by Don Winslow
something to talk about?
But they settled into silence
an unspoken agreement to pretend and
Diane begins to think that maybe it’s the necessity of marriage to let scar tissue form over the wounds so that you both become, literally,
callous.
They settled into silence until
tonight
Stan sets his Updike down, gets up, and says that he’s going to the store to
take inventory.
97
Kim pauses in the lobby outside the fund-raiser cocktail party and experiences
A moment of self-doubt.
The women are so elegant, so beautifully turned out, so confident in their wealth and elegance. The men are so casual and handsome, so well dressed. Their laughter comes out of the room like a challenge to her, saying—
You don’t belong here
Trailer-park trash
Waitress
Your mother cleans our houses and
You lived in a cave.
She stops and stands there.
Thinks, as she did at the border check, of simply turning around and going home to the trailer, where she belongs.
It’s her eighteenth birthday.
98
Stan gets a gun.
Freudian, sure, but there it is.
Finding a gun in Dodge City is like finding sand on the beach. All he does is walk over to John’s house and let himself in.
The pistol is under John’s bed.
99
She turns heads.
She’s that beautiful.
Exquisite, Kim walks into the cocktail party uninvited
with her head high
you might call her bearing
regal
and no one stops her at the door, no one has the nerve to tell this lovely creature that she can’t come in.
Even the women, although jealous, are intrigued. They want to see what’s going to happen, they want to test their husbands and boyfriends and their own attractiveness against this newcomer.
Kim walks through the crowd, seemingly unconscious of their stares—certainly not self-conscious—walks to the bar, asks for a glass of Chablis, and gets it
She looks twenty-three, at least
No one asks for an ID or an invitation—
And then, glass at her lips, she coolly turns to survey the crowd as if to determine whether they’re
worthy of her interest.
It’s a stunning debut.
Kim is certainly not a debutante, there was no money for even a Sweet Sixteen, but this is her
Coming-Out Party.
100
John’s at a different kind of party.
What would come to be known as the Great Laguna Blizzard of 1976.
It snowed like hell inside Doc’s house that night.
Cocaine everywhere, and most of the Association boys nose-deep in it. Cocaine on mirrors, cocaine on tabletops, cocaine on magazine covers—Doc hosting like some kind of surfer-dude Mad Hatter at the tea party.
John sits back and watches the circus.
He doesn’t do coke.
Well, he did when they brought it up from Mexico. John took a couple of snorts the way a winemaker might take a couple of sips, pronounced it “okay,” and then forgot about it.
Coke is too crazy for him.
People get too jacked up.
But this is a coming-out party for coke, in Laguna at least, a sort of motivational seminar for the sales force—
You can only sell what you love. Is everybody excited?!
—so John could give a shit. He smokes a j, sips a little Scotch, and lets it snow, snow, snow.
And scopes the women.
Shit, Doc has really stocked the pond on this one. Sleek, long-legged women are everywhere, and they’re digging the coke. He doesn’t even have to get up from the couch and—bingo, bango—an incredibly gorgeous auburn-haired chick in a miniskirt comes up and sits down next to him.
“I’m Taylor,” she says.
“John.”
The white smudge under her nose looks cute, but John leans over and wipes it off.
“Don’t waste that,” she says. She holds his wrist and licks the coke off his fingers, then says, “Taste of what’s to come.”
Except he hears
“You slept with my wife.”
John looks up and Stan is standing over him, looking stupid in his denim jacket and jeans, stupider with this look of rage on his face.
“You slept with my wife,” he repeats.
Taylor giggles.
John tries to go the chivalric route. “Stan, I don’t know what you’re—”
“She told me.”
John says, “Okay, I slept with your wife.”
Like, now what?
Stan doesn’t know.
He stands there looking confused and uncertain and stupid and John just wishes he would go away so that he can get back to Taylor and things to come and is about to tell him so when
Stan pulls a pistol from his pocket.
101
Kim is a triumph at the cocktail party.
Think Cinderella (if you haven’t already), think Sabrina (see above); point is, she kills.
Even the Orange County bitches, who normally would have sliced her up like a gang of Benzedrine-crazed chefs at Benihana, can’t touch her. It’s not a matter of kindness, God knows, but of cowardice. Not one of them is brave enough to be the first shark to draw blood and start the feeding frenzy, and by the time they work themselves into a sufficiently collective indignation at this parvenu to socially gang-rape her, it’s
too late
because one of the Young Men recognizes himself as a cultural trope and obediently plays
Prince Charming.
Brad Donnelly is a scion of OC nobility. Twenty-five, UCLA alum, doing great things in Dad’s real estate business, looks to match.
