Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (15 page)

Owwwwww!!!

“Gotcha, dawg. You’re flaking on me.”

“Damn, Sergeant!”

“If this was Iraq, you’d be dead.”

“If this was Iraq there wouldn’t be chicks in leather pants. Jesus, Sergeant.” Billy straightens his clothes, gingerly touches his chest. While he was absorbed in thought, Sergeant Dime snuck up behind him, clotheslined his throat, and gave his left nipple a ferocious twist.

“I think you ripped my titty off, Sergeant.”

Dime laughs. He asks for a Sprite at the bar. He is a Sprite man, always Sprite, diet if you got it.

“Sergeant Dime, what is leverage?”

Dime blows a little of his Sprite. “What, Lynn, you been reading
Forbes
behind my back? Where did you hear about leverage?”

“That guy over there”—Billy tips his chin at Mr. Jones—“he said leverage is the key to Norm’s success.”

“He said that, huh.” Dime studies Mr. Jones. “Leverage, Billy, that’s a fancy way of saying other people’s money. As in, borrowing. Debt. Credit. Hock. Using other people’s money to make money for yourself.”

“I don’t like debt,” Billy says. “Owing money makes me nervous.”

“Historically that is the sane position.” Dime bites down on a chunk of ice,
scrunch
. “But I’m not sure sanity counts for much anymore.”

“What about Norm?”

“What about him?”

“Are you saying he’s not sane?”

“I’m not sure he even exists.”

Billy laughs, but Dime does not crack a smile.

“I do know one thing, though.”

“What, Sergeant?”

“He’s got a big old boner for Albert.”

Billy opts for silence.

“I guess once you’ve conquered the NFL there’s nothing left to do but take on Hollywood. He’s all over Albert about the movie biz.”

“What’s Albert doing?”

“He’s cool, dawg. He’s working it.”

“For our movie?”

“Better be. We’re the ones who got him here.”

They fall silent. Mr. Jones has joined a group of well-dressed guests. Even when he laughs, Mr. Jones’s eyes stay sharp, his body alert. Young and strong as he is, even with his military training, Billy thinks he would have a hard time taking Mr. Jones in a fight.

“See that guy over there, the one I was talking about? He’s packing.”

Dime is not impressed. “I thought everybody packed in Texas.”

“Yeah, but here? It’s bullshit.” Billy is surprised by the intensity of his disgust. “Only a dick would pack at a game, like, what, there’s only about a million cops here? Maybe he thinks he’s gonna take out all the terrorists by himself.”

Dime turns to Billy and laughs. Then he stiffens, wheels to Billy’s front and stands so close that their noses almost touch. Billy holds his breath but it is too late.

“You motherfucker, you’re still drinking.”

“A little, Sergeant.”

“Did I give permission for further consumption of alcohol?”

“No, Sergeant.”

Dime glances at the cup in Billy’s hand. “Do you have a problem?”

“No, Sergeant.”

“We’re back in the shit in two days, have you forgotten that?”

“No, Sergeant.”

“You better get your shit wired to a T, and I mean fast.”

“I am, Sergeant Dime. I will.”

“You think the beebs are going to give us a pass just because we’ve been the big shit over here?”

“No, Sergeant Dime.”

“Hell no, they’re gonna be gunning for us. And if I can’t count on you . . .” Dime steps back. He seems suddenly aggrieved. “Billy, I’m gonna need you. You gotta help me keep the rest of these clowns alive. So don’t be flaking on me.”

And fast as that, Dime breaks his heart. He is the kind of man for whom you’d rather die than disappoint.

“I’m fine, Sergeant. I’m good. Really.”

“Really?”

“I am, Sergeant. Don’t worry about me.”

“All right. Drink some water. Don’t get wasted on me.”

So Billy is drinking water when A-bort and Crack approach, grinning like cheetahs with bits of flesh and bone stuck between their teeth.

“What?”

“Norm’s old lady.”

