Savages

Piaget, Pioneer, Porsche Design, Prada, Pure Beauty (yup)

Quiksilver (surfing sells out; ambiguity intentional)

Ralph Lauren, Rangoni Firenze, Restoration Hardware, Rolex, Room and Board (again, without irony)

Saks, Salvatore Ferragamo, Sassoon, Sears (Sears?), Smith & Hawken, Sony, Sunglass Hut, Sur La Table, Swatch

Talbots, Teen Vogue, The Territory Ahead, Tiffany, Tinder Box (no shit, the fire this time)

Valentino, Van Cleef, Versace, Victoria’s Secret, Victoria’s Secret Beauty

Wahoo’s Fish Taco (see “surfing sells out”), Williams-Sonoma, Wolfgang Puck

Yves Saint Laurent

Zara

And a score of lesser saints.

63

O is one of the worshippers.

Would be a daily communicant if she had the cash. Did we say the girl loves to shop? Did we say that the girl maybe lives to shop? We’re not slamming O; she’d tell you so herself.

“I shop,” she said to Ben one time after maxing out her card, “because there is nothing else to do. I have no job, no serious interests, no purpose in life, really. So I buy stuff. It’s something that I can do and it makes me feel better.”

“You’re filling the internal void with external things,” Ben said.

(Sanctimonious Baddhist.)

“There you go,” O said. “I don’t adore myself, so I adorn myself.”

“You can’t replace your absent father’s love or gain your suffocating mother’s approval with material acquisitions,” Ben said.

(Annoying child of two psychotherapists.)

“That’s what the paid shrink said,” O responded. “But I can’t seem to locate the Absent Father’s Love and Suffocating Mother’s Approval Boutique. Which one is it?”

“All of them,” Ben answered.

O changes therapists like some people change hairstyles. Well, like O changes hairstyles. And she’s covered the whole fucking thing with all the shrinks—how Paqu feels guilty for not having provided her little girl with a stable home so tries to make up for it by supporting her and at the same time crippling her by enabling her blah blah; how Paqu is appalled by the idea of getting old and so has to keep her daughter a dependent child because having a truly adult daughter would mean that she is old blah blah blah, so—

“It’s Paqu’s fault,” O told Ben.

“It’s Paqu’s fault, your responsibility,” Ben answered.

(Patronizing moralist.)

He’s tried. He’s offered to set O up in her own small business, but O isn’t interested in any business. He said he’d support her trying art, photography, music, acting, film, but O doesn’t have a passion for any of that. He even invited her to join him overseas doing aid work, but—

“That’s you, Ben. Not me.”

“It’s immensely satisfying, if you can tolerate the absence of creature comforts.”

“I can’t.”

“You could learn.”

“Maybe,” O said. “How’s the shopping in Darfur?”

“Shitty.”

“See …” O looked at her reflection in the store window. “I’m the person a person like you should hate, Ben. But you don’t because I’m so lovable. I have a great twisted sense of humor, I’m loyal like a dog, I have a cute face, small tits but I’m a freak in bed, and you’re a loyal dog, too, B, so you love me.”

Ben had no argument.

It was all accurate.

Another time, O did hit on something she could do.

As a career.

“Cool,” Ben said. “What?”

The freaking suspense killing him.

“Reality TV show star,” O said. “I could have my own reality TV show.”

“What would the show be about?”

“Me,” O said, like, duh.

“Yeah, I know, but what would you do on the show?”

“Do,” like, as in a verb.

“The cameras just follow me around my day,” O said. “Me being me. It would be like the Really Real Laguna Beach. A Girl Trying Not To Become A Real Housewife of Orange County.”

(O has more than once suggested they do a show about her mother and friends, The Real Cunts Of Orange Housewifies.)

“But what do you do all day?” Ben asked. He knew, for one thing, that said camera crews wouldn’t be complaining about early calls, anyway.

“You’re a real buzzkill, Ben.”

Among other things, I do you, don’t I.

“Okay, what’s the show called?”

Again—

Duh—

O.

64

Now O whips out Paqu’s black plastic and spanks it like a male dancer in a Madonna concert. Then she cruises over to Jose Eber and uses Mom’s name to get an appointment for a cut, color, and styling. After that, it’s off to the spa for a facial, then a redo on the makeup situation.

A One-Woman Stimulus Package.

65

Ben and Chon go to the volleyball nets at Main Beach, right by the old Hotel Laguna.

Figure it will feel good to bat the ball around a little. Alleviate their anger, clear their heads, help them decide what to do.

Your basic Fight v. Flight moment.

Guess who goes for which?

“I say we send Alex and Jaime back in a cereal box,” says Chon, if you haven’t guessed.

Set, spike, kill.

“I say we just go away for a while.”

Volley.

“Where can we go where they can’t reach out?”

Volley.

“I know places.”