Authors: Don Winslow
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.
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 below
them, 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.
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.
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 head up and down, knowing he’ll dig the sight of that, guys love the sight of that (seeming) submission; she sees his fingers grip the sofa cushion.
“You want to come in my mouth,” she asks, “or in my pussy?”
“In you.”
She takes his hand and leads him into the bedroom. Pulls her dress up over her head, slides her panties down her legs, and kicks them off. Takes off his shirt, his jeans, his boxers and pulls him down on top of her.
“Are you wet?” Ben asks.
Pure Ben, always considerate. Ben never wants to hurt anyone.
“God, yes. Feel me.”
Opens herself to let him see
her glistening.
“God, O.”
“You want to fuck me, Ben?”
“Oh yes.”
“Fuck me, sweet Ben.”
Sweet sweet Ben so slow and gentle so strong and gentle, so warm so fucking fucking fucking warm, his brown eyes looking into hers questioning, asking if this pleasure can be real asking if this pleasure
can be really found and his smile an answer, the answer yes because his smile makes her come a small one, the first small wave.
The mermaid on her arm strokes his back, the green sea vines entwine him and hold him to her, sweet sticky trap, dolphins surfing on his spine as he rides her, their salty sweat meeting and mixing, slicking them together, sticking them together, little frothy white bubbles joining his cock and her cunt.
O loves his hardsoft cock in her, loves gripping his shoulders as he moves in and out; in his ear she whispers, “I missed this.”
“Me, too.”
“Sweet, sweet, sweet Ben, fucking me.”
The “me” triggers another climax, it’s the “me” of it, this beautiful, wonderful, sweet, loving man, it’s “me” he wants to fuck, his beautiful warm brown eyes looking into “mine,” his hands on my back his cock in my pussy.
She comes again and tries to slow down but can’t, but can’t, she gives up on the control she wanted to make this slow for him make it last for him but can’t and she jacks her hips to push her clit into his pubic bones and circles her hip to grind it there his cock deep inside her.
“Oh, Ben. Oh!”
Her fingers, a crab scuffling across the wet sand, race down to his ass, search for and find the crevice, a tidal pool, she pushes a finger in and hears him groan and feels him shoot deep inside her his back muscles shudder, and then again, and then he falls on her.
The mermaid smiles.
The dolphins fall asleep.
So do Ben and O.
Ben gently untangles himself from her moist arms.
Gets out of bed, puts on his jeans and shirt, and steps into the living room. Through the big window he sees Chon sitting out on the deck. Ben goes to the fridge, grabs two Coronas, and goes out.
Hands Chon a beer, leans against the white metal railing, asks, “Good swim?”
“Yeah.”
“No sharks?”
“Not that I saw.”
No surprise—sharks are afraid of Chon. Predators recognize each other.
Ben says, “We make the deal.”
“Mistake.”
“What,” Ben says. “You worried their dick is bigger than our dick now?”
“
Our
dick?”
“Okay, our
dicks.
Our collective dick. Our joint dick.”
“Redundant,” Chon says. “Let’s just keep our dicks separate.”
“Okay, they won,” Ben says. “And what did we lose? We got out of a business we want to get out of anyway. I’m telling you, Chon, I’m bored with it. Time to move on. Next.”
“They think we’re afraid of them.”
“We are.”
“Separate dicks?” Chon says. “I’m not.”
“We’re not all you,” Ben says. “We don’t all chew up and spit out fifteen terrorists before breakfast. I don’t want a war. I didn’t get into this thing to fight wars, kill people, get people killed, get their heads lopped off. This used to be a pretty mellow gig, but if it’s going to get to
this level of savagery, forget it. I don’t want to be a part of it. They think we’re afraid of them? Who fucking cares? This isn’t fifth grade, Chon.”
Yeah, it isn’t, Chon thinks. It isn’t a pride thing, an ego thing, or a dick thing.
Ben just doesn’t get how these people think. He can’t wrap his rational head around the reality that these people will interpret his reasonableness as weakness. And when they see weakness, when they smell fear, they attack.
They pour it on.
But Ben will never get that.
“We can’t beat the cartel in a shooting war, the math just doesn’t pencil,” Ben says.
Chon nods. He has guys he could recruit, good people who can take care of 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—
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.
Ben wants peace.
Chon knows
You can’t make peace with savages.
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.
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 handsome
guy 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 says.
“And I’ll cry if I want to,” O adds.
“Get in,” Ben says.
Dennis gets into the front passenger seat. Chon and O sit in the back.
“I shouldn’t be seen in the same zip code with you guys,” Dennis whines.