He soaped himself, eyes roaming her body. Maria expected him to try to have sex with her again and hoped he wouldn’t. But he did. She was sore, but she let him. It was nothing. It was easier this time, something she could pretend to like. She pretended Sarah was with her.
When they finished, he got out and handed her a towel. She took another for her hair, remembering how she and her mother had both used to wrap their hair in towels. Before the guardies came and explained that they’d be moved to shelters. Before everything went wrong.
By the time Maria went out into the living room, Ratan had pulled open the shades. Dawn light was just starting to touch the sky, turning the dust haze red. She hadn’t slept as late as she’d thought.
He went into the kitchen. Now that they were out of the shower, he seemed almost embarrassed. His eyes avoided hers.
“Are you…” He hesitated. “Are you okay?”
He’d done exactly what he wanted, and done it again in the shower. But now that he wasn’t hard, he couldn’t meet her eye.
She was amazed that he looked so abashed and wondered why she didn’t feel the same. Her father and mother would have been heartbroken at what she’d done. And she didn’t care at all.
“Do you want some breakfast?” he asked.
She tucked the towel more tightly around herself. Nodded, not trusting her voice. A shower. Clean clothes. She glanced toward the bedroom. Sarah was still asleep.
“I forgot your first name,” she admitted.
He smiled at that, almost boyish for a moment and also relieved somehow. “Michael. Mike.” He offered a hand for her to shake. “Nice to meet you.” And then he sort of laughed and looked embarrassed. “Again, I mean.”
Maria smiled back, wanting him to feel comfortable. “Again.”
He pulled eggs from his refrigerator and cracked them into a bowl while Maria took in the apartment. She couldn’t help but feel astonished at the place’s luxury. Navajo carpets on hardwood in the living room. Paintings on the walls. Real books on his shelves in careful artful stacks, interspersed with pottery that looked Japanese to Maria. The refrigerator hummed contentedly, running on a stable electric supply. And quiet. So quiet. She couldn’t hear anyone fighting overhead. Wasn’t surrounded by watching eyes.
He ran water down the drain and tossed his eggshells down with it. He noticed her following his movements.
“It’s not getting wasted,” he explained. “It all gets recycled. It goes down to methane digesters, then passes through carp ponds and snail beds. Some of it gets reverse-osmosis-filtered and comes back up through the pipes, and some of it goes into the vertical farm on the south face.”
Maria let him talk, marveling at what he thought he needed to explain, and what he took for granted.
At one time she’d had all these things, too. Simple basic things. Faucets. A room of her own. A/C. And she’d taken them all for granted, just as this man did.
He didn’t realize the magic of his life.
Maria remembered Sarah clutching to her, whispering in her ear as Mike thrust into her, He’ll pay.
But it wasn’t the money that mattered. Lingering here—that was everything.
“Are you here for a long time?” she asked.
As soon as the words left her mouth, Maria realized how obvious she sounded.
Mike glanced up at her, his expression wary, both of them knowing she was angling for a long-term connection.
“It’s hard to say,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “There’s a lot changing right now.” He looked down at the eggs. “Last night was kind of a celebration for me.”
“What are we celebrating?”
He winked. “Lucky breaks.”
“I could use one of those.”
She meant it as a joke, but the words came out with too much bitter honesty, and from the way Mike clammed up, she knew she was driving a wedge between them. He needed to think she was fun, not desperate and needy. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s not your fault. Don’t worry about it.” God, she was just making it worse.
Mike stared down at the eggs as they cooked in the pan. “What would you do if you could get out?” He looked up, suddenly fixed on her. “What if someone were leaving and wanted to take you with them? What would you do?”
The question caught Maria off guard, as if he were reading her mind. But the question didn’t sound hypothetical.
“I don’t know. Get a job?” She didn’t know what the right answer was, but she had a feeling that if she said the right thing, it could open doors. “Maybe go to school again?”
