Going along the strand (pun intended) — Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, Capistrano Beach, San Clemente (interrupt for Camp Pendleton), Oceanside, Carlsbad, Leucadia, Encinitas, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Torrey Pines, La Jolla Shores, La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, Coronado, Silver Strand, Imperial Beach.

All beautiful, all fine, but the best one is Lagoona — which was the name officially given to the town by the State of California until someone explained that there was no actual “lagoon,” but that the name derived from “ canada de las lagunas, ” which in Spanish means “canyon of the lakes.” There are two lakes, up in the hills above said canyon, but Laguna isn’t known for its lakes, it’s known for its beaches and its beauty.

About which Ben, Chon, and O are a little blase, because they grew up here and take it for granted.

Yeah, except Chon doesn’t right now because his leave is up and he’s about to go back to Afghanistan, aka Stanland.

Or, in the spirit of things Afgoonistan.

7

Chon tells Ben and O that he literally has to get packing.

He goes back to his efficiency apartment on Glenneyre and packs a baseball bat into his ’68 green Mustang — in honor of Steve McQueen — the King of Cool — and drives down to San Clemente, not far from Richard Nixon’s version of Elba and hence known in the latter half of the 1970s as

Sans Clemency.

(Nixon, poor Nixon, the only truly tragic hero in the American political theater; the only recent president more Aeschylus than Rodgers and Hammerstein. First there was Camelot, then The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, then Richard?)

Chon drives not to the old Western White House

The real name of which was, with presumably unintended irony,

La Casa Pacifica