“I’m Brad,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“I’m Kim,” she says.
It’s working
just the way she
imagined it a million times
just the way she
planned it.
He smiles and walks her onto the broad deck, with its stunning view of the beach and the ocean, the sun setting like it knows it’s in her movie.
“Who are you?” Brad asks. “Why haven’t I seen you before?”
“I guess you haven’t been looking.”
“I’m looking now.”
“So I see.”
He juts his chin back toward the party inside. “They’re all talking about us, you know.”
“I know. Do you mind?”
“I don’t care,” Brad answers. They make inconsequential chitchat for a few minutes, then Brad asks, “You want to get out of here and go to a really cool party?”
“I would love to.”
102
Here’s how fucked-up coke is—
This is funny
Guy pulls a gun and points it in somebody’s face and most of the partygoers think it’s a hoot. It’s even funnier if you know Stan, because it’s so totally un-Stan-like.
Winnie-the-Pooh packing heat.
Pretty much John’s reaction—
He doesn’t say—
Stan, don’t.
Or
Please, don’t kill me. He says, “Stan, where did you get that?”
“Never mind,” Stan says, realizing it sounds dumb. “I should kill you.”
The “should” is the giveaway.
He “should”; he’s not going to.
John says, “I didn’t rape her, Stan.”
Doc, ever the good host, comes over and says, “Come on, put that away, Stan. It’s a party.”
“He had sex with Diane,” Stan says.
Doc ponders this for a moment, and then delivers a response that becomes Laguna legend.
“Well,” Doc says, “so have you.”
Coc
aine logic.
Irrefutable.
“Come on, man,” Doc says, putting his arm around Stan’s shoulder, “join the party, do a few lines.”
Stan sets the pistol down on the coffee table and starts to cry.
“My man,” Doc says.
103
“Have you ever done coke before?” Brad asks her.
“No,” Kim says truthfully, neglecting to mention that the cocaine on the glass table in front of them had once been taped to her torso.
Brad does a line, then Kim does a line, and it isn’t long before she lets him maneuver her into one of the bedrooms as if it were his idea. When they shut the door, he starts to undress her, but she pushes him away.
And then undresses herself.
She peels off the black dress and stands in front of him in her black bra and panties, knowing that she’s a vision. She lets him look for a few seconds, then reaches behind her and unsnaps her bra.
Brad smiles, kicks off his shoes, and hurries out of his slacks and Jockey shorts. He picks her up and then drops her onto the bed. Then he nudges her legs apart, kneels between them, and reaches for her panties.
Her hand blocks him.
She looks into his eyes, smiles, and says, “No, Brad. If you want this, you’ll have to marry it.”
No one comes into Kim’s room.
Without paying.
104
Coked out of his skull
Stan takes inventory.
Takes a long look at the Bread and Marigolds store and the merchandise they’re trying to sell to a diminishing customer base and decides that it’s over.
Sees himself in his shabby denim and feels stupid.
Less than.
Who?
John?
Doc?
Diane?
Bread and marigolds, he thinks.
Jesus.
The place is a fire trap, anyway
It only takes a little kerosene and a match.
The fire this time.
105
“Your boyfriend is pretty ripped,” Doc says to Kim.
She looks over and sees Brad slumped on a sofa, his eyes glassy from coke and booze. He’ll be out cold any second.
“My fiancé,” she corrects.
“You’re going to marry that stiff?” Doc asks.
“For a while,” she answers.
“Come on,” Doc says, taking her hands.
“Where are we going?”
“You know.”
In his bedroom he says, “Take them off, Kim.”
“Take what off?”
“The pretty clothes.”
She does and stands in front of him.
Pirouettes.
“My God,” Doc says.
He admires her perfect body for several seconds and then lays her down on the bed.
“Look at that,” he says.
She puts her hand over herself and says, “No, Doc, if you want this, you’ll have to—”
He laughs.
Long time coming, this rendezvous.
She wraps her arms around his broad back.
Remembers lying in a cave hearing him with her mother.
Soon it’s like she’s tumbling over a waterfall, and she holds him tighter.
Turns her head and sees the Charles Jourdans.
Her pretty shoes.
106
John pulls on his slacks and walks back into the living room.
He’s fucked out.
Taylor wasn’t a ride, she was the whole amusement park.
Six Flags.
Magic Mountain.
Knott’s Pussy Farm.
That girl Kim, the mule, is on the couch next to a life-size Ken doll who looks like he just had his head handed to him.