“You know it’s not all milk and honey across the border, right?”
“Better than here.”
“Sure. But if you could go anywhere, where would you go? If you had any choice in the world, what would you take?”
He seemed weirdly fixated. Almost as if he were a Merry Perry pastor offering salvation. “If you could go anywhere, and do anything, and become anyone—what would you do?”
“But that’s not real,” she said. “Nobody gets to do that.”
“What if you could, though?”
It annoyed her that he kept talking about impossible things, but she answered anyway.
“China. My dad said we should go to China. I’d go to China, and I’d learn Chinese. My dad told me once that there are floating cities near Shanghai. I’d live there. I’d float on the ocean.”
“You’re Texan, right?”
“ ’Course.”
“How did you end up here?”
She wondered if telling him would make him pity her. Maybe tie him to her and Sarah more completely. She needed more than just the sex to hook him. Sex was tenuous. There were too many girls on the street who would do anything for a shower and a little cash to pad their bras. It wasn’t enough to fuck him. She needed him to like her and Sarah, somehow. Needed him to see them as individuals. As people. People who mattered.
So she told her story and didn’t milk it. Just told him how the guardies had come to their town outside San Antonio and said everyone had to leave because they weren’t going to be trucking water to the town anymore. Told him how they’d crossed out of Texas, going west because everyone knew Oklahoma was stringing people up, and Louisiana was full of hurricane refugees. Told him how bad New Mexico had been. Bodies thrown over barbed-wire fences, Merry Perry convoys, and Red Cross relief stations, and her mother dying of chikungunya.
She told him, too, about her schemes. About how she’d been selling water with Toomie. Described how she’d tried to use his water tip.
He laughed at that, impressed, and his reaction gave her hope that she was getting through to him. If she could just tie herself and Sarah to this man, he could take them anywhere.
“You know Catherine Case got her start in water trading?” Mike said.
“That’s the lady who owns the water in Las Vegas, right?”
“More or less. She started out selling farm water to cities, getting the best price when farm-to-city water transfers really got rolling. After she squeezed Las Vegas, they hired her to do the same to everyone else. She was always looking for the angle. She’s famous for the deals she made.”
“I’m not like her.”
He shrugged. “Not so different. It’s all about moving water to where people value it. Case works with hundreds of thousands of acre-feet; you work with gallons. But the game—it’s not so different.”
To Maria’s surprise, he turned off the eggs. He went to his shelves and pulled down an old paper book. He glanced at her speculatively, flipped through, pulling out papers that were stuffed between the pages.
“You ever read this?” he asked, offering her the book.
Maria took it and read the title slowly. “Cadillac Desert? It’s about cars or something?”
“Water, actually. It’s kind of how we got where we are now. There are other books. Lots came later. You can read Fleck or Fishman or Jenkins or others online.” He nodded at the book in her hands. “Bu
t I always think people should start with this. It’s the bible when it comes to water.”
“The bible, huh?”
“Old Testament. The beginning of everything. When we thought we could make deserts bloom, and the water would always be there for us. When we thought we could move rivers and control water instead of it controlling us.”
“That’s interesting.” She offered it back to him, but he waved it off.
“You can have it.”
The way he said it…“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Maria said. “That’s why you were okay paying so much for me and Sarah.”
He seemed uncomfortable. “It’s possible.”
“When?”
He looked down. “It depends.” Didn’t meet her eyes. “Soon, I think.”
Maria shoved the book back to him. “You can keep your book.”
“I don’t think you understand.”
“Oh, I understand. It’s a book. And I don’t need a book to tell me how dumb people are. I already know that. If you’ve got a book about how to get across the border without getting caught by drones, that’s what I need. Maybe a book about how not to get knifed by my coyote, like all those people they’re digging up on the TV.”
She glared at him. “I don’t need books about how things used to be. Everybody talks about how things used to be. I need a book about how I’m supposed to live now. Unless you got a book like that, I don’t need the weight.” She flicked her hand at the thing, lying on the countertop. “I mean, seriously. It’s paper.”
