of the community that its Quaker builders had hoped it would be nearly two centuries before.
Now the white courtyard walls were wrapped with colored streamers, and Japanese paper lanterns were hung in the courtyard’s three big willows. The McElroy Mariachi Men strolled about playing their loose sweet music, and a long table was crowded with bottles of Al Shroeder’s atrocious champagne.
Uneasily Kevin pedaled into the parking lot. As a contractor he had appeared before the council countless times, but walking into the yard as one of the council members was different. How in the hell had he got himself into it? Well, he was a Green, always had been. Renovate that sleazy old condo of a world! And this year they had needed to fill one of their two spots on the council, but most of the prominent party members were busy, or had served before, or were otherwise prevented from running. Suddenly—and Kevin didn’t really know who had decided this, or how—they were all encouraging him to do it. He was well-known and well-liked, they told him, and he had done a lot of visible work in the community. Very visible, he said—I build houses. But in the end he was won over. Green council members voted all important issues as an expression of the group, so there wasn’t that much to it. If there were things he didn’t know, he could learn on the job. It wasn’t that hard. Everyone should take their turn. It would be fun! He could consult when he needed to.
But (it occurred to him) he would most need to consult when he was actually up there behind the table—just when consulting was impossible! He brushed his hair with his fingers. Just like him, he thought morosely, to think of that only now. It was too late; the job was his. Time to learn.
Doris biked in with an older woman. “Kevin, this is Nadezhda Katayev, a friend of mine from Moscow. She was my boss when I did the exchange at their superconductor institute, and she’s over here for a visit. She’ll be staying with us.”
Kevin shook hands with her, and they joined the crowd. Most of the people there were friends or acquaintances. People kidded him as usual; no one was taking the evening very seriously. He was handed a cup of champagne, and a group from the Lobos gathered to toast the day’s game, and the political stardom of their teammates. Several cups of champagne later he felt better about everything.
Then Alfredo Blair entered the courtyard, in a swirl of friends and supporters and family. The McElroys tooted the opening bars of “Hail to the Chief,” and Alfredo laughed, clearly having a fine time. Still, it was odd to see him at such an event without Ramona there, serving as the other pole of a powerful eye magnet. A sudden vision, of long legs pumping beside his, of her broad expressive face tearful with rage, pounding the ultralite’s frame—
The party got louder, charged along. “There’s a madman here,” Doris observed, pointing to a stranger. They watched him: a huge man in a floppy black coat, who sidled from group to group with a strange rhinocerine grace, disrupting conversation after conversation. He spoke, people looked confused or shocked; he departed and barged in elsewhere, hair flying, champagne splashing out of his cup.
The mystery was solved when Alfredo introduced him. “Hey Oscar, come over here! Folks, this is our new town attorney, Oscar Baldarramma. You may have seen him in the interview process.”
Kevin had not. Oscar Baldarramma approached. He was huge—taller than Kevin, and fat, and his bulk rode everywhere on him: his face was moonlike, his neck a tree trunk, and an immense barrel chest was more than matched by a round middle. His curly black hair was even more unruly than Kevin’s, and he wore a dark suit some fifty years out of date. He himself looked to be around forty.
Now he nodded, creasing a multiple chin, and pursed thick, mobile lips. “Nice to meet the other rookie on the team,” he said in a scratchy flat voice, as if making fun of the phrase.
Kevin nodded, at a loss for words. He had heard that the new town attorney was a hotshot from the Midwest, with several years of work for Chicago under his belt. And they needed a good lawyer, because El Modena like most towns was always getting sued. The old council had taken most of six months to replace the previous attorney. But then to choose this guy!
Oscar stepped toward Kevin, lowered his head, waggled his eyebrows portentiously. A bad mime couldn’t have been more blatant: Secrecy. Confidential Matter. “I’m told you renovate old houses?”
“That’s my job.”
Oscar glanced around in spy movie style. “I’ve been permitted to lease an elderly house near the gliderport, and I wondered if you might be interested in rebuilding it for me.”
Oh. “Well, I’d need to take a look at it first. But assuming we agree on everything, I could put you on our waiting list. It’s short right now.”
“I would be
willing to wait.”
It seemed a sign of good judgment to Kevin. “I’ll drop by and look the place over, and give you an estimate.”
“Of course,” the big man whispered.
A tray was passed around and they all took paper cups of champagne. Oscar stared thoughtfully into his. “A local champagne, I take it.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said, “Al Shroeder makes it. He’s got a big vineyard up on Cowan Heights.”
