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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 milk, not the skimmed or 1 percent shit that Moms insists on stocking when she’s not completely antidairy, which is apparently now, so O pours the cereal into a bowl and eats it dry, with her fingers, a small measure of revenge.
    “Well, Eleanor thinks I have the makings of a life coach my
self
,” Paqu answers, placing some flowers into a tall, skinny vase. “So she’s going to help me actualize that potential.”
    The potential actualization of that potentiality gets O even zingier. “So your life coach is coaching you to be a life coach.”
    So you can coach other people to be life coaches. O almost hustles out the door right then because she just can’t wait to report this circle jerk of life coaching to Ben (Ben’s coming home!) and Chon.
    Paqu ignores the question. “She’s truly amazing.”
    “What happened to the skin-care product thing?”
    “Superficial, don’t you think?” Paqu looks at the flower arrangement and smiles with self-satisfaction. Then she has a revelation. “Darling!
You
could study to be a life coach,
too
! Then we could be mother-and-daughter life coaches!”
    “But then you’d have to come clean that you have a daughter over theage of ten,” O says, shoveling Mini-Wheats into her mouth.
    Paqu peruses her with what O guesses is meant to be life coach–level discernment.
    “Of course, you’d have to do something about that hair,” Paqu says. “And the … ‘body art.’”
    “Maybe I could start as a ‘life cheerleader.’”
    Rah.

30
     
    Chon sits in the black leather chair and watches the inauguration of the new president of the United States.
    Who reaches out a hand to the Muslim world.
    Chon gets that—he’s reached out to the Muslim world a few times himself.
    It’s good Ben is coming back. The new prez agrees. He’s telling the thousands in attendance and the millions watching on television that the feeding frenzy at the trough is over, the orgy has been put on indefinite hiatus, the Third World is closer than you