108
I couldn’t have done it.
A mantra Ben involuntarily repeats, his mind on continuous loop as he races to the grow house.
I couldn’t have done it.
Couldn’t have pulled the trigger on myself, even to save O.
Would have wanted to.
Would have tried to, but—
I couldn’t have done it.
With the mantra comes shame, and, surprisingly for the product of two shrinks, a derogation of his manhood.
You feel less a man for not blowing your own brains out? On command? Ben asks himself. As if you’ve ever equated masculinity with machismo. That’s crazy. That’s beyond crazy, that’s over the crazy horizon.
Yeah, but crazy is where we live now.
The Republic of Crazy.
And Chon would have done it.
Check that—Chon did it.
And what if
what if
what if
they had ordered Chon to shoot not himself but
Me.
He would have done it.
Sorry, Ben. But
And he would have been right.
Ben pulls off onto the cul-de-sac in the quiet suburban neighborhood in the eastern reaches of Mission Viejo. The “Old Mission.” (Meet the new mission, same as the old mission.) The house is at the top of the circle, its manicured backyard separated by a wall from a long slope of chaparral that shelters rabbits and coyotes.
He pulls in to the driveway, gets out, walks up, and rings the bell.
Knows a surveillance camera is on him.
(Better be, anyway.)
So Eric knows it’s him when he comes to the door.
Eric doesn’t look like a dope farmer, he looks like an actuary. Short light-brown hair, receding on his forehead, horn-rimmed glasses. All dude needs is a pocket protector to be totally dweeb.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
He walks Ben through the living room—sectional sofa, La-Z-Boy recliner, big-screen TV playing
There’s a fucking pool, all right.
With grow lamps, drip lines.
Metal halide—vegetative phase
High pressure sodium—flowering phase
A fecund hothouse.
Ben looks at his watch.
Motherfucker.
Realizes that his armpits are soaked with anxiety sweat.
“It’s all packed up?” he asks.
“Everything that’s harvest-ready.”
“Let’s get it loaded.”
A soccer-mom van, stripped of the backseats, waits out back. Ben and Eric load the kilos in, then Ben gets behind the wheel and starts the motor.
He has forty-three minutes to get to Costa Mesa.
109
Slicing through SoCal
Cutting through a California night
The freeway (5) is soft and warm and
Welcoming
But for Ben
The green exit signs are like steps climbing up a scaffold
Toward O.
Each one marking precious time, saying miles to go—
And miles to go before she sleeps
Aliso Viejo, Oso Parkway, El Toro
Lake Forest, Culver, MacArthur
John Wayne Airport now off to his left, glowing in white light, shut down for the night now so that takeoffs don’t disturb the slumber of Orange County—
Jamboree, because the Boy Scouts camped there.
Ben does eighty-five with a vanload of dope. Doesn’t want to speed like that but has to because the clock is running
Irvine Spectrum with its unlikely Ferris wheel and
Irvine Amphitheater proclaiming on its marquee the coming of Jimmy Buffett, o come, ye Parrothead faithful …
Ben sees, from the corner of his eye
The CHP car parked in the median
Lying in ambush
Like death does
(Cancer, heart attacks, aneurisms, all waiting patiently in the median strip)
He prays that the cop has better things to do, replays a Springsteen song in his head (“Mister state trooper, please don’t stop me, please don’t stop me, please don’t stop me”), not because he fears the years in prison but because it would mean O’s death and he glances in the rearview mirror to see if the cop pulls out (please don’t stop me, please don’t stop me), and he doesn’t.
Ben fucking can’t fucking breathe.
Hands soaked on the sweat-slick wheel.
Finally, Bristol Street.
South Coast Plaza.
O’s hunting grounds.
He exits left on Fairview.
Head on a swivel, he looks for the address they gave him, street numbers matching a little strip mall.
Come on, come on, come on
Where is it, where is it, where is it
His stomach aching, cramping in tension, he feels like he might shit himself, then sees—
The wooden sign “33–38.”
A liquor store, a pizza joint, dry cleaner’s, nail salon.
All closed.
