Savages

Ben is happy.

Walking on this beach he loves with these people he loves.

The arc of the coast wraps around him like their arms.

81

Elena lies in her big lonely bed and looks at a soap opera.

Watches other people’s passion.

Magda calls from school.

How are you? I’m fine. How are you? Nothing new, really …

Elena knows that the call is meant to conceal more than it reveals but she understands and even approves. Good for the girl to get out and have her own life. As much as she can, anyway, shadowed everywhere by bodyguards. She has told them to be discreet and that they are security, not spies—she does not need to know what she does not need to know.

The light from the television flickers on the grenade screen outside the window and Elena watches that for a few moments. Then the two lovers on the screen start to yell at each other and she turns her attention to that and the argument resolves in an embrace and a fiery kiss.

When the phone rings it’s Lado.

The two gueros went out with a girl and they all went back to the same house.

“A whore?” Elena asks.

“Not a professional,” Lado answers. “I don’t think.”

She looks and acts like a rich girl.

Elena hears this and wonders about Magda. Does she look and act like a rich girl? Probably so. I should have a word with her about toning it down.

“Whose girlfriend is she?” Elena asks. “Does she belong to Mr. Let’s Cut the Shit or Mr. Fuck You?”

“I don’t know,” Lado answers.

He explains his difficulty.

“You’re there now,” she says.

“Outside the house, yes.”

“And the three of them are still there?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.”

Not to Lado. He’s bored. He has four good men with him, all mujados, paperless, untrackable, stone killers who could be back across the border before the sun goes up. The three gueros are drunk and stoned—this might be the easiest they would ever have it against the killer—

“I can do it now.”

“That means the girl, too, though.”

Lado lets his silence answer.

82

Another awkward uncharacteristic silence.

When they get back to Ben’s.

O wondering what (who) to do.

But Ben busts out

The sex dope.

Moist, musky, earthy, tasty, fetid fucking boo.

One toke busts the dew out on your blossom, two makes you flow flow flow. You swell and flow, grip and let go, and cry. Tears from your pussy, tears from your eyes, your nips would weep if they could, it’s that good. And that’s for the women, for the men it’s

Taproot time.

Could bust through a concrete sidewalk looking for the light, searching for sun. So hard, so hard so hard but you last, literally for fucking ever. Fucking forever, every nerve on your skin a shimmering pleasure center, like, she touches your freaking ankle you moan.

Ben & Chon’s Sex Dope.

Responsible for more orgasms on the West Coast than Doctor Johnson.

No wonder the Mexicans want it.

Everybody wants it.

You give this to the Pope he’d be frisbeeing condoms off the balcony to grateful, adoring thousands. Telling them to go for it. God is good, get laid. God is love, get good.

O takes two tokes.

OMG.

O My fucking G.

Spot.

Chon hits on it, too. Takes one long one but one long one is long enough. O and Chon splayed out on the bed. He flops down beside O, who takes another whack and hands it to Ben. He sucks it down and this is more than a toke, it’s a decision, an agreement, a tacit acceptance that they’re going to cross a river.

They all feel it.

O, the center, the middle, the conduit of their tripartite love.

They’re in no hurry, though, every slow move is fascifuckinating. Takes Chon about thirty-seven minutes just to peel the shoulder strap of her dress down her arm and she feels like she’s going to come just from that. She has on this transparent black bra and he spends a good five years stroking her breast with the back of his fingers watching feeling that nipple trying to poke through the material like a plant coming up in the spring until she reaches behind and unsnaps the damn thing (Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall) because she wants to feel his skin on her breast before it just bursts open and when he does she has a little one right there and one when he puts his lips on her nip and the colors in the room get crazy.

Colors go positively psychotic when he slides down, opens her with his fingers, and tongues her. Very unlike Chon, this oral loving, he’s usually a right-to-the-dicking guy but now he takes his time and hums little happy tunes into her (Little Miss Echo), presses his finger onto her spongy spot, and she writhes and wriggles and wiggles, pants and moans and coos and comes and comes and comes (O!) and then rolls to her side, yanks down his jeans, grabs his dick, and puts it inside of her (where it belongs).

Ben strokes her back. Runs his fingers slowly up and down her spine, along the curve of her ass, down the backs of her thighs, her calves, her ankles, her feet, and back up again.

Exquisite.

O says, “I want both. Both my boys.”

She reaches behind her to feel his warm hardsoft wood. Ben is pine, no—oak, no—sandalwood, sweet, scented, sacred sandalwood and she places him where she wants him, Chon’s cold-hot steel pumps her fills her but not all of her then she feels Ben push and there’s this little resistance but then he’s inside and now she has both her men inside her (where they belong).

Who knew they were such musicians, who knew they were a duet capable of this rhythm, this beat this dance? Who knew she was an instrument capable of these notes? A slow song at first, slow and soft, largo and piano, then the pace picks up, one strain comes on as the other recedes, back and forth, a relentless driving beat. Ben’s hands on her breasts, Chon’s on her waist, she touches Chon’s face, Ben’s hair. Her two men, driving in her, playing her, she hears herself scream now, no refuge from the pleasure, no break, no eighth-note rests, no respite, no sanctuary, one thin membrane separating them, she’s dripping, swelling, grabbing, gripping, pouring, shooting