“Cowan Heights.”
Doris said sharply, “Just because it isn’t from Napa or Sonoma doesn’t mean it’s terrible! I think it’s pretty good!”
Oscar gazed at her. “And what is your profession, may I ask?”
“I’m a materials scientist.”
“Then I defer to your judgment.”
Kevin couldn’t help laughing at the expression on Doris’s face. “Al’s champagne sucks,” he said. “But he’s got a good zinfandel—a lot better than this.”
Oscar went slightly cross-eyed. “I will seek it out. A recommendation like that demands action!”
Kevin snorted, and Nadezhda grinned. But Doris looked more annoyed than ever, and she was about to let Oscar know it, Kevin could tell, when Jean Aureliano called for silence.
* * *
Time for business. Alfredo, who had already spent six years on the council, was sworn in as the new mayor, and Kevin was sworn in as new council member. Kevin had forgotten about that part, and he stumbled on his way to the circle of officials. “What a start!” someone yelled. Hot-faced, he put his hand on a Bible, repeated something the judge said.
And yet in the midst of the blur, a sudden sensation—he was part of government now. Just like sixth grade civics class said he would be.
They moved into the council chambers, and Alfredo sat at the centerpoint of the council’s curved table. As mayor he was no more than first among equals, a council member from the town’s most numerous party. He ran their meetings, but had one vote like the others.
On one side of him sat Kevin, Doris, and Matt Chung. On the other side were Hiroko Washington, Susan Mayer, and Jerry Geiger. Oscar and the town planner, Mary Davenport, sat at a table of their own, off to the side. Kevin could clearly see the faces of all the other members, and as Alfredo urged the spectators to get seated, he looked them over.
Kevin and Doris were Greens, Alfredo and Matt were Feds. The New Federalists had just outpolled the Greens as the town’s most numerous party, for the first time in some years; so they had a bit of a new edge. Hiroko, Susan and Jerry represented smaller local parties, and functioned as a kind of fluctuating middle, with Hiroko and Susan true moderates, and Jerry a kind of loose cannon, his voting record a model of inexplicable inconsistency. This made him quite popular with some Modeños, who had joined the Geiger Party to keep him on the council.
Alfredo smacked his palm against the table. “If we don’t start soon we’ll be up all night! Welcome to new member Kevin Claiborne. Let’s get him right into it with the first item on the agenda—ah—the second. Welcoming him was the first. Okay, number two. Re-examining order to cut down the trees bordering Peters Canyon Reservoir. An injunction against complying with the order was issued, pending review by this council. And here we are. The request for the injunction was made by El Modena’s Wilderness Party, represented tonight by Hu-nang Chu. Are you here, Hu-nang?”
An intense-looking woman stepped up to the witness’s lectern. She told them forcefully that the trees around the reservoir were old and sacred, and that cutting them down was a wanton act of destruction. When she began to repeat herself Alfredo skillfully cut her off. “Mary, the order originated from your people—you want to comment first on this?”
The town planner cleared her throat. “The trees around the reservoir are cottonwoods and willows, both extremely hydrophilic species. Naturally their water comes out of the reservoir, and the plain fact is we can’t afford it—we’re losing approximately an acre foot a month. Council resolution two oh two two dash three instructs us to do everything possible to decrease dependency on OC Water District and the Municipal Water District. Expanding the reservoir helped, and we tried to clear the area of hydrophilic trees at the time of expansion, but the cottonwoods are especially quick to grow back. Willows, by the way, are not even native to the area. We propose to cut the trees down and replace them with scrub oaks and adapted desert grasses. We also plan to leave one big willow standing, near the dam.”
“Comments?” Alfredo said.
Everyone on the council who cared to comment approved Mary’s plan. Jerry remarked it was nice to see El Modena cut down some trees for once. Alfredo asked for comments from the audience, and a few people came to the lectern to make a point, usually repeating an earlier statement, sometimes in an inebriated version. Alfredo cut those off and put it to a vote. The order to cut down the trees passed seven to zero.
“Unanimity!” Alfredo said cheerily. “A very nice omen for the future of this council. Sorry, Hu-nang, but the trees have a drinking problem. On to item number three: proposal to tighten the noise ordinance around the high school stadium, ha! Who’s the courageous soul advocating this?”
