He has to remember to breathe. He feels calm and agitated all at once, self-awareness teased to such a screaming pitch that his skull might split at any moment, and he moans, it is just too much to hold in. The realtress glances his way and answers with a sympathy moan. The next moment she steps over and puts her arm around his waist, and they stand so joined, Billy saluting, sweating, standing ramrod straight, the realtress singing with her right hand held to her heart and her left clamped to Billy’s hip.
This lady can really belt it out. Tears the size of lug nuts are tumbling down her cheeks but that’s the kind of thing war does to you. Sensations are heightened, time compressed, passions aroused, and while a single dry-hump might seem a slender reed on which to build a lifetime relationship, Billy would like to think this is where the logic leads. He made Faison tremble, he made her come, surely there’s meaning in that. Given all the shifting variables of existence, it’s insane to plan or hope for any one particular thing, yet somehow the world comes to be every day. So if not this, then what? So why not this?
The realtress pulls him closer. He doesn’t sense that it’s a sexual thing at all; it feels too brittle, more like a codependent clinginess or mothering clutch, which he can handle. Part of being a soldier is accepting that your body does not belong to you.
Ore th’ Laaa-ha-annnndddd of the Freeeeeeeeeee — HEEEEEEEEE
Then the pause, the teetering catch at cliff’s edge, followed by the vocal swan dive—
Never do Americans sound so much like a bunch of drunks as when celebrating the end of their national anthem. In the midst of all the boozy clapping and cheering perhaps a dozen middle-aged women converge on Billy. For a second it seems they’ll tear him limb from limb, their eyes are cranking those crazy lights and there is nothing they wouldn’t do for America, torture, nukes, worldwide collateral damage, for the sake of God and country they are down for it all. “Isn’t it wonderful?” the realtress cries as she holds him tight. “Don’t you love it? Doesn’t it make you just so proud?”
Well, right this second he wants to weep, that’s how desperately proud he feels. Does that count? Are we talking the same language here? Proud, sure, he thinks of Shroom and Lake and all the blood-truths of that day and starts brainstorming quantum-theory