“Yeah?”

“We wanna do her. Two on one.”

“Shut up. Dude, she’s like, fifty-five.”

“I don’t care how old she is,” says A-bort, “check her out. That bitch is tight.”

“I always wanted to bone a rich bitch right up the ass,” Crack offers.

“That’s just rude,” Billy says, with feeling; his puritanical recoil puzzles even him. “You guys are disgusting. We’re her guests and you’re showing disrespect.”

Mango has joined them. “Ain’t disrespect if it ain’t never gonna happen. It’s just
werds
. They ain’t gonna tap that lady.”

“Watch,” Crack promises. “Five to one I do her, hundred bucks.”

“Bullshit,” Billy says, still on his choirboy streak.

“I’ll take that,” says Mango.

“Me too,” says A-bort.

“What,” Crack says, “like you mean if I nail her, or you too?”

But before they can clear this up a Cowboys executive joins them, and it’s like a video splice, one second the Bravos are the sludgiest sort of street-corner pervs, and the next they are the nation’s very spine and marrow, yes, near to holy they are, angelic warriors of America’s crusader dreams. The executive sets a stack of
Time
magazines on the bar and asks for their autographs, there, on the cover, and again on p. 30 where the story starts, “Showdown at Al-Ansakar Canal”: “The tiny hamlet of Ad-Wariz on the Al-Ansakar Canal is a backwater even by Iraqi standards, a loose collection of mud-wattle huts and subsistence farms. But for two brutal hours on the morning of October 23, this remote village became the epicenter of America’s war on terror.”

There follow six pages of copy and photos, plus a 3-D schematic with arrows and labels that bears no relation to any battle that Billy can recall. It is not even a Bravo on the cover but Sergeant Daiker from Third Platoon, a dramatically blurred close-up of his clenched and fearsome face. “It seems this particular group of insurgents wished to die,” Colonel Travers told
Time,
“and our men were more than willing to oblige them.” True on both counts, but not until the very end did they offer themselves up, a little kamikaze band of eight or ten bursting from the reeds at a dead sprint, screaming, firing on full automatic, one last rocks-off martyrs’ gallop straight to the gates of the Muslim paradise. All your soldier life you dream of such a moment and every Joe with a weapon got a piece of it, a perfect storm of massing fire and how those beebs blew apart, hair, teeth, eyes, hands, tender melon heads, exploding soup-stews of shattered chests, sights not to be believed and never forgotten and your mind simply will not leave it alone. Oh my people. Mercy was not a selection, period. Only later did the concept of mercy even occur to Billy, and then only in the context of its absence in that place, a foreclosing of options that reached so far back in history that quite possibly mercy had not been an option there since before all those on the battlefield were born.

The Bravos sign. They’ve signed dozens of
Time
s over the past two weeks, and some have turned up on eBay, but whatever. The executive gathers up the magazines with the gingerly air of a lawyer who’s just pulled a fast one.

“Destiny’s Child here yet?” Crack asks him.

“Not in the loop on that one, fella.”

“We were hoping we could hang with them a little.”

The executive laughs. “You friends of theirs?”

This seems a bit fresh. He might be laughing at them.

“We’re fans,” Mango says steadily.

“Son, I’d be worried if you weren’t. Tell you what, I’ll go find out.”

Sure. The Bravos bar up for a quick round of Jack and Cokes, and Harold’s a sport, he keeps the bottle belowdecks as he pours. They slam down the drinks just in time to be rounded up and led into the chilly hall, where Josh gives them the drill for the press conference. He has a clipboard now. His hair is a perfect delta wedge. His entire person looks freshly dry-cleaned.

Will the cheerleaders be there?

“Yes, there will be cheerleaders.”

Yaaaaaaahhhhhh-woof! What about those lap dances?

“No lap dances in front of the press, guys.”

What are we supposed to do at halftime?

“I don’t have those specifics yet. I do know Trisha has some kind of role for you.”

