“Yes sir, we like Albert a lot. He really believes in our story. And he’s doing everything he can to get us the best deal possible.”
Norm clears his throat and says nothing for several moments. Billy leans forward a couple of millimeters, anxious for someone to speak.
“Hilary Swank,” Norm says at last.
“Sir?” Dime inquires.
“Hilary Swank,” Norm repeats. “Albert says she’s one of the stars interested in your project.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He said she wants to play you.”
“Apparently so.”
“That strikes me as sort of nutty. What do you think?”
“I’ll be honest, sir, I’m having a hard time getting my head around it.”
“They should stay true to the story, not go twisting it around just to suit some star’s whim. I’ll tell you frankly, the narcissism of Hollywood people never ceases to amaze me.”
“I only know what I read in the tabloids.”
“I don’t think a whole lot of her as an actress anyway.”
“Ah.”
“I saw her in that movie with Schwarzenegger, the one where she plays his wife and he’s in the CIA, but supposedly she doesn’t know it? Kind of a silly movie. I didn’t think much of that movie at all.”
“I think that was Jamie Lee Curtis, sir,” Dime says.
“Pardon?”
“I think that was Jamie Lee Curtis who played the wife, not Swank.”
“Really? Well. It was still a shitty movie.”
Billy happens to look at Albert just as he pockets the phone, his shoulders rising and falling in a tectonic heave. Such a gesture would seem to suggest defeat, but Billy thinks he looks more thoughtful than worried, like a consummate old pro plotting his next move. So do something, Billy silently urges, and he finds himself wishing the producer had more skin in the game. The deal craters, Albert goes back to L.A., back to his Brentwood home and his hot young wife and his office with the three Oscars sitting on the shelf. Meanwhile it’s back to the war for Bravo, deal or no deal. Iraq has never been less than a life-or-death proposition for them, but the deal hanging in the balance seems to make it more so.
They nail the next take and everyone cheers, even the camera crew adds its own jaded bray. Norm doles out old-school high-fives. “Hang on to those footballs,” he tells Bravo, “they’re yours to keep. But they’ll look better with some ink on them, don’t you think?” He grins. “Follow me, men.”
XXL
THEY ARE HUGE. THEY could be a new species, or throwbacks to some lost prehistoric age when humans the size of Clydesdales roamed the earth. TV’s toy-soldier scale doesn’t do them justice, these blown-up versions of the human frame with their beer-keg heads and redwood necks and arms packing softball-sized bulges, plus something not quite right about their faces, their eyes too close or too far apart, a thumb-mashed puttiness to cheekbone and nose. All the parts are there but the whole is out of joint, a hitch of proportion, of cranial size relative to facial scheme, as if by achieving superhero scale the players have outstripped the blueprint of the human face.
“Arncha glad you aren’t that guy’s toilet seat?” A-bort whispers to Billy, nodding toward that pile of human spam known as Nicky Ostrana, the Cowboys’ All-Pro offensive guard. Where else but America could football flourish, America with its millions of fertile acres of corn, soy, and wheat, its lakes of dairy, its year-round gushers of fruits and vegetables, and such meats, that extraordinary pipeline of beef, poultry, seafood, and pork, feedlot gorged, vitamin enriched, and hypodermically immunized, humming factories of high-velocity protein production, all of which culminate after several generations of epic nutrition in this strain of industrial-sized humans? Only America could produce such giants. Billy watches as tight end Tony Blakely pours an entire box of cereal into a mixing bowl, follows that with a half gallon of milk, and serenely falls to with a serving spoon. One. Entire. Box. Any other country would go broke trying to feed these mammoths, who blandly listen as Norm speaks from the center of the room. Real American heroes… freedoms… that we might enjoy… “So let’s give them our warmest Cowboys welcome,” Norm exhorts, and the team responds with a round of applause. For all their exalted status, the players are, technically speaking, Norm’s employees, so Billy supposes they have to do what he says.
Norm turns to Coach Tuttle. “George, would you mind if our guests got a few autographs while they’re here?”
Coach answers with a marked lack of enthusiasm, “That would be fine,” all but adding, Then get the fuck out of my locker room. He is a large, dour, slope-shouldered man, in size and shape not unlike an old bull walrus. His skin is the same oatmeal shade as his salon-tinted hair, a bushy quiff that he combs straight back for a retro Deep South prison warden look. On their way down to the locker room Josh handed out Sharpies to the Bravos—still no Advil, he lashed himself for forgetting — and now the soldiers fan out to gather autographs.
“I wonder if Pat Tillman played with any of these guys,” Dime muses in a bright voice. Several players give him a look, but no one answers. So there’s Dime, staking out his psychic territory, and there’s Sykes and Lodis scurrying off to collect as many signatures as possible, and here is Billy, hanging back. He’s never really seen the point of autographs anyway, and the players’ size is such that he doesn’t even want to look at them directly, much less approach in supplicant mode. He’s not comfortable here. He feels exposed, diminished. If the painful truth be known, he feels less of a man right now than he did five minutes ago. The players seem so much more martial than any Bravo. They are bigger, stronger, thicker, badder, their truck-sized chins could bulldoze small buildings and their thighs bulge like load-bearing beams. Testosterone, these guys are cranking it, and their warrior aura ramps up exponentially as they assemble themselves for the game. As if these human mountains needed more bulk? Elaborate systems of shock and awe are constructed about their bodies, arrays of hip pads, thigh pads, knee pads, then the transformative lift of the shoulder pads, these high-tech concoctions of foams, fabrics, Velcros, and interlocking shells, with girdling skirt extensions to cradle mere mortal ribs. Tape for the hands, tape for the wrists. Roll pads. Elbow pads. Pads for the forearm. The top shelf of each locker displays no fewer than four pairs of brand-new shoes.
All the gear, all this stuff, depresses Billy further. Such tedium it involves; the players probably spend more time getting dressed than the most pampered models and actresses, and they show it, they are surly and closed off, thoroughly into their suiting-up ritual. They don’t want to be messed with, which Billy gets; it’s a mental thing, the mental feeding off the physical, getting their heads set to deal some serious hurt because aggression against one’s fellow man is not a casual thing. Dude, been there! Totally feeling it! He recognizes the process, even the hurt-music pounding from the lockers is the same, but starting a conversation along these lines would just seem like sucking up.
Billy gets Kervan McClellan’s autograph because, well, he’s standing right there and it would seem rude not to. He knows it’s Kervan McClellan because his name and number are stenciled in jaunty script across the top of his locker. Billy moves on to the next player, Spellman Taylor, # 94. Tucker Rubel, # 55. DeMarcus Carey, # 61. The players are all business. They take the Sharpie and scrawl their names and most of them don’t even look up. A few manage to nod when Billy thanks them. Indurian Kashkari, # 81. Tommy Budznick, # 78. Then Billy comes to Ed Crisco, # 99, an enormous white guy standing perfectly still while a trainer winches his shoulder pads tight. Crisco holds out his arms and doesn’t speak, doesn’t blink, just stares straight ahead like a beast of burden submitting to the harness for yet another day.