flees to the inside of the van (where, if he were smart, he would remain) and emerges (see?) with a pistol.
And says to Chon,
“ Now what are you going to do, asshole?”
The prosecution rests.
God is God.
Darwin is Darwin.
14
EXT. BEACH PARKING LOT — DAY
An UNCONSCIOUS SURFER with a PISTOL (with the safety on) jammed in his mouth lies slumped out of the sliding door of a van. TWO OTHER SURFERS lie in fetal positions on the ground.
In their wet suits, they look like baby seals in a PETA clip.
CHON roots around in the console of the van and comes up with a plastic-wrapped QUARTER POUND of dope, which he jams into his jacket pocket.
Then he steps over to a fourth surfer, BRIAN, who is on all fours, trying unsuccessfully to get to his feet.
Chon kicks him in the ribs.
Several times.
Then grabs him by the collar and drags him over to the van.
CHON
Brian, let the word go forth from this time and place: It is not okay to steal our product. It is especially not okay to lay hands on our people. And one other thing Chon stretches Brian’s right arm over the edge of the van’s bumper, then picks up the baseball bat and
CRACK!
Brian screams.
CHON
— next time I’ll kill you.
15
Time to go.
O’s trying to get out of the fucking house.
Very expensive house in the exclusive gated community of Monarch Bay.
Except Paqu is, like, on it.
“What are you going to do with your life?” she asks.
“I dunno.”
“Are you going back to school?”
“I dunno.”
“Are you going to get a job?”
“I dunno.”
Check Paqu out Blonde hair, perfectly coiffed.
Chiseled (not metaphorically) features.
Makeup perrrfect.
A couple of gr worth of clothing on her perrrfectly toned, sculpted body that features TTDF.
Tits To Die For.
(Many male ships have been wrecked on those cliffs, my friend. Crashed and broken apart. Y chromosomes flailing the crazy-bad whitewater waiting for a jet ski that ain’t coming.)
Now she turns her formidable tits and formidabler eyes on O. “Well, you have to do something.”
“I dunno,” O answers, wilting under the four-point gaze.
“You have thirty days,” Paqu says.
“To…”
“Get a job or go back to school,” Paqu answers, cutting up strawberries and putting the pieces into a blender with two scoops of protein powder.
She’s been into “power smoothies” lately.
“Oh God,” O answers, “have you been to one of those tough love seminars again?”
“DVD,” Paqu answers.
“Did Four put you up to this?” O asks.
She knows that Four put her up to it because he doesn’t want an “adult child” cluttering up the house he thinks is his just because he nails Paqu in it.
I was in this house before you were, O thinks.
Come to think of it, I was in Paqu before you were.
“Nobody put me up to it,” Paqu yells over the whirl of the blender. “I have a mind of my own, you know. And if you go back to school, you have to take it seriously.”
O had a 1.7 GPA at Saddleback before she gave up the charade entirely and just stopped going.
“What if I don’t?” she asks.
“Don’t what?”
“Will you shut that fucking thing off?”
Paqu turns off the blender and pours her power smoothie into a glass. O knows that in a half hour she’ll go to the gym to work with her personal trainer for two hours, then drink a “meal replacement shake,” then go to yoga before coming home for a power nap. Then she’ll spend two hours getting herself ready for when Four comes home.
And she thinks I’m a useless cunt, O thinks.
“You have a power-smoothie mustache,” O tells her.
“If you don’t get a job or go back to school,” Paqu says, wiping her upper lip with the back of her index finger, “you can’t live here anymore. You’ll have to find your own place.”
“I don’t have money for my own place.”
“That is not my problem,” Paqu says-obviously practiced from the DVD.
But they both know that it is.
Paqu’s problem, that is.
She’ll forget about it, O thinks, cognizant of Paqu’s Bipolar Approach To Parenting.
Paqu has wide swings between
Absent Neglectful Mother and
Smothering Controlling Mother
So, like, Paqu will take off on — a European vacation
Rehab
Spiritual Retreat or just
Another Affair
And totally forget about O.
Then she’ll come back, feel guilty, and go in the
Complete Other Direction
Micromanaging O’s life down to the tiniest details of clothing, friends, education (or lack thereof), career (see “education”), and protein-carbohydrate balance, and was literally up her ass during a truly unfortunate “colonic” phase.
It’s Either/Or
There is no middle ground, and it has been
