Kevin took to spending a lot of time at the TV, talking with the house’s sister families around the world, catching up on what they were all doing. Awful the way people tended to ignore these humans who appeared on their screens once a month, in a regular rotation. Oh sure, there were occasional conversations over meals, but often the people on both sides of the screens avoided the commitments these screen relationships represented. Still, it only took paying attention, an inquiry, a hello; the translating machines went to work and there he was in another place, involved in distant lives. He needed that now, so he turned up the sound, faced the screen, said Hi, asked how people were doing. The Indonesian couple had just had their third child and were facing killer taxes. The South African family was complaining about their government’s bungling trade policies. The big Russian household near Moscow was building a new wing onto their complex, and they talked to Kevin for almost two hours about it. He promised to be there next month to check in on how they were doing.
And then every night the screen would go blank, and he’d be left with his own household, whatever members of it were at home. They were a distraction, though he would have preferred to talk to Tom. But Tom was usually out with Nadezhda. So he wished his sister would call. He would try calling her, but she was never in Dakka. He didn’t want to talk about it with his parents. Jill, however… he wanted to talk to her, needed to. But she was never home. He could only leave messages.
Life on pause. His hitting streak, going beyond all laws of chance and good fortune, began to seem like a macabre joke. He hated it. And yet it seemed vitally important that he keep it going, as if when the streak broke, he would too. Then he went to bat afraid, aware of the overwhelming likelihood of making an out. In one game, in his first at-bat he nubbed one but managed to beat it out. The next time he took a pitch on a full count, and Fred Spaulding called it a ball despite the funny bounce to one side that it took. The third time up he nubbed another one, directly in front of the plate. He took off running to first base thinking it’s over now, it’s over. But, as they told him afterward, the Tigers’ catcher, Joe Sampson, slipped on the strike carpet and fell face first into the grass, fingers just inches from the ball. And since the fielder had never touched the ball, it couldn’t be scored an error. It was a hit, even though the ball had traveled less than four feet.
“Holy moly,” Hank said afterwards. “That was the lamest two-for-two I ever expect to see in the life of the universe!”
Kevin could only hang his head and agree. The streak was a curse in disguise. It was mocking him, it was out to drive him crazy. Better if it were ended. And nothing would be easier, actually. He could just go up to the plate and whiff at a couple and it would all be over, the pressure gone.
In the next game he decided to do it. He would commit streak suicide. So in his first at bat he squeezed his eyes shut, waited, swung, missed. Everyone laughed. He gritted his teeth, feeling horrible. Next pitch he squeezed his eyes shut harder than before, groaned, swung the bat hard. Thump. He opened his eyes, astonished. The right fielder was going to field the ball on a hop. His teammates were yelling at him to run. He jogged to first, feeling dazed, as if he had jumped off a building and a safety net had appeared from nowhere.
Of course he could keep his eyes open and miss for sure. But now he was scared to try.
When the inning was over he went to the dugout to get his glove, and Jody said, “Pressure getting to you, eh?”
“No!” Kevin cried.
Everyone laughed.
“Well, it’s not!” Kevin insisted, feeling his face flush.
They laughed harder.
“That’s all right,” Jody said. “I’d be crazy by now. Why don’t you just go up there next time and take two whiffs and get it over with?”
“No way!” Kevin cried, jumping away from her. Had she seen his eyes squeezed shut? Had all of them seen?
But they all were laughing cheerily. “That’s the spirit,” Stacey said, and slapped his shoulder in passing. They ran out onto the field chattering, Kevin’s stress-out forgotten. But Kevin couldn’t forget, couldn’t loosen up. Here he was in a softball game, and his diaphragm was a block of wood inside him. He was falling apart.
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.