feeling deep in his chest, this liposucked void where his best part should be. He needs a woman. No, he needs a girlfriend, he needs someone to mash into body and soul and he’s been waiting for it to happen these entire two weeks, the girlfriend, the mashing, two weeks he’s been traveling this great nation of ours so you would think that after all the miles and cities and positive press coverage, all the love and goodwill, all those smiling cheering crowds, he would have found someone by now.
So either America’s fucked up, or he is. Billy walks the concourse with his aching heart and awareness that time is running out. They report to Fort Hood at 2200 tonight, tomorrow will be PACK YOUR SHIT day, and the day after will commence their twenty-seven hours of flying time and the resumption of their combat tour. It seems to Billy a flat-out miracle that any of them are still alive. So they’ve lost Shroom and Lake, only two a numbers man might say, but given that each Bravo has missed death by a margin of inches, the casualty rate could just as easily be 100 percent. The freaking randomness is what wears on you, the difference between life, death, and horrible injury sometimes as slight as stooping to tie your bootlace on the way to chow, choosing the third shitter in line instead of the fourth, turning your head to the left instead of the right. Random. How that shit does twist your mind. Billy sensed the true mindfucking potential of it on their first trip outside the wire, when Shroom advised him to place his feet one in front of the other instead of side by side, that way if an IED blew low through the Humvee Billy might lose only one foot instead of two. After a couple of weeks of aligning his feet just so, tucking his hands inside his body armor, always wearing eye pro and all the rest, he went to Shroom and asked how do you keep from going crazy? Shroom nodded like this was an eminently reasonable question to ask, then told him of an Inuit shaman he’d read about somewhere, how this man could supposedly look at you and know to the day when you were going to die. He wouldn’t tell you, though; he considered that impolite, an intrusion into matters that were none of his business. But talk about freaky, huh? Shroom chuckled. Looking that old man in the eye and knowing he knows.
“I don’t ever wanna meet that guy,” Billy said, but Shroom’s point was made. If a bullet’s going to get you, it’s already been fired.
Billy realizes that Mango hasn’t spoken for the past five minutes, so he knows his friend is also thinking about the war. He’s tempted to raise the subject, but really, what can you say short of everything? As if once you opened your mouth would you even be able to stop, though in the end it all amounts to one and the same thing, how the hell are they going to get through eleven more months of it.
“You’ve been lucky so far, right?”
This was Kathryn, talking to Billy over backyard beers.
I guess I have, he answered.
“So keep on being lucky.”
Sometimes it feels as easy as that, just remembering to be lucky. Billy thinks about this as he eyes the fast food outlets that line the stadium concourse, your Taco Bells, your Subways, your Pizza Huts and Papa John’s, clouds of hot meaty gases waft from these places and surely it speaks to the genius of American cooking that they all smell pretty much the same. It dawns on him that Texas Stadium is basically a shithole. It’s cold, gritty, drafty, dirty, in general possessed of all the charm of an industrial warehouse where people pee in the corners. Urine, the faint reek of it, pervades the place.
“Fierce,” Mango says in hushed tones of wonder.
“What?”
“All these thousands of gringos, and not a single Major Mac.”
Billy snorts. “You know we’re never gonna find that mofo. He’s a grown man anyway, like why are we even looking for him.”
“He knows where he is.”
“You would think.”
They look at each other and laugh.
“Let’s go back,” Billy says.
“Let’s go back,” Mango agrees.
First they stop at Sbarro and get a couple of slices of pizza, then stand there munching off paper plates, content for the moment not to be recognized. Being a Bravo means inhabiting a state of semi-celebrity that occasionally flattens you with praise and adulation. At staged rallies, for instance, or appearances at malls, or whenever TV or radio is present, you are apt at some point to be lovingly mobbed by everyday Americans eager to show their gratitude, then other times it’s like you’re invisible, people just see right through you, nothing registers. Billy and Mango stand there eating scalding hot pizza and know that their fame is not their own. Mainly it’s another thing to laugh about, this huge floating hologram of context and cue that leads everyone around by the nose, Bravo included, but Bravo can laugh and feel somewhat superior because they know they’re being used. Of course they do, manipulation is their air and element, for what is a soldier’s job but to be the pawn of higher?
Wear this, say that, go there, shoot them, then of course there’s the final and ultimate, be killed. Every Bravo is a PhD in the art and science of duress. Billy and Mango finish their pizza and start walking. With some food in their bellies they’re feeling stoked, and on a whim they wander into Cowboys Select, the highest-end of all the on-site establishments offering Cowboys apparel and brand merchandise for sale. The dizzying scent of fine leathers meets them at the door, along with a brightly lit Texas Lottery machine. Flat-screen TVs mounted in the walls are playing a highlights reel from the Aikman years. Billy and Mango are a little bit punchy coming in, they’re primed for an ironic retail experience, and in seconds the place has them laughing out loud. It’s not just the racks and racks of upscale clothing, the fine jewelry, the framed and certified collector memorabilia, no, you had to admire the determination, the sheer marketing balls of stamping the Cowboys brand on chess sets, toaster ovens, high-capacity ice makers, personal oxygen bars, and laser-guided pool cues. Dude, check it out! An entire line of Cowboys kitchenware. The two Bravos grow so rowdy that other customers start to give them some space. As far as Billy and Mango are concerned, the store is a museum, these are all things to look at but nothing a Bravo could buy, and the humiliation of it makes them a little wild. His ’n’ hers cotton terry-cloth robes, like, four hundred dollars. Authentic game jerseys, a hundred fifty-nine ninety-five. Cashmere pullovers, cut-crystal Christmas ornaments, Tony Lama limited-edition boots. As their shame and sense of insult mount the two Bravos become rough with each other. Dude, check it out, sick bomber jacket. Only six hundred seventy-nine bucks, dawg.
Is it leather?
The fuck you mean, hell yeah it’s leather!
’Cause, dawg, I don’t think so. I think that’s pleather.
The fuck it’s pleather!
Unh-unh, dumbshit. It’s just you’re so fucking ghetto you don’t know from pleather—
Suddenly they’re grappling, they’ve hooked arms in a fierce shoulder clench and lumber about like a couple of barroom drunks, grunting, cursing each other and butting heads, laughing so hard they can hardly stand up. Their berets go flying as they tear at their ears. It hurts and they laugh harder, they’re gasping now, bitch, shitbag, cum-slut, faggot, Mango jabs at Billy with stinging uppercuts, Billy crams a fist into Mango’s armpit and off they go on a left-tilting axis, pottery wheel and pot rolling loose across the floor. Can I help you! someone is shouting, jumping in and out of the way. Gentlemen! Fellas, guys, can I help you? Whoa there!
Billy and Mango separate, come up flushed and laughing. The salesman—store manager? a middle-aged white guy with thinning hair—he, too, is laughing, but it’s clearly a situation for him, what with two obvious lunatics on his hands. Everyone else, staff, customers—the few who haven’t fled—is standing well back.
“Is this leather?” Billy asks, lifting a sleeve from the rack of bomber jackets. “’Cause moron here’s trying to tell me it’s pleather.”
“Oh no sir,” says the manager, “that’s genuine leather.” He’s chuckling, he knows they’re putting him on, but in the manner of straight men since the beginning of time