She’s sitting there like there isn’t a drug-crazed orgy going on all around her, like there’s not a pistol on the coffee table at her demure knees. Like she’s about to answer questions from Miss America judges and then twirl fire batons while singing a medley from Oklahoma!, but whatever, because
speaking of fire
there is one.
Outside, the sky is on fire.
107
The Bread and Marigolds Bookstore is, as they say, engulfed in flame.
They all stand across the street and watch as the fire department pretty much lets it go, trying only to contain the fire and keep it from spreading to buildings they don’t consider a public nuisance.
Their faces red in the reflection of flame, they stand and watch—
Doc
Kim
John
Stan and Diane, arms around each other’s shoulders
Doc asks, “Anyone have marshmallows?”
They laugh, even Stan.
They are
Stardust
Golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain.
Laguna Beach
2005
108
The sun comes red over the Laguna hills.
Ben strides to Chon’s apartment.
Knocks on the door.
Waits.
A sleepy O, clad in one of Chon’s T-shirts, opens the door, sees the look on Ben’s face, and screams
Nooooooooooooo!
109
He’s all right, Ben tells her as he walks her to the bed and makes her sit down.
He’s wounded, some shrapnel, they got most of it out, he’s in the hospital, he’s going to be okay.
“God.”
Ben allows himself a slight smile. “He called—classic Chon—and said—”
110
“I fucked up.”
111
“Is he coming home?” O asks.
“No,” Ben says. “Also classic Chon. He’s hoping they can ‘put him back together’ enough so he can go back to his team.”
“Jerk,” O says. When Chon calls her a couple of hours later she asks, “They didn’t shoot your dick off, did they?”
“No, it’s still there.”
She feels good hearing him laugh. She says, “Okay, I’m going out and buying a nurse’s uniform . . .”
He laughs again. “A Farewell to Arms.”
“Is that some kind of sick joke?”
“No, it’s a book.”
“Yeah, I don’t do books,” she says. “Okay, ‘Navy Nurse’ or ‘Candy Striper’?”
“Candy Striper. Definitely.”
112
Ben walks back to his place.
He was going to tell Chon about being shaken down, but now he can’t.
No way he piles on with this.
So he needs to handle it himself.
He needs a plan.
That leaves Chon out of it.
113
Chon hangs up and relishes the thought of O for a few minutes, and then moves off it because a real nurse comes with his meds.
Sanitized word for drugs
Which there’s a war on. And there’s also a War on Terrorism and they’re connected, Chon contemplates as the meds take hold—the politicians either are on drugs or should be.
A bunch of religious fanatics mostly from Saudi Arabia fly planes into buildings and we invade . . .
Iraq.
It’s a generational thing, Chon muses.
Bush Sr. goes to war against Saddam Hussein and puts troops in Saudi Arabia (which was bin Laden’s reason for going to “war” against America), and Hussein tries to kill Bush Sr., and then Bush Jr.—faithful son, loyal son—uses bin Laden’s attack as an excuse to get payback for Hussein’s attempted hit on his dad.
41 as Brando
43 as Pacino
and featuring Saddam Hussein as Virgil “The Turk” (near miss there) Sollozzo. And the U.S.A. as a collective, credulous Diane Keaton
Just this once, Kay, I’m going to let you ask me about my business
Shut the fucking door in her face and get on with it, lock yourself up with the Cabinet and the Congress and
Guzzle the Kool-Aid.
The drugs they have for bipolar, schizophrenic paranoid delusions are so good now.
They work.
Problem is, they work so well that the patients think they’re cured and stop taking them and get sick again and do crazy shit like invade Iraq in the delusional belief it’s going to make their fathers love them.
So please, Mr. President
Chon thinks as he floats into a drug cloud of his own
Please
Don’t go off the meds.
114
Drug Warrior Dennis Cain
Gets up in the morning feeling no different, which is almost a disappointment after making a Faustian deal for his soul.
I mean, you think you’d notice, right? Something different.
Yeah, not so much.
He makes his coffee, drinks his orange juice, kisses his wife on the cheek, makes two scrambled eggs and eats them while exchanging sleepy early-morning talk with his girls, says to his wife,
“Those countertops? I’ve been thinking. We can afford them.”
“Really? You sure?”
“Yeah, why not? You only live once.”
He finishes his breakfast, says goodbye, gets into his car, says hi to the neighbor who is getting into his car, and joins the other pilgrims in the commuter-hour snarl on I-15 South.
It’s a pisser.
You sell your soul and no one even notices.
Not even you.
115
Judas took the thirty pieces of silver, but
Would Jesus?
If he’d been made the offer?
And if Judas was worth thirty, Jesus had to be worth, what—
