Savages

business, but the BC has an army. Still, what are you going to do? Grab the KY, bend over the railing? Prison love?
    “This was just a way of making a living,” Ben says. “My balls aren’t attached to it. We have some money stashed. Cook Islands, Vanuatu … We can live comfortably. Maybe it’s time to put our focus somewhere else.”
    “Bad time for a start-up, Ben.”
    The market a bobsled run. The credit stream a
barranca
. Consumer confidence at an all-time low. End of capitalism as we know it.
    “I’m thinking alternative energy,” Ben says.
    “Windmills, solar panels, that kind of shit?”
    “Why not?” Ben asks. “You know how they’re making those fourteen-dollar laptops for kids in Africa? What if you could make a ten-dollar solar panel? Change the fucking world.”
    Ben still doesn’t get—
—Chon thinks—
    —that you don’t change the world.
    It changes you.
    For example—

46
     
    Three days after Chon gets back from the Rack he and O are sitting in a restaurant in Laguna when a waiter drops a tray.
    Clatter.
    Chon dives under the table.
    Down there on all fours reaching for a weapon that isn’t there and if Chon were capable of social self-consciousness he’d be humiliated. Anyway, it’s tough to get nonchalantly back in your chair after diving under the table with a restaurant full of people staring at you and the adrenaline is still juicing his nervous system so he stays down there.
    O joins him.
    He looks over and there she is, eyeball to eyeball with him.
    “A little jumpy, are we?” she asks.
    “A tad.”
    Good word, “tad.” The one-syllable jobs are usually the best.
    O says, “As long as I’m on my hands and knees …”
    “There are laws, O.”
    “Slave to conformity.” She sticks her head out from under the table and asks, “Could we get a refill on the water, please?”
    The waiter brings it to her, under the table.
    “I kind of like it down here,” she says to Chon. “It’s like having a fort when you were a kid.”
    She reaches up, grabs the menus, and hands one to Chon. After a few moments of perusal she says, “I’m going to go with the chicken Caesar salad.”
    The waiter, a young surfer-type dude with a perfect tan and perfect white smile, squats beside the table. “May I tell you about our specials?”
    Gotta love Laguna.
    Gotta love O.

47
     
    Ben wants peace.
    Chon knows
    You can’t make peace with savages.

48
     
    O wakes up from her nap, gets dressed, and comes out onto the deck.
    If the girl feels awkward about being in the presence of two guys she’s simul-doing, she doesn’t show it. Probably because she doesn’t feel it. Her thinking on this is basic and arithmetical:
    More love is better than less love.
    She hopes they feel the same way, but if they don’t—
    Oh well.
    Ben and Chon decide to roll down to Dickyville.
    Etymology:
    San Clemente, home of the former Western White House of
    Richard Nixon
    Aka Dick Nixon
    Aka Tricky Dick
    Dickyville
    Sorry.
    O wants to go with.
    “Yeah, not a good idea,” Ben says. They’ve never involved her in the business before.
    Chon feels the same way—it’s a line he doesn’t think they should cross.
    “I really want to go,” O says.
    Still—
    “I don’t want to be alone.”
    “Could you be with Paqu?”
    “I don’t want to be alone.”
    “Got it.”
    They roll down to Dickeyville.

49
     
    To see Dennis.
    They pull off at a parking lot on the beach. The railroad track runs right past it. Ben and O sometimes take that train just for the hell of it, sit and watch dolphins and sometimes whales out the window.
    Dennis is already there. He gets out of his Toyota Camry and walks over to the Mustang. In his late forties, Dennis has sandy hair that is just starting to thin and packs thirty excess pounds on his six three frame because he can’t seem to drive
past
a drive-
thru
these days. In fact, there’s a Jack in the Box just across the 5 … Anyway, he’s a handsomeguy except for the stomach that hangs over his belt.
    He’s surprised to see Ben, because usually he meets solo with Chon.
    Then he usually swings by Jack in the Box.
    He’s even more surprised to see this chick he doesn’t know. “Who’s this?”
    O says, “Anne Heche.”
    “No, you’re not.”
    “Well, you asked who I was.”
    Ben says, “She’s a friend of ours.”
    Dennis doesn’t like it at all. “Since when do we invite friends to these parties?”
    “Well, it’s my party, Dennis,” Ben