“I’ll think about it.” He swallowed. “Know what I heard?”
“What?”
“I heard Alfredo’s being pressed into trying for this move. Needs to do it.”
Kevin thought about that as he rode over to see Susan Mayer. Susan was chief scientist at the El Modena Chicken Farm, which supplied much of northern Orange County with chickens. Kevin found her out in the farm’s lab, cursing a gc/mass spec: an athletic woman in her forties, one of the best swimmers in town. “I don’t really have time to talk about it now, Kevin, but I assure you I know just what you’re worried about. Alfredo is a nice man, and good for the town, but sometimes it seems like he should be in Irvine or Anaheim where the stakes are higher.” She wouldn’t say more than that. “Sorry, I’ve got to get to work on this, it looks like we might have an outbreak in one of the coops. We’ll have to wait and see about the hill stuff until we know more anyway, right?”
Sigh. On to Hiroko, botanist and orchard farmer. Also a landscape gardener, and she was out on a job. Kevin found her and gave her a hand digging up a front yard, and they had a good long talk as they worked. Hiroko had been on the council on and off for about twenty years, and so nothing much in that area excited her any more. But she seemed sympathetic, and skeptical about Alfredo and his big plans, as she put it. Kevin left her feeling good. If they could count on Hiroko, then it would only take one more to have a majority on the council. Susan and Jerry were both possibles, and so…
He told Doris what Jerry had said about Alfredo needing to make the move. “Hmm,” Doris said. “Okay, I’ll see if pretending I know that for sure will pull anything more out of John.” She was working the hardest of them all, pumping her connections for more news from inside Heartech. Her friend John heard a lot in the financial office of her own firm, Avending, and his friend over in Heartech’s offices knew even more. The next time she talked to him, she said something about Alfredo having to make a move. “Yeah, it’s an outside thing,” John said, “Ann’s sure of it. They’ve always had a source of outside money, she says. That’s why it’s ballooned so fast.”
Apparently Heartech’s growth had been even more rapid than it appeared to the public. And some of that growth was being absorbed by a hidden backer, so that Heartech would remain within legal company size, and avoid any special audits from the IRS. Or so the rumors had it. “They’re iceberging in the black, Ann says,” John told Doris in low voice.
“Unbelievable,” Doris said. If it were true, then they would have the best weapon possible to stop any office-building by Heartech. Proving it, however… “But if they build this development they’re going to come under the microscope! No way they can fund it themselves—they’ll either have to apply for government help or have a partner.”
“True,” John said a week later. “And Doris—I’m sorry to tell you, but…”
Dear Claire:
…Yes, I went to Opening Day in Bishop, and provided the usual entertainment for the masses with Sally. Our match was witnessed by Kevin and Doris; the sturdy Doris was either appalled or disgusted, she couldn’t decide which. She had little spare time to scorn the Grand Sport, however, as she and Kevin spent at least part of the weekend recomplicating an old relationship. They were lovers long ago, Nadezhda told me, and currently Doris seems both attracted to and exasperated by Kevin, while he, it seems to me, relies on her rather more than he realizes. They spent a night in Sally’s guest room, and afterwards the currents swirling around under the surface of things would have spun a submarine. This, at the same time that Kevin is enthusiastically exploring the consequences of Ramona the Beauty’s freedom. It’s getting pretty complicated in Elmo….
…Yes, Nadezhda is still here, though she won’t be for long; her ship is in Newport Harbor, and in two or three weeks it will depart, taking her with it. That will be a sad day. We have done a lot together, and it has been a delight. Often she calls to ask if I want to cruise the town, and if I agree I am dragged all over Orange County in a kind of parody of an educational tour. She’s like Ben Franklin on drugs. What are you doing here? Why are you doing it this way and not that? Is it really true that mustard grass was part of the original ground cover on this plain? Couldn’t you use bigger cells? Aren’t you thinking the mayor is pushing things too fast? Is it true what they say about Kevin and Ramona? She peppers them with questions till they reel, then bikes away muttering about slowness, ignorance, sleepwalking. What zombies, she’ll mutter if they’re unresponsive. What sheep! On the other hand, when she runs into people who know what they are doing and enjoy talking about it, she gets them going for hours, and bikes away glowing. Ah, what energy, what ingenuity, what boldness! she will cry, face flushed, eyes bright. And so the people here love her, while at the same time being slightly afraid of her. With her combination of fire and wisdom, of energy and experience, she seems like some higher life form, some next step in evolution. Old but young. Those geriatric drugs must really be something. Maybe I’d better start taking them now.
Certainly her presence has put the jumper cables to Tom Barnard, who was living a hermit’s life in the hills before her arrival. Now he comes into town pretty regularly. Many people here know him, especially among the older generations, and Nadezhda has worked hard at getting him re-involved in their lives, in her usual energetic fashion. They’re doing a lot of socializing together. Also, we’ve started to get him seriously involved in the struggle over the plans for Rattlesnake Hill.
Developments (so to speak) in the hill battle abound, as Kevin and Doris try to put Sally’s suggestions into action. They may even drill a spring. This was Sally’s suggestion, and I am sure she was joking, but she played it like a wooden Indian, and they took her seriously. Far be it from me to disabuse them, and explain that a drilled spring (or well, as we call it) will not stop development.
One night in the midst of this activity Doris came home from work slamming doors and snarling. I had just dropped by their house to talk to Kevin, and found no one home but the kids. I was the only adult there, an unusual situation that neither Doris nor I would have wanted, I am sure.
However, I asked what was wrong. She shouted her reply; a friend in the financial department of her company, Avending, had told her that Avending was negotiating with Heartech, the mayor’s company, over plans to propose a new complex in El Modena. Here we had been wondering who Alfredo and his partners would get to join them in building this complex, and it was Doris’s own company!
I tried to make a joke. At least she would be within walking distance of her job, I said. She gave me her Medusa imitation, a very convincing one.
I’m quitting, she said. I can’t work there anymore.
Something in the way she said it made me feel mischievous. I wanted to push at this virtue of hers, see how far it extended. I said, first you ought to find out what you can about their plans.
She stared at me. Do you think so?
I nodded.
I’d need some help.
I’ll help you, I said, surprising both of us.
So she called her friend in the financial office, and spoke urgently with him for nearly half an hour. And then I found myself accompanying Fierce Doris to her place of employment, Avending of Santa Ana.
It was a small complex of labs and offices near the freeway. Doris led us in past a security guard, explaining I was a friend.