Savages

“I think so.”

She thinks so because Paqu keeps her passport in a desk drawer so that O doesn’t fuck up and lose it.

Or go someplace.

“Go get your passport, buy some cool clothes, meet us back here at five.”

“Coolie cool.”

89

When O asks Paqu how things with Eleanor are, Paqu gives her an odd, uncomprehending look.

“Eleanor?” O prompts. “Your life coach?”

“Jesus is my life coach now.”

Uh-oh.

Turns out Paqu has joined a megachurch up in Lake Forest. Paqu being Paqu, of course it’s the largest church in the nation.

“Uhhh, do you know anything about Jesus’s life, Mom?” O asks. “Read a biography or anything?”

“Yes, darling, the Bible.”

“Have you gotten to the end, because—”

“I’ve accepted Christ as my personal savior.”

“—it didn’t turn out that well for the guy. You know, the crucifixion thing and stuff.”

Three Things I Will Do Today to Get Myself Nailed to a Cross:

1. Piss off the money changers

2. Piss off the Romans

3. Tell my dad I don’t want to

(Young Jesus hangs from a cross, learning a lesson about trust. “Just get up there, I’ll catch you.”)

“Would you pray with me, Ophelia?” Paqu asks.

“Yeah, no. Thanks, though.”

“I’ll pray for you.”

“Where’s my passport?”

This sets off Paqu’s alarm system. “Why?”

“I want it.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I’m thinking France.”

“What’s in France?”

“I dunno, French stuff. The French.”

“Is it a French man, Ophelia?” Her skin is stretched so tight across her bones you could drum on it.

O is tempted to say that actually she got double-teamed by two perfectly fine all-American guys last night, just to see her face actually go jigsaw puzzle, but she doesn’t. She wants to say that she’s going to Indo with these two men and maybe try to build some kind of life, she wants to say goodbye, but she doesn’t say that, either.

“It’s my passport,” she hears herself whine.

“In the upper left desk drawer in my office,” Paqu says. “But we need to talk about this.”

Yeah, we need to talk about a lot, Mom, O thinks. But we won’t. She goes into Paqu’s office, digs around in the desk drawer, finds her passport, and goes out the back door.

B4N.

90

Ben and Chon get busy.

Lots to do, disengaging.

First they get on the phone, the text, e-mail to all their retailers and tell them to take a vacay, go off the radar for a spell. Lots of bitching, pushback, and questions, but Ben is firm about it.

Trading has been suspended.

Just giving you a heads up.

Heh.

Then he and Chon drive down to Cafe Heidelberg on the PCH and Brooks Street to have coffee and a pastry with Ben’s money guy. They have to pass three Starbucks to get there but Ben won’t go in the joints. He will only buy “fair trade” coffee. Chon has a different idea about what fair trade means. He gives them money, they give him coffee, that’s fair trade. Anyway, he doesn’t care, the Heidelberg is just fine.

He makes Ben drive even though Ben is a shitty driver. But Chon wants his hands free for the Glock on his lap, the shotgun on the floor, and the Ka-Bar in his belt just in case they run into a deer that needs leveling or if things get up close and personal.

Ben thinks the arsenal is excessive.

“It’s a business negotiation,” he says.

“You saw the video,” Chon answers.

“That was Mexico,” Ben says. “This is Laguna Beach. The cops wear shorts and ride bicycles.”

“It’s too civilized here?”

“Something like that.”

“Uh-huh. Then why are we going to Indonesia?”

“Because there’s no point in being careless.”

“Exactly.”

They find a parking spot on Brooks, and Ben fills the meter with quarters. For some reason, Ben always has quarters. Chon never has quarters.

Spin Dry is already at a table outside.

Spin D used to be an investment banker with an established bank in Newport Beach. Then he discovered Ben’s product, and that he could make more money laundering Ben’s profits. The bank was not unhappy to see him go.

Now Spin spends the early-morning hours monitoring the money markets in Asia and the Pacific, and the rest of the time riding his bike, going to the gym, and banging Orange County Trophy Wives who get their Mercedes and jewelry from their hubbies and their cookies from Spin.

Spin is a happy man.

He rode his bike here and he’s dressed in one of those stupid skintight Italian bodysuits with the matching cap.

Chon thinks he looks like an idiot.

“S’up?” Spin asks, because he thinks talking like a surfer who’s been hit in the head too many times will make him not forty-three.

“Not us,” Ben says. “I need to go off the grid for a while.”

Spin wipes the cappuccino foam off his upper lip. “S’cool.”

“Yeah, it’s not, really,” Ben says. “But it’s where we’re at. I need you to set up a new line for me, double- blind, liquidate five hundred K, and I want everything else washed fresh. Whole new cycle, make it go away somewhere for a while.”

“No worries.”

No worries—every time Chon hears “no worries” he worries.

“I want to pick it up clean in Jakarta,” Ben tells Spin. “Half in dollars, half in local currency.”

“Lot of lettuce to be carrying around, boss.”

“It’s okay,” Ben says. “Also, so you can plan your personal finances, I want to tell you that we’re getting out of the old pista secreta.”