* * *
And so the meeting rolled on, filling Wednesday night as so many meetings had before. A building permit battle that became a protest against town ownership of the land, a zoning boundary dispute, an ordinance banning skateboards on bike trails, a proposal to alter the investment patterns of the town funds … all the business of running a small town, churned out point by point in a public gathering. The work of running the world, repeated thousands of times all over the globe; you could say that this was where the real power lay.
But it didn’t feel like that, this particular night in El Modena—not to Kevin. For him it was just work, and dull work at that. He felt like a judge with no precedent to guide him. Even when he did know of precedents, he discovered that they were seldom a close enough fit to the current situation to really provide much help. An important legal principle, he thought fuzzily, trying to shake off the effects of Al’s champagne: precedent is useless. Often he decided to vote with Doris and figure out the whys and wherefores later. Happily there was no mechanism for asking them to justify their votes.
At about the fifth of these votes, he felt a strong sinking sensation—he was going to have to spend every Wednesday night for the next two years, doing just this! Listening very closely to a lot of matters that didn’t interest him in the slightest! How in the hell had he gotten himself into it?
Out in the audience people were getting up and leaving. Doris’s old boss Nadezhda stayed, watching curiously. Oscar and the council secretary took a lot of notes. The meeting droned on.
Kevin’s concentration began to waver. The long day, the champagne.… It was nice and warm, and the voices were all so calm, so soothing.…
Sleepy, yes.
Very, very sleepy.
How embarrassing!
And yet intensely drowsy. Completely drowsy. At his first council meeting. But it was so nice and warm.…
Don’t fall asleep! Oh my God.
He pinched himself desperately. Could people see it when you clamped down on a yawn? He had never been sure.
What were they talking about? He wasn’t even sure which item on the agenda they were discussing. With an immense effort he tried to focus.
“Item twenty-seven,” Alfredo said, and for a second Kevin feared Alfredo was going to look over at him with his raffish grin. But he only read on. A bunch of water bureaucracy details, including nominations by the city planning office of two new members for the watermaster. Kevin had never heard of either of them. Still befuddled, he shook his head. Watermaster. When he was a child he had been fascinated by the name. It had been disappointing to learn that it was not a single person, with magical powers at his command, but merely a name for a board, another agency in an endless system of agencies. In some basins they merely recorded, in others they set groundwater policy. Kevin wasn’t sure what they did in the
ir district. But something, he felt, was strange. Perhaps that he had not recognized the names. And then, over at the side table, Oscar had tilted his head slightly. He was still watching them with a poker face, but there was something different in his demeanor. It was as if a statue of the sleeping Buddha had barely cracked open an eye, and glanced out curiously.
“Who are they?” Kevin croaked. “I mean, who are these nominees?”
Alfredo handled the interruption like Ramona fielding a bad hop, graceful and smooth as ever. He described the two candidates. One was an associate of Matt’s. The other was a member of the OC Water District’s engineering board.
Kevin listened uncertainly. “What’s their political affiliation?”
Alfredo shrugged. “I think they’re Feds, but what’s the big deal? It’s not a political appointment.”
“You must be kidding,” Kevin said. Water, not political? Drowsiness gone, he glanced through the rest of the text of Item 27. Lots of detail. Ignoring Alfredo’s request to explain himself, he read on. Approval of water production statements from the wells in the district, approval of annual report on groundwater conditions (good). Letter of thanks to OCWD for Crawford Canyon land donated to the town last year. Letter of inquiry sent by town planning board to get further information on the Metropolitan Water District’s offer to supply client towns with more water—
Doris elbowed him in the ribs.
“What do you mean?” Alfredo repeated for the third time.
“Water is always political,” Kevin said absently. “Tell me, do you always put so many things into one item on the agenda?”
“Sure,” Alfredo said. “We group by topic.”
But Oscar’s head shifted a sixteenth of an inch to the left, a sixteenth of an inch to the right. Just like a Buddha statue coming alive.
If only he knew more about all this.… He chose at random. “What’s this offer from MWD?”
Alfredo looked over the agenda. “Ah. That was something a few sessions ago. MWD has gotten their Colorado River allotment upped by court decision, and they’d like to sell that water before the Columbia River pipe is finished. The planning office has determined that if we do take more from MWD, we can avoid the penalties from OC Water District for overdrafting groundwater, and in the end it’ll save us money. And MWD is desperate—when the Columbia pipe’s done it’ll be a real buyer’s market. So in essence it’s a buyer’s market already.”