The guy looked hurt. “It’s a first edition,” he said defensively. “People value these. You could even sell it if you wanted.”
But Maria didn’t care. She was suddenly sick of him. Sick of having to be polite to some guy who wanted to give her a book to read so he could feel good about the fact that he’d fucked her and was leaving Phoenix the first chance he got.
“Just keep it.”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I thought you’d think it was interesting.” He stuffed his papers back into the book and set it aside.
“Whatever. It’s okay.” She hesitated. “Can I do my laundry?”
“Sure.” He nodded, looking almost as tired and defeated as she felt. “There’s a robe in my room. You can wear it while your clothes run. You can do Sarah’s, too.”
“Thanks.”
She made herself smile at him, wider than she felt, trying to fix the broken moment, and he seemed to brighten a little. He might not be taking them with him when he left, but maybe she could get a tip out of him. Or one more night for herself and Sarah.
Maria returned to the bedroom and dropped her towels. Hunted for the robe. Sarah turned over, flinging an arm and leg out, taking up the whole bed, but didn’t wake.
Maria paused, staring at her friend, affectionate for her sleep. Glad she was getting to sleep in, and sleep well, for once.
Am I in love with her? Maria wondered.
She knew she wanted Sarah. And she knew she didn’t want Mike at all. Not as Sarah seemed to want him. Mike was nice. All the boys in Maria’s life had been nice, but looking at Sarah felt as forbidden and overwhelming as when her mother had caught her touching herself while looking at tablet searches for the actress Amalie Xu. Being with Sarah felt as vibrant as grabbing a live wire. All Maria knew was that she didn’t want to lose Sarah.
Maria searched through the tangled sheets for the rest of their clothes. She poked Sarah. “Where’d your skirt go?”
Sarah mumbled and pushed her away.
“Fine. Do your own laundry, then.”
From the living room, the doorbell rang. Maria froze, suddenly aware of her nudity. Where was Mike’s robe?
She peeked through the bedroom door. A voice said, “Hey there, Mikey, you old motherfucker, how you doing?”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mike said. “I told you we were going to meet later.”
“Decided not to wait.”
“Wha—?” There was a wet thump. Shouts followed. More thumps and gasps.
“God damn, Mikey, you got a hard fucking face! Now how about we talk about our—oh no you don’t!”
There was a muffled cough. Maria glimpsed Mike stumbling back, clutching his shoulder. A man followed, pistol pointed.
“Wait!” Mike gasped. “We had a deal!”
“Definitely. The deal is, you give me what I want, and you get the fuck out of Phoenix.”
Mike lunged for the man with the gun. The pistol coughed again. Blood exploded from the back of Mike’s head. He toppled backward.
Maria lunged for Sarah. “Get up!” she hissed. “Hide!” She tried to haul Sarah out of the bed.
“Lemme go,” Sarah moaned. “Lemme alone.”
Voices from the other room:
“Why the fuck did you whack him?”
“Would’ve done it sooner or later, right?”
“I still needed to ask him where the rights were!”
“Sorry, bro. Shit happens.”
“Fucking hell. Check the rest of the place.”
Maria grabbed Sarah’s wrist and pulled. She could hear someone coming, footsteps on hardwood. Closer and closer.
Maria threw herself down beside the bed as the door opened.
“Wha—” Sarah started.
The gun coughed.
Maria wriggled under the bed as the gun went off again. She froze, trying not to whimper, jammed into the tight space.
“God damn, what a mess,” a man’s voice said.
“What you got?” the other called from the living room.
“Some Texas bangbang.” The footsteps receded.
“You didn’t have to shoot his ass.”
“Motherfucker threw down on me.”
Maria’s heart was so loud in her ears, she could barely make out their voices. Their conversation grew muffled as they roamed the apartment, words blurring into a rise and fall of chitchat, distinctive for its calm.
