field. The light is a nerve-jangling palette of hards and softs, the rancid-butter mizzle of the overhead fixtures cut by the harsh silver glare from all those giant windows, a constant wrenching of visual tone and depth such that the patrons’ eyes never properly adjust. The carpet is coal-slurry gray, the furnishings a scuffed, faux-baronial mélange of burgundy vinyls and oxblood veneers reminiscent of a 1970s Holiday Inn. Clearly, all expense has been spared save for the bare minimum to keep a captive market from outright rebellion.
Billy gets how shitty the place makes him feel, the quick sink of depression in his gut, but he thinks it’s just an allergic reaction to rich people. He clenched the moment he walked in and felt the money vibe. He wanted to back right out of there. He wanted to punch someone. Rich people make him nervous for no particular reason, they just do, and standing by the hostess station in his kudzu-green class A’s Billy felt about as belonging here as a wino pissing his pants. But—surprise! As Bravo stood there waiting to be seated, the Stadium Club patrons rose as one and achieved a stately round of applause. Several of the nearby millionaires stepped over to shake hands, while farther back in the room a group of patriots, drunk from the sound of it, offered up a woozy ballpark cheer. The manager himself, a slender, oleaginous fellow with the unctuous patter of an undertaker murmuring pickup lines in a bar, showed them to their table, and in a way this was worse, having all these high-powered people looking at you. Billy felt his stride going wonky, his arms starting to flail, but a quick glance at Dime settled him down. Shoulders square, eyes forward, head tipped six degrees as if dignity was a shot glass you balanced on your chin—he assumed the Dime tilt, and immediately everything clicked into place.
Fake it till you make it, he reminds himself. This is how he’s survived Army life so far.
Josh sees to it that they’re served and seated, then announces he has to leave them for a short while.
“Dawg, you gotta eat,” A-bort says. “You’re getting skinnier just standing there.”
Josh laughs. “I’ll be okay.”
“When do we meet the cheerleaders?” Holliday wants to know.
“Soon,” Josh answers over Crack, who’s saying the hell with that, bring on Destiny’s Child, he wants some quality “facial” time with Beyoncé.
“They gonna give us some lap dances?” Day persists. Josh hesitates. “I’ll ask,” he says in perfect deadpan, and everybody haws. Josh. Jaaaaassssshhhhh. Jash is all right for a pussy boy. They are seated at a big circular table near the windows with an excellent view of the playing field, on which nothing much is happening at the moment. Dime allows them one Heineken with lunch, one, he says, glancing at Major Mac, who nods. Billy has made sure to sit next to Dime and Albert, because whatever they say he means to hear it. He knows he doesn’t know enough. He doesn’t know anything, basically, at least nothing worth knowing, the measure of worth at this point in his life being knowledge that quiets the mind and calms the soul. So he makes it his business to sit next to Dime, and where Dime sits, that’s the head of the table. Albert is to Dime’s right, then A-bort, Day, Lodis, Crack, Sykes, Major Mac, Mango, and finally, rounding off the circle, Billy. So how about a couple of place settings for Shroom and Lake? This is his private mental ritual at the start of group meals that he does in lieu of prayers. Another ritual: Never cross a threshold with your left foot leading. And others: Fasten body armor from the bottom up, do not start sentences with the letter W, don’t masturbate within six hours of a mission. Yet he’d adhered to all such tics and talismans on the day of the canal so maybe it doesn’t matter a damn that they stayed at the W Hotel in Dallas last night, or that said hotel featured an upscale club called, how fucking weird, the Ghost Bar. So many omens, so many signs and portents to read. It’s the randomness that makes your head this way, living the Russian-roulette life-style every minute of the day. Mortars falling out of the sky, random. Rockets, lob bombs, IEDs, all random. Once on OP Billy was pulling night watch and felt a sick little pop just off the bridge of his nose, which was, he realized as he tumbled backward, the snap of a bullet breaking the sound barrier as it passed. Inches. Not even that. Fractions, atoms, and it was all this random, whether you stopped at the piss tube this minute or the next, or skipped seconds at chow, or were curled to the left in your bunk instead of the right, or where you lined up in column, that was a big one. At first they were hitting the lead Humvee, then they switched to number two, then it was a toss-up between two, three, and four, then they went back to one, and don’t even talk about the never-ending mindfuck debate as to your odds in any particular seat inside the vehicle, on any given day it could be anything, anywhere. “You can dodge an RPG,” he said to a reporter a couple of days ago. He hadn’t meant to reveal such a fraught and intimate fact, and felt cheap, as if he’d divulged a shameful family secret, but there it was, you can dodge an RPG, that damn crazy thing lamely fluttering at you, spitting and smoking like a cheap Mexican firework, tttttthhhhhhhpppppfffffftttt-FOOOM! What he’d meant to say, been trying to say, is that it’s not a lie, sometimes it really happens in slow-motion time, his ultimate point being just how strange and surreal your own life can be. Lately he thinks he could have tapped it as it flew by, sent it spinning off to nowhere like thumping a balloon instead of merely dodging as it sputtered past on its way to making such a christfuck mess back there. What’s happening now isn’t nearly as real as that, eating this meal, holding this fork, lifting this glass, the realest things in the world these days are the things in his head. Lake, for instance. “Lake,” that’s all it takes to get this bleak little movie going, a night shot of, say, the berm road in pale moonlight, crickets cheeping, dogs barking faintly in the distance, the slow suck and gurgle of the nearby canal. So there is the berm road on a quiet night, then a slow tracking shot that peels off the road and gradually keys on something in the high grass. A leg. Two legs. Lake’s. Peaceful. Those crickets, the soft moonlight, the purring canal. As if waking from a long sleep, the legs begin to stir. Tentative at first, they move with a childlike air of sweetly baffled innocence, but eventually they rise, shake themselves off, and set off in search of the rest of Lake. It could be a Disney movie about a couple of household pets mistakenly left behind, for they are as brave as that, as trusting and loyal, how can they know they’re screwed from the start for Lake is six thousand miles and an ocean away? Not that these are appropriate thoughts for mealtime, but once these little movies get going in your head—
“Billy!” woofs Dime. “You’re flaking on me.”
“No, Sergeant. I’m just thinking about dessert.”
“Thinking ahead, good man. God-damn I trained them well.”
“They certainly can eat,” Albert observes. “Hey, guys, you can slow down. It’s not going anywhere.”
“It’s chill,” Dime answers. “Just keep your hands and feet away from their mouths and you won’t get hurt.”
Albert laughs. He is having only a mixed green salad and fizzy water, along with a barely touched “Cowboyrita” on the side. “I’m gonna miss you guys,” he tells them. “It’s been an experience getting to know you fine young men.”
“Come with us,” says Crack.
“Yeah, come to Iraq,” A-bort urges. “We’ll have some laughs.”
“No,” Holliday objects. “Albert gotta stay here and make us rich, ain’t that right, Albert.”
“That’s the plan,” Albert responds in a studiously mild voice, and there, Billy thinks, there it is in that soft deflation at the end, the almost imperceptible slackening of ego and effort that denotes the triage mode of the consummate pro. “I’d just get in the way,” Albert is saying, “plus I’m pretty much your classic pacifist twerp. Listen, the only reason I went to law school was to stay out of Vietnam, and lemme tell you guys, if my deferment hadn’t come through, I would’ve been on the bus for Canada that night.”
“It was the sixties,” Crack observes.
“It was the sixties, exactly, all we wanted was to smoke a lot of dope and ball a lot of chicks. Vietnam, excuse me? Why would I wanna go get my ass shot off in some stinking rice paddy just so Nixon can have his four more years? Screw that,