Savages

it.

Yet.

So she’s going to do some time.

For a brief but interesting period in her young life, O had a thing for Women’s Prison Movies. She and Ash used to sit up and watch old videos. Chained Heat, Canned Heat, Chained Canned Heat. Anyway, there was always some young chick who got thrown in with a bunch of hard-core dykes, a rapacious male or female warden, and a kinder, older mother-figure prisoner and O and Ash got off on the soft-core lesbian porn. Their favorite thing to do was turn the sound off and make up the dialogue themselves.

So she thinks she knows a little about doing time.

At least they took the blindfold off. Put her in a room with a bed, a chair, an attached bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower. There’s a window, but they taped over it so she can’t look outside and take a guess as to where the fuck she is.

And, of course, the one door is locked from the outside.

Three times a day this sweet, shy Mexican kid comes in with a meal on a tray. O has asked, but the kid won’t tell her his name.

Breakfast is always a roll with butter and strawberry jam.

Lunch is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Dinner is a microwave whatever.

This isn’t going to work.

Not for three freaking years if it comes to that.

For one thing, the video replay is driving her nuts.

Two, when that isn’t playing she’s bored out of her skull.

So …

She starts taking her head out for little walks.

139

Later that night

Ben and Chon sit in the office on Brooks Street watching Jeff and Craig do-do the computer voodoo.

Jeff, clad in board trunks and a T-shirt, leans back in his chair with the lappie on his, uhhh, lap, and his bare feet up on the desk. He sucks on a joint and looks at the screen, while Craig, on the headset, talks Dennis through it.

Craig is dressed formally for the occasion—jeans, tennis shoes, a shirt with sleeves. He puts his hand over the mike, smiles, and says, “Your boy is nervous.”

“Can you break through the DEA firewall?” Ben asks.

Craig rolls his eyes. Jeff smiles and says, “We know the guys who wrote the software. Nice dudes, but …”

“Got him,” Craig says.

He spins his chair so Ben can see the screen.

“Easy squeezy now,” Craig says into the mike. “I’m looking at what you’re looking at.”

He starts speaking geek—combos of numbers and letters, “alt” this, “enter” that. Every once in a while he breaks into an Indian accent because he thinks it’s funny. (“Just trying to dial down the vibe.”) It isn’t. About twenty minutes later Craig says into the phone, “Okay, hit the button and you give me the joystick.”

Dennis does.

“It’s Amazon now,” Jeff says to Ben. “Happy shopping.”

140

O creates a new persona for herself.

Tragic heroine.

As opposed to tragically hip heroin girlfriend, a previous fantasy involving Chon’s nonexistent addiction.

It’s nice to move to center stage, though, or center scaffold, as long as it doesn’t actually happen, instead of being the supportive woman you’ve seen in a few thousand movies and TV shows.

So she models herself on Famous Women Who Have Been Beheaded, or more accurately, Women Who Are Famous for Being Beheaded because, like, none of these babies would have gotten a mention except for their spectacular exit scenes.

O consults history for this.

Which is a task because she’s never really read any. All O’s background study for this role comes from movies and TV, of which she’s seen a lot a lot.

Anyway, she makes a (mental) list:

Marie Antoinette, of course.

Good clothes—the chick could shop. You turn MA loose in South Coast Plaza or Fashion Valley, you got something going.

O is familiar with Marie (they’re on first-name status now, based on shared experience) mainly from the movie with Kirsten Dunst. The movie had very cool music—New Order, the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees—and Marie was married at age fourteen and couldn’t get her husband to do her until she finally explained to him it was like a key going into a lock, which apparently got him enthused. But then she got into a lot of trouble for eating a bunch of pastries and throwing parties, which O can relate to because Paqu approved of neither of these things. The movie didn’t actually show Marie getting her head cut off, but O remembers something about that from history class in high school and also something about the girl saying, “Let ’em eat cake,” which, you know, you’d think would be a happy thing, but you never know what’s going to piss off the French.

So there’s Marie and there’s Anne Boleyn, whom O knows from the TV series and from a movie about her sister. The girl was a real slut, apparently. She fucked a lot of guys, including maybe even her own brother. O doesn’t hold the slut thing against her—she’s fucked a lot of guys, too, and never had a brother (one pregnancy was plenty for Paqu, thank you. She went out and got her tubes tied after O), so who knows?

Anyway, the chick in the series was fucking hot. This catlike little body and she was, like, dirty girl, and O and Ash were very into her and very into the guy playing Henry VIII so when they hooked up it was OMFG. But then VIII got tired of her and she couldn’t produce a boy and they sentenced her to death for fucking her brother and some other guy and she came out of the Tower looking all demure and shit and kneeled in front of the chopping block and stretched her arms out and she had this beautiful, elegant neck, but when it comes to beautiful necks you have to give the trophy to Natalie Portman, who played Anne in the movie and Anne was a major cock-tease. Which O never really mastered but never really tried because she just really likes cocks so why pretend otherwise?

So there’s Marie Antoinette and Anne Boleyn.

There was Catherine somebody, but that’s season four and it hasn’t been on yet so O doesn’t know anything about her.

Then there was Lady Jane Grey, played in this old movie by that chick who was in the Harry Potter movies, and she was queen for just nine days, which is a bummer and O can’t remember why they chopped her head off, just that they did.

Mary, Queen of Scots.

O is pretty sure she was decapitated because she read something about Scarlett Johansson was going to star in the movie, but something happened and they didn’t make the movie, which O thinks was a mistake because a lot of mammarily challenged chicks, herself included, would have happily laid down ten bucks to see Scarlett get her head cut off.

O decides to go with Marie Antoinette.

Let ’em eat cake.