Savages

kid coming home from a field trip to Costa Rica.
    He looks thin like he always does when he comes home. His skin, in that particularly weird, Third World way, is simultaneously tan and pale—dark from the sun with a sub-layer of infection-induced white underneath. What is it this time? Anemia? Hep? Some parasite that’s crept under his toenail into his bloodstream?
    Bilharzia.
    Ben sees them and smiles.
    Big white even teeth.
    In a different generation Ben would have been in the Peace Corps. Shit, Ben would have been the
director
of the Peace Corps, played touch football with Jack and Bobby on the lawn at Hyannis Port, out sailing on the yacht. Tan and smiling. A life of vigor, moral and physical.
    But that was a different generation.
    O runs up to him, throws her arms around his shoulders, wraps her legs around his waist. It’s no prob, she weighs, like, nothing.
    “Bennnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!”
    The other passengers turn and look.
    Ben holds her up with one arm, pivots, and extends his other hand to Chon.
    “Hey.”
    “Hey.”
    His bag comes down the conveyor belt. Chon picks it up, hefts it on his shoulder, and they walk out past the statue of
    The Duke—
    And, by the way—
    Fuck
him.

42
     
    The Coyote Grill
    In south Laguna Beach
    Just an exterior stairway up from Table Rock and the condo.
    They sit out on the balcony. A rectangle of blue Pacific down belowthem, fishing boats cruising the edge of the kelp beds, Catalina lying fat and lazy (a spoiled house cat) on the edge of the world.
    Nice nice.
    Sun shining and the air smells of fresh salsa.
    It’s Ben’s favorite place when he’s home. His hang. But he doesn’t eat a lot today, just pushes his food around the plate and nibbles on a tortilla and Chon thinks he probably has some gut malady. Rumbling intestines and frequent trips to the john. Load up on magazines because Ben is going to get a lot of reading done.
    Chon has a burger. He hates Mexican food. His opinion is that all Mexican food is the same, it’s just wrapped differently.
    O eats like a horse.
    Big plate of nachos with chicken, fish tacos with yellowtail, rice, and black beans. Having Ben home gives her even more than her usual ravenous appetite. (Her two men around her.) It’s almost disgusting watching her shovel the food into her mouth. Paqu would hemorrhage through her fucking ears if she saw this.
    Which would make O even hungrier.
    Ben orders an iced tea but Chon tells him clear liquids are better. You have the trots, only drink fluids you can see through. Ben gets a lemonade and mostly just chews on the ice.
    “Where have you been?” O asks between gulps.
    “All over,” Ben answers. “First I was in Myanmar.”
    “Myan … ?”
    “—mar,” Ben says. “Used to be Burma. Go to Thailand and take a left? I ended up in Congo.”
    “What was in Congo?” Chon asks.
    Ben gives him that
Apocalypse Now
look. Brando before the Pudding Pops.
    The
horror.

43
     
    Home home.
    Welcome home.
    Ben walks into the big living room and instantly starts checking it out, doing a mental inventory to see what vodka-and-speed-propelled damage Chon has done.
    But the place looks good.
    Pristine.
    “You brought a cleaner in,” Ben says.
    “One of Paqu’s anal retentives,” O says.
    “It looks nice,” Ben says. “Thanks.”
    Paqu’s house cleaners generally go in one of two directions—have nervous breakdowns and quit, hopefully stealing something of value on their way out the door; or are obsessive-compulsives who are totally into meeting her impossible standards. O brought one of the latter types in to sterilize Ben’s crib.
    Now they sit on the sofa and smoke up. Look out at the ocean. Look out at the ocean. Look out at the ocean …
    Chon says he’s going for a training swim.
    That means a
long
swim, couple of miles at least, plus the walk back. He leaves the room, comes back with his trunks on, and says, “Later.”
    They watch him walk out onto the beach and jump into the water.
    No toe-dipping for Chon.

44
     
    Or for O.
    “How long has it been,” she asks Ben, “since you’ve had a woman?”
    “A few months.”
    “That’s too long.”
    She kneels in front of him, unzips his fly, licks butterfly wings up and down him. He stops her and asks, “How does Chon feel about this?”
    “It isn’t his tongue, isn’t his mouth.” And swallows him deep, slides her lips up and down his beautiful warmwood cock, feels him harden, loves her power to make that happen, bobs her