Savages

                         Brown eyes.

His lips slightly out of synch, a broken second’s lag behind the sound as he says,

“Okay, I’m coming

         home.”

27

O is happy

that Ben is coming back.

Ben, her other bookend

The two men—Ben and Chon—

who mean something in her life.

The only two who ever have.

28

Ben is warm wood, Chon is cold metal

Ben is caring, Chon indifferent

Ben makes love, Chon fucks.

She loves them both.

What to do, what to do?

29

When O gets up that morning (okay, afternoon), she looks out the window and sees a tall woman with close-cropped silver hair get into a BMW and pull out of the driveway.

“Who was that?” O asks Paqu when she walks into the kitchen to look for the Cocoa Puffs that Paqu has probably thrown out. (O hijacks the shopping list that Paqu gives Maria and adds items like Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Hostess CupCakes, self-heating lubricating gel, and Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits. But then Paqu goes on patrol in the pantry and throws these things out, save for the gel, which O whips into her room the second Maria comes back with the groceries.)

“That’s Eleanor, my life coach,” Paqu says. “She’s wonderful.”

“Your . . .”

“Life coach.”

This is just 2G2BT. This makes O really happy. Her skin gets all tingly as she asks, “Just what does a life coach actually do, Mom?”

Sure enough, Paqu gave the Puffs the heave, so O has to settle for Frosted Mini-Wheats, then scans the fridge for real, actual milk, not the skimmed or 1 percent shit that Moms insists on stocking when she’s not completely antidairy, which is apparently now, so O pours the cereal into a bowl and eats it dry, with her fingers, a small measure of revenge.

“Well, Eleanor thinks I have the makings of a life coach myself,” Paqu answers, placing some flowers into a tall, skinny vase. “So she’s going to help me actualize that potential.”

The potential actualization of that potentiality gets O even zingier. “So your life coach is coaching you to be a life coach.”

So you can coach other people to be life coaches. O almost hustles out the door right then because she just can’t wait to report this circle jerk of life coaching to Ben (Ben’s coming home!) and Chon.

Paqu ignores the question. “She’s truly amazing.”

“What happened to the skin-care product thing?”

“Superficial, don’t you think?” Paqu looks at the flower arrangement and smiles with self-satisfaction. Then she has a revelation. “Darling! You could study to be a life coach, too! Then we could be mother-and-daughter life coaches!”

“But then you’d have to come clean that you have a daughter over the age of ten,” O says, shoveling Mini- Wheats into her mouth.

Paqu peruses her with what O guesses is meant to be life coach–level discernment.

“Of course, you’d have to do something about that hair,” Paqu says. “And the … ‘body art.’”

“Maybe I could start as a ‘life cheerleader.’”

Rah.

30

Chon sits in the black leather chair and watches the inauguration of the new president of the United States.

Who reaches out a hand to the Muslim world.

Chon gets that—he’s reached out to the Muslim world a few times himself.

It’s good Ben is coming back. The new prez agrees. He’s telling the thousands in attendance and the millions watching on television that the feeding frenzy at the trough is over, the orgy has been put on indefinite hiatus, the Third World is closer than you think, in both time and space.

Recession.

Depression.

Repression.

Whichever word you use, there’s a smaller pie to slice up and the knives are out. (See Clip, Video.) Layoffs, lop-offs, the market self-correcting. Companies becoming more efficient and the Baja Cartel is at the cutting edge (oof).

“How do you think we should respond?” Ben asks in the Skype session.

“Reach out to the Mexican world.”

“Violence is not necessarily the answer,” Ben says.

It’s not necessarily not the answer, either, Chon thinks.

This violent state of mind.

This violent state of mine.

As he watches the old president—aka the Sock Puppet—wave and get on the helicopter.

The last time someone tried to muscle Ben and Chonny’s it was a biker gang. Those boys picked up one of their retailers and beat him to death with a tire iron as a message that Ben and Chon could no longer do retail in the greater San Diego area.

Ben, natch, was off doing good somewhere, so this is how Chon took care of it.

31

Flashback:

Chon rolls down the 5 in his classic black ’66 pony.

Pointed toward Fun Dog.

Etymology:

San Diego

Sun Diego