Sands Rising by H M Wilhelmborn

Author:H M Wilhelmborn [Wilhelmborn, H M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781951396022
Publisher: Wilhelmborn LLC
Published: 2019-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

9

Would You Take a Bullet for Me?

Though I do not celebrate my imprisonment, I’ve come to think—and jail has made this clearer for me—that life is nothing but a collision of consequences, and we live at their intersection.

What came next happened barely a week after Eleena’s execution.

I don’t remember that particular day for how afraid I felt that my kids might never feel the rain on their skin again, but for how foreboding everything seemed, for the terror the dust storms portended, and for the fact that I felt defenseless.

I’d gotten the kids ready for the day and was shaking in the bathroom just before leaving for work. Mauru was holding me—we’d just fought about leaving San Diego—and he was asking me to tell him what he could do. He wanted to leave San Diego within a few months at most and move east to Maine, and I flippantly said, “Better the weather you know than the weather you don’t. No place is perfect, babe.”

Shortly after, I was shaking. I was terrified.

“Hold me,” I said to Mauru, “I don’t know why, but I’m just so scared. Tomorrow scares me.”

Mauru held and comforted me, telling me that it would all be OK.

When I got to work, Hannah shared that she’d met with Mike to apologize for her questions about being “open,” and he’d accepted her apology and had asked her to have coffee with him over the coming weeks; he’d be in touch.

“Ha-nnah!”

“Yes, Larry.”

“Did you see that e-mail from that foreigner, Zuva?”

Hannah didn’t respond. She pursed her lips in her office and was shaking her head in disapproval.

“Ha-nnah!”

“Yes, Larry. I—”

“Well, that piece of shit said he’s taking his business elsewhere because we’re associated with the CWP—”

“But—”

“Immigrants, man! You let them in, and they think they own the place. It’s like an infestation—”

“Larry,” Hannah responded calmly as she entered his office, “Spencer Zuva was born in San Diego, and even that’s beside the point. You’re scapegoating.”

“Well, it is the point,” Larry fumed. “Zuva is blowing a hole in my budget projections. Fucker!”

“But he isn’t the only one, Larry. Andy mentioned that Brad Mountbatten also pulled his business, so did Sequoia & Birch, a few retailers, the pharmaceutical company, and the hedge fund. It’s about Eleena.”

“All run by foreigners!” Larry shouted. “All run by foreigners! If you look at who really runs this world, it’s the foreigners! They’re everywhere! You leave the US, and you’re surrounded by them!”

“Larry,” Hannah said as she shuffled her feet, “I know you can fire me for no reason at all, but as someone who looks up to you as a mentor, I’m going to suggest, respectfully, that we end this conversation and talk about something else—”

“So, what? You don’t think they’re everywhere?”

“Larry, I’m going to work from home for the rest of the day,” Hannah said. “And let me know tomorrow if you’d like my resignation because this is not right. And that’s putting it respectfully.”

“I’m going home, too,” I said to Larry. “I’m a foreigner, too.”

Larry

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