Who the fuck’s Trisha?

“Guys, come on, Mr. Oglesby’s daughter. You just met her. She’s been planning the halftime show for the past six months.”

Tell her we can sing!

“I’m sure you guys are great singers, but we’ve got Destiny’s Child for that.”

Yeah, we wanna meet—

“I know I know I know, but guys, it’s Destiny’s Child. Getting you in there might be a little above my pay grade.”

You dah man, Jash.

“I’ll ask. But I can’t guarantee anything.”

More laughs, a smattering of wolf cheers. Bravo is pumped. They stand around long enough to realize they are waiting for something, for Norm it turns out, at last he arrives with his cloud of an entourage that includes a photographer, a video guy, several family members, and a big chunk of the Cowboys’ upper management.

“Ready?” Norm asks, beaming at the Bravos. “I expect you guys are pros at this by now.” He scoops one of his grandsons into his arms and off they go through the stadium labyrinth, as intricate as the guts of a battleship. Billy’s head is pounding, but Josh, so alert and duteous in other matters, has forgotten his Advil again. The ache forms a kind of aura or envelope around his head, with localized boreholes of quite specific pain, as if a nail gun is firing spikes into his skull.

Outside the media room Norm hands off his grandson and waits by the door while the Bravos form up. “Great,” he is murmuring, “super,” “fantastic,” “outstanding,” a gaseous blather of free-form superlatives aimed at no one in particular. It is a little embarrassing to see him this way, like watching the fattest kid at a birthday party circling the cake, clearly wishing he could have it all to himself. In any case Norm is first through the door and his entry cues a cataclysmic shriek, from the cheerleaders Billy sees when he crosses the threshold, a pom-pom waving, boot-stamping, thunderclap howl that jumps abruptly to a 4/4 dogtrot chant, a cheer!, and well why not, it’s their job:

American soldiers strong and true,

The best in the world at what they do,

Thanks for keeping us safe and strong

Against all those who’d do us harm!

Billy takes a seat onstage with the feeling that the war has attained new heights of lunacy. Norm is urging the medias to stand up! up!, a mostly male crowd of forty or fifty reporters who don’t seem terribly thrilled to be stage-managed, yet they stand, they clap, they break into grudging smiles, they are lifted by the moment in spite of themselves, and Norm gestures toward Bravo and raises his arms as if to say, Look at what I brought for you!

He is said to be a marketing genius, is Norm, and sitting there amid the flaming hairball of media lights Billy has the weirdest feeling that none of them exists except in Norman Oglesby’s mind. Norm is beaming, clapping, gesturing toward the Bravos. His blue eyes glitter with a special, no, a
holy
light, he is so completely certain of the Cowboys brand that God is surely on his side. What higher calling could there be? What greater good in life? Any profit to the team is truly God’s work, and all creation must bend to His will.

The room is a hothouse of plastic and epoxy smells, the burnt-dust fug of large electronics. “U-S-A!” a cheerleader yells, and the rest take up the chant, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” and Norm is chanting and clapping, rocking with the beat. So many cheerleaders, enough to line three walls of the room—the sheer volume of exposed female flesh sends Bravo into a mild state of shock. Photographers crab-walk close and flash off in Bravo’s face, singeing eyes and probably cauterizing pieces of brain. Camera crews are bunched at both sides of the stage, a two-foot-high riser with the fudgy give of plywood underfoot. The stage is backed by an incurving bulkhead of sorts, a fabric screen stamped with the Cowboys star and Nike swoosh logo. It’s actually kind of a crummy room, more like a union hall or underfunded rec center: fluorescent lights, that horrible all-weather carpet everywhere, steel-tube chairs with hard plastic shells. Norm takes the last seat at the table and bellies up to the microphone.

“
I,
” he begins, but has to pause for the handful of cheerleaders who simply can’t shut up. He smiles, looks down at his hands, and chuckles at their zeal, which draws a responsive chuckle from the medias.