Savages (12 page)

Beautiful there under the strings of lights on the PCH.

Nothing not to love.

Fine soft spring night, the air smells like flowers and O is beautiful, smiling, and happy. The food is great although Ben just has the miso soup, which he seasons with Lomotil tablets, the chemical cork, as any Third World sojourner knows.

Not O—she fired up some of Ben’s appetizer boo and eats like a pregnant horse. Starts with the calamari then hits the French onion soup, the grilled ahi with cracked pepper crust and aioli, garlic mashed potatoes, Gujerati green beans, then the crème brûlée.

The wine flows.

No bill, no tab, no receipt but they leave a liberal “as-if” tip, then go out to the limo, blaze up, and hit the exclusive hotel bars—the St. Moritz, the Montage, the Ritz-Carlton, the Surf & Sand. Apple martinis and O grabbing glances everywhere, she’s so hot with her two men.

“It’s like that movie,” she says, standing on the patio of the Ritz looking out at the moonlight hitting the breakers.

“What movie?” Ben asks.

“That old movie,” O says, “with Paul Newman when he was alive and Robert Redford when he was young. I was home sick one day from school and it was on cable.”

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,”
Chon kicks in. “If I follow O’s drift, you’re Butch and I’m Sundance.”

“Which one was Butch?” Ben asks.

“Newman,” Chon answers. “Which fits, because you’re into the philanthropist thing. I’m the sexy shooter.”

“I’m the girl in it,” O says happily.

“Didn’t they get killed at the end?” Ben asks.

“Not the girl,” says O.

Lado gets tired

Following these rich spoiled
gueros
up and down the Gold Coast.

Them in their limo.

Good to get a look at them, though. The one moves like a killer and they’ll have to be careful with him. This is the one that said “Fuck you” to Elena (and we already know how this kind of thing goes down with Lado).

The other looks soft and easy.

No problem.

The
puta, la guerita
?

What Lado can’t figure out is, whose woman is she? Which cock does she suck? They both treat her like she’s their woman—an arm around the shoulder, a peck on the lips, but the men don’t look like they’re going to butt heads.

Could it be that she does them both?

And do they know?

And not care?

Fucking savages.

After the bar crawl they take a walk on the boardwalk at Main Beach.

Laguna.

A gentle arc anchored by the Inn at Laguna on the north and the old
Hotel Laguna on the south. Tall graceful palm trees, tropical flowers, moon sparkling on the small waves. The basketball courts, the volleyball courts, the playground.

The old lifeguard tower.

One of Ben’s favorite spots on earth and probably why he always eventually comes home.

So they walk, a little drunkenly, and talk about retirement from the dope business. What he and Chon are going to do, who they’re going to be. O is geeked by the energy idea, wonders if maybe there’s a place for her and the answer is of course. This business is different from the last business, no risks legal or otherwise, all aboveboard, transparent in the open air.

Launder the dope money, it comes out sunshiny clean as energy.

They’re happy about this.

Even Chon is happy about this now he’s thought a little and drank a lot. Might be nice to let the adrenaline level drop a little. Will take some getting used to, but it might be a good thing. Swap the hardware of guns for the hardware of turbines, blades, and panels. Shoot electricity around like streams of bullets.

Light it up.

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.

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.

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 screaming one long note as they come together.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Elena can’t sleep.

Thinking about the girl.

Chon on the difference between advertising and pornography:

Advertising gives beautiful names to ugly things.

Pornography gives ugly names to beautiful things.

Should be awkward (What did we
do
last night?!) in the morning but it isn’t.

It’s EZ.

Happy cool.

Chon rolls out first. Goes out on the deck and does his push-ups. Ben still sleepy-warm in the bed. He gets up a few minutes later, hears the shower running and O singing some tune off the radio.

They gather around the breakfast table.

Grapefruit, sliced mango, black coffee.

O smiling happily.

The boys quiet until Ben looks across the table at Chon, holds his thumb and index finger a millimeter apart, and says, “We’re
that
close to being gay.”

They laugh for half an hour.

Collective dicks.

On the radio some airwave jabber-jockey goes on and on about the new prez being a socialist while another mike-monkey “defends” him.

A fight as real and choreographed as a WWF match. The liberal in one corner, the conservative in the other—pick your villain, pick your hero.

Ben likes the new POTUS because the cat smoked weed, snorted crack, wrote about it, and got away with it.

Nobody said dick.

Not in the primaries, not in the campaign, not at all.

And you know why?

Because he was black.

And you have to love that.

No disrespect to Dr. King, Ben thinks, but the giddiest guy on Inauguration Day would have been Lenny Bruce.

Paqu was, like,
appalled
when Obama got elected.

Like, what’s next, a Mexican?

At least the White House lawn will look good, O comforted her.

“I hope he
is
a socialist,” Ben says. “Socialism works.”

Worked for Ben and Chonny’s, certainly.

Chon doesn’t believe in socialism

or communism or capitalism.

The only “ism” he believes in is

jism.

O, the sacramental vessel of his faith,

laughs.

“What about hedonism?” Ben asks, just enjoying the game because Chon is one of the least hedonistic people he knows. Chon likes his pleasure, no doubt, but he is also a disciplined daily self-torturer who runs miles of beach, swims miles of ocean, does a thousand push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups and bangs his bare fist into a wooden post until it bleeds (the fist, not the post).

“Nope, not hedonism,” Chon answers. “In my world, there’s only

he do or he don’t ism

because when it comes down to a man getting it done, either

he do, or he don’t.”

O concurs.

Happy she has two he do’s.

“No, I’ve got it,” Ben says. “Nihilism.”

“Nihilism,” Chon says. “Now you might be onto something.”

Okay, that’s pretty funny, O thinks.

Then Ben sez—

“I think we should go on a little trip.”

He and Chon looking all conspirational. For two dope dealers, O thinks, they are amazingly transparent. She should have them teach her to play poker with them, take everything they own.

“We?” O asks. Like who is the we in “we”? The two of us—in which case, which us—or we three (kings of Orient are)?

“The three of us,” Ben clarifies. “New life, new beginning.”

“Are we going to Bolivia?” O asks.

“I’m thinking Indo.”

He knows this pretty little village on the ocean. The people are beautiful and friendly. Ben has put a clinic, a school, and a water treatment plant in this village. He has brought in cosmetic surgeons to heal children. The men of the village—small, slight men who wear skirts—carry long, curved blades and love Ben.