Savages

milk, not the skimmed or 1 percent shit that Moms insists on stocking when she’s not completely antidairy, which is apparently now, so O pours the cereal into a bowl and eats it dry, with her fingers, a small measure of revenge.
    “Well, Eleanor thinks I have the makings of a life coach my
self
,” Paqu answers, placing some flowers into a tall, skinny vase. “So she’s going to help me actualize that potential.”
    The potential actualization of that potentiality gets O even zingier. “So your life coach is coaching you to be a life coach.”
    So you can coach other people to be life coaches. O almost hustles out the door right then because she just can’t wait to report this circle jerk of life coaching to Ben (Ben’s coming home!) and Chon.
    Paqu ignores the question. “She’s truly amazing.”
    “What happened to the skin-care product thing?”
    “Superficial, don’t you think?” Paqu looks at the flower arrangement and smiles with self-satisfaction. Then she has a revelation. “Darling!
You
could study to be a life coach,
too
! Then we could be mother-and-daughter life coaches!”
    “But then you’d have to come clean that you have a daughter over theage of ten,” O says, shoveling Mini-Wheats into her mouth.
    Paqu peruses her with what O guesses is meant to be life coach–level discernment.
    “Of course, you’d have to do something about that hair,” Paqu says. “And the … ‘body art.’”
    “Maybe I could start as a ‘life cheerleader.’”
    Rah.

30
     
    Chon sits in the black leather chair and watches the inauguration of the new president of the United States.
    Who reaches out a hand to the Muslim world.
    Chon gets that—he’s reached out to the Muslim world a few times himself.
    It’s good Ben is coming back. The new prez agrees. He’s telling the thousands in attendance and the millions watching on television that the feeding frenzy at the trough is over, the orgy has been put on indefinite hiatus, the Third World is closer than you think, in both time and space.
    Recession.
    Depression.
    Repression.
    Whichever word you use, there’s a smaller pie to slice up and the knives are out. (See Clip, Video.) Layoffs, lop-offs, the market self-correcting. Companies becoming more efficient and the Baja Cartel is at the cutting edge (oof).
    “How do you think we should respond?” Ben asks in the Skypesession.
    “Reach out to the Mexican world.”
    “Violence is not necessarily the answer,” Ben says.
    It’s not necessarily
not
the answer, either, Chon thinks.
    This violent state of mind.
    This violent state of mine.
    As he watches the old president—aka the Sock Puppet—wave and get on the helicopter.
    The last time someone tried to muscle Ben and Chonny’s it was a biker gang. Those boys picked up one of their retailers and beat him to death with a tire iron as a message that Ben and Chon could no longer do retail in the greater San Diego area.
    Ben, natch, was off doing good somewhere, so this is how Chon took care of it.

31
     
    Flashback:
    Chon rolls down the 5 in his classic black ’66 pony.
    Pointed toward Fun Dog.
    Etymology:
    San Diego
    Sun Diego
    Sun Dog
    Fun Dog
    In the backseat under a blanket sleeps a Remington Model 870 SPS Super Slug pump action, 12-gauge shotgun with a synthetic cantilevered slug and a rubberized pistol grip that “advances deer-levelingtechnology to farther reaches and smaller group sizes than ever before possible.”
    Right now it’s resting up for the big business meeting.

32
     
    Chon likes to keep meetings short.
    Learned that in a book,
Things They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School.
    A short meeting is a good meeting.
    He drives down to Dago, finds the house in Golden Hill he’s looking for, and parks on the street. Wakes the shotgun up (“We’re there”), crosses said street, and knocks on the door.
    Tire Iron opens it. Big wooly motherfucker, heavy hairy shoulders showing under the wifebeater.
    Chon puts the shotgun to T.I.’s throat and pulls the trigger.
    Guy’s head goes ballpark.
    (
Fun
Dog!)
    Something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School.
    “Savages, How to Deal With.”
    Savagely.

33
     
    Continuing in flashback mode:
    Chon goes back to the Tuna—
    Etymology:
    (And, by the way, Chon really likes the word “etymology,” the etymology of which is Greek and means “in the true sense.” Hmmmm …)
    Laguna, rhymes with
    Tuna—
    Holes up with a freaking arsenal, tells O not to come around