Savages

shameful, pleasurable id things. Where are most of your illicit—dig the word, B, “illicit”—drugs produced? In that nasty dick, vagina, and asshole southern hemisphere.”
    “But where,” Ben posits, “are most of those same drugs consumed? In your brainy, moral, superego region.”
    “Exactly,” Chon answers. “That’s why we need the drugs.”
    Ben ponders this for a loooooonnng time, then
    “So,” he says, “you’re saying that if we all took good shits and fucked a lot, there would be no drug abuse.”
    “And,” Chon adds, “no more war.”
    “We’d both be out of work.”
    “Okay.”
    They laughed for a long time.

24
     
    Stan and Diane never asked, never ask how their boy got so rich. That, they don’t question or try to analyze. They don’t do the financial forensics on how a twenty-five-year-old buys a four-million-dollar crib at Table Rock.
    They’re proud of him.
    Not for
that
, for his social consciousness.
    His social conscience.
    And conscientiousness.
    His Third World activism.

25
     
    Which explains (sort of) where Ben is now.
    Okay, Chon doesn’t know exactly where Ben is now, which, with severed heads bouncing around the blogosphere, worries him a little, but—
    —the boy does have a tendency to take care of other people’s business instead of his own. Ben has what they call a social conscience. Very aware, progressive dude. Chon likes that about him,
but
—
    —bro tends to houdini for months at a time, saving some group of people from something. Wells to prevent cholera in the Sudan, mosquito nets to save kids in Zambia from malaria, observation teams to keep the army from slaughtering the Karen in Myan-myan-myan-mar.
    Ben spreads his wealth.
    Call it what you want
    The Ben Foundation.
    The Hydro Institute.
    Dope Delivers
    Green Is Green
    Chon tries to tell him just send the money, let the cash fingers do the walking, stay and take care of business, but Ben is a hands-on kind of guy. Money isn’t enough, he says, you have to commit your heart, soul, and body. Ben puts his money where his mouth is but also his mouth where his money is, so
—every few months he washes back up at Table Rock with
dysentery—
—malaria and/or—
    —Third World Heartbreak—
(with which Chon is familiar)
    —and Chon and O take him down to the best doctors at Scripps and then get him well until he finds another cause and then it’s—
Gonzo again.
Off to rescue kids with tiny arms, big eyes, and
    swollen stomachs.
    Now Chon tells him via e-mail that he has a problem right here at home. He forwarded the video clip not to hurt Ben (he hates to hurt Ben), but Ben has to know that there is bad shit happening
here.
    People being turned into Pez dispensers.

26
     
    Ben’s disembodied head
                                          floats in the ether.
    Skype.
    Blurred background behind the focus on his face.
    Unkempt brown hair.
                             Brown eyes.
    His lips slightly out of synch, a broken second’s lag behind the sound as he says,
    “Okay, I’m coming
         home.”

27
     
    O is happy
    that Ben is coming back.
    Ben, her other bookend
    The two men—Ben and Chon—
    who mean something in her life.
    The only two who ever have.

28
     
    Ben is warm wood, Chon is cold metal
    Ben is caring, Chon indifferent
    Ben makes love, Chon fucks.
    She loves them both.
    What to do, what to do?

29
     
    When O gets up that morning (okay, afternoon), she looks out the window and sees a tall woman with close-cropped silver hair get into a BMW and pull out of the driveway.
    “Who was that?” O asks Paqu when she walks into the kitchen tolook for the Cocoa Puffs that Paqu has probably thrown out. (O hijacks the shopping list that Paqu gives Maria and adds items like Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Hostess CupCakes, self-heating lubricating gel, and Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits. But then Paqu goes on patrol in the pantry and throws these things out, save for the gel, which O whips into her room the second Maria comes back with the groceries.)
    “That’s Eleanor, my life coach,” Paqu says. “She’s
won
derful.”
    “Your . . .”
    “Life coach.”
    This is just 2G2BT. This makes O really happy. Her skin gets all tingly as she asks, “Just what does a life coach actually
do
, Mom?”
    Sure enough, Paqu gave the Puffs the heave, so O has to settle for Frosted Mini-Wheats, then scans the fridge for real, actual