Savages

what that gets you. But it’s Ben’s business so they get out the lappie and find the return e-address on the Seven Dwarfs video.
    Eighteen e-mails later they’ve set a meeting with the BC for the next day at the Montage.
    Ben reserves a 2K-a-day suite.
    When that’s done, O smiles at her boys and asks, “Can we go out? The three of us?
Really
go out?”
    They know what she means by “really.” The “really” means do it right—get dressed up, hit the best places, drop a bundle, paint the town,do it.
    We can go out is the answer.
    Why not go out the night we
go
out? Ben thinks. Do it right. Celebrate the end of a successful business that’s been good to us.
    Embrace the change.
    “Tomorrow night,” Ben says. “Dress up.”
    “I’ll have to go shopping,” O answers.

52
     
    When O gets home, Eleanor is pulling out of the driveway again.
    Seems like that chick is always pulling
out
of driveways.
    When O goes into the house, Paqu sits her down in the living room for a
    Serious Talk.
    “Darling girl,” she says, “we need to have a serious talk.”
    Which for O is like
    Uh-oh.
    “Are you breaking up with me?” she asks, sitting on the sofa cushion where Paqu has patted her hand to indicate that she should sit.
    Paqu doesn’t get it. She leans closer to O, her eyes get all soft and misty, she takes a deep breath and says, “Darling, I need to tell you that Steve and I have decided to pursue our separate destinies.”
    “Who’s Steve?”
    Paqu takes O’s hand and squeezes it. “Now, this doesn’t mean that we don’t love you. We do—very much. This has nothing to do with you and … it is
not … your … fault
… you do understand that, don’t you?”
    “Oh God, is he the pool guy?”
    O likes the pool guy.
    “And Steve is going to stay in town, you can see him anytime you want, this won’t change your relationship.”
    “Are we talking about
Six
?”
    Paqu blinks. “Steven—your stepfather?”
    “If you say so.”
    “We tried to make it work,” Paqu says, “but he was so unsupportive of my life coaching and Eleanor said that I shouldn’t be with a man who isn’t supportive of my goals.”
    “Six is unsupportive of your life coach coaching you to leave him,” O says. “What an asshole.”
    “He’s a very nice man, it’s just that—”
    “Is this an
L Word
thing, Mom? Because Eleanor strikes me as a little—”
    Dykey.
    Not that there’s anything wrong with that, O thinks. She and Ash have done some quasi-lesbo things under the influence of grass, X, and each other, but it really isn’t their permanent thing, just sort of an emergency measure like Popsicles when you really want ice cream but the store is closed and that’s all that’s in the freezer.
    Or maybe it’s the other way around, metaphorically speaking.
    She tries to imagine Paqu going down, strapping on a tool belt, or being femme to Eleanor’s butch, but the image is scoop-your-own-eyes-out-with-a-grapefruit-spoon creepy and twenty-thousand-hours-in-therapy-and-you’re-still-messed-up wrong so she gives it up.
    As Paqu gently intones, “So Steve is moving out.”
    “Can I have his room?”

53
     
    Lado drives home listening to some radio talk-show host go on and on about a “wise Latina” and he thinks it’s pretty funny.
    He knows what a “wise Latina” is: a “wise Latina” is a woman who knows to shut her mouth before she gets the
back
of the hand, too, that’s what a “wise Latina” is.
    His wife is a wise Latina.
    Lado and Delores have been married for coming on twenty-five years, so don’t tell him it don’t work. She keeps a nice home, she’s raised three beautiful, respectful kids, and she does her duty in the bedroom when requested and otherwise doesn’t make demands.
    They have a nice home at the end of a cul-de-sac in Mission Viejo. A typical suburban California home in a typical suburb, and when they moved up from Mexico eight years ago Delores was delighted.
    Good schools for the kids, parks, playgrounds, excellent Little League program in which their two sons are stars—Francisco is a pitcher, Junior is an outfielder with a strong bat—and their oldest, Angela, made cheerleader at the high school this year.
    It’s a good life.
    Lado pulls in to the driveway and turns off the radio.
    Health care, who gives a shit about health care? You put money aside and you take care of yourself if you get sick. He had to set up a group insurance plan for his employees at the