Savages

Suffocating Mother’s Approval Boutique. Which one is it?”
    “All of them,” Ben answered.
    O changes therapists like some people change hairstyles. Well, like O changes hairstyles. And she’s covered the whole fucking thing with all the shrinks—how Paqu feels guilty for not having provided her little girl with a stable home so tries to make up for it by supporting her and at the same time crippling her by enabling her blah blah; how Paqu is appalled by the idea of getting old and so has to keep her daughter a dependent child because having a truly adult daughter would mean that she is old blah blah blah, so—
    “It’s Paqu’s fault,” O told Ben.
    “It’s Paqu’s fault,
your
responsibility,” Ben answered.
    (Patronizing moralist.)
    He’s tried. He’s offered to set O up in her own small business, but O isn’t interested in any business. He said he’d support her trying art, photography, music, acting, film, but O doesn’t have a passion for any of that. He even invited her to join him overseas doing aid work, but—
    “That’s you, Ben. Not me.”
    “It’s immensely satisfying, if you can tolerate the absence of creature comforts.”
    “I can’t.”
    “You could learn.”
    “Maybe,” O said. “How’s the shopping in Darfur?”
    “Shitty.”
    “See …” O looked at her reflection in the store window. “I’m the person a person like you should
hate
, Ben. But you don’t because I’m so lovable. I have a great twisted sense of humor, I’m loyal like a dog, I have a cute face, small tits but I’m a freak in bed, and you’re a loyal dog, too, B, so you love me.”
    Ben had no argument.
    It was all accurate.
    Another time, O did hit on something she could do.
    As a career.
    “Cool,” Ben said. “What?”
    The freaking suspense killing him.
    “Reality TV show star,” O said. “I could have my own reality TV show.”
    “What would the show be about?”
    “Me,” O said, like, duh.
    “Yeah, I know, but what would you
do
on the show?”
    “Do,” like, as in a verb.
    “The cameras just follow me around my day,” O said. “Me being me. It would be like the Really Real Laguna Beach. A Girl Trying Not To Become A Real Housewife of Orange County.”
    (O has more than once suggested they do a show about her motherand friends,
The Real Cunts Of Orange Housewifies
.)
    “But what do you do all day?” Ben asked. He knew, for one thing, that said camera crews wouldn’t be complaining about early calls, anyway.
    “You’re a real buzzkill, Ben.”
    Among other things, I do
you
, don’t I.
    “Okay, what’s the show called?”
    Again—
    Duh—
    O
.

64
     
    Now O whips out Paqu’s black plastic and spanks it like a male dancer in a Madonna concert. Then she cruises over to José Eber and uses Mom’s name to get an appointment for a cut, color, and styling. After that, it’s off to the spa for a facial, then a redo on the makeup situation.
    A One-Woman Stimulus Package.

65
     
    Ben and Chon go to the volleyball nets at Main Beach, right by the old Hotel Laguna.
    Figure it will feel good to bat the ball around a little. Alleviate their anger, clear their heads, help them decide what to do.
    Your basic Fight v. Flight moment.
    Guess who goes for which?
    “I say we send Alex and Jaime back in a cereal box,” says Chon, if you haven’t guessed.
    Set, spike, kill.
    “I say we just go away for a while.”
    Volley.
    “Where can we go where they can’t reach out?”
    Volley.
    “I know places.”
    Volley.
    Ben does. There are dozens of villages in the remote Third World where they could hide and have a good time doing it, but what he really has in mind is this sweet little village on an Indonesian island called Sumbawa.
    (Where they could be vewy vewy quiet.)
    Clean beaches and green jungles.
    Sweet people.
    Chon says, “You start running you never stop.”
    Kill.
    “Bad movie clichés notwithstanding,” Ben counters, “running is fun and good for the cardiovascular system. You
should
never stop.”
    Volley.
    Chon isn’t ready to give it up. “There are some guys around from my old team. Some other guys I know. It would take some money …”
    Volley.
    “And only prolong the inevitable,” Ben says. “They can’t force us to do anything if we’re not here and they can’t find us. We go away for a while. By the time we’re tired of traveling they’ll probably have all killed each other off and we’ll have a new set of people to deal with.”
    Kill.
    Chon leaves