They’d just killed two people, but their voices sounded as if they were having a conversation over coffee. Business banter. She heard one of them laugh. Cabinets being pulled open. More conversation.
The footsteps returned.
Please no, please please please.
“These Ibis fuckers sure know how to live,” the man commented.
“Expense accounts.”
Maria could see his shoes. Black cowboy boots so close she could reach out and touch them. Polished and expensive. The boots came to a halt. The gun spat again, and Maria flinched.
Was he making sure Sarah was dead? Or did he do it just for fun?
Maria realized she was crying. She could feel tears running down her cheeks. Her vision was blurry. Beneath the bed, immobile with fear, she sobbed, but not a single sound escaped her mouth.
She cried silently, as still as a mouse, praying that the man with the boots wouldn’t notice that too many girls’ clothes lay strewn about the room or that too many high-heeled shoes lay jumbled on the carpet.
Maria cried with terror and loss, still feeling Sarah’s warm hand in her own, her fingers slipping from Maria’s grasp as she dove for safety.
She cried, silently and without hope, knowing that her dreams were real. Whatever angel or devil or saint or ghost whispered in her ear, she had been a fool not to listen to the warning nightmare, and now it was too late to do anything except to pray for forgiveness and salvation.
In the other room the thumping and scraping continued.
“Nothing here,” one of the men said. “Check the bedroom.”
Please no please please please.
CHAPTER 19
The guard kept pace with Lucy, making sure she actually left.
She’d seen ejections happen before, but hadn’t thought about it from the squatter’s perspective.
She’d been sitting at Saguaro Coffee, just on the far side of the plaza, meeting with a Chinese engineer who specialized in biodesign. He’d talked about how the pond they were sitting beside was actually par
t of the entire water-treatment structure, how each reed and fish had been carefully engineered and selected to accomplish specific cleaning tasks.
In the midst of the conversation, she’d seen the guards ushering someone out. She’d sipped her coffee, watching as it happened. Pitying the person but not really feeling their desperation.
And now she was the one being guided out, while others at the coffee shop pretended not to see it happening.
Behind her a man gasped. The sound was loud enough that Lucy turned.
She half-expected to find someone knifed, from the way he sounded. But instead the man was standing stock-still, staring upward. Others were gasping as well, bolting to their feet, gawp-jawed. A ripple of astonishment running through the entire Taiyang plaza. Surprise and alarm, and everyone looking up at the sky. No, not the sky—
The monitors. The huge TV screens that hung throughout the atrium.
Lucy followed their gaze. “What the—?”
The cop shoved her to keep going, but she shook him off.
“Wait.”
He made to grab her again, but then he, too, paused, and just like that, they were no longer security guard and trespasser, but two people watching TV. Two people, together, suddenly made into brother and sister by changing circumstances.
Up on the televisions, images of a huge placid lake flashed. A dam. The text beneath the images had it labeled.
Blue Mesa Reservoir. Gunnison, Colorado.
An azure jewel pooled among yellow clay hills, cliff scarps, and sagebrush.
At one narrow end of the lake, a wall of boulders corked a deep craggy canyon, stoppering the blue waters behind it.
Except the bouldered face of the dam was weeping water. Three separate cascades. The spouting froths seemed to be growing.
Lucy could make out people clambering off the dam, running, tiny little ants in comparison to the leaks that had sprung. A car was racing across the highway that ran atop the dam.
There were crews on rappelling lines, down on the dam face, trying to figure out what they were supposed to—
The dam started to give way.
The guard’s hand fell from Lucy’s arm. Behind her someone cried out, horrified. The dam spat more and more water. Monolithic hunks of it peeled away. More water shouldered through the gap, spouting. More and more, faster and faster. The people were specks on the edges of the dam, all fleeing. The scale was almost too big to understand, the people tiny beside the jetting waters that blasted through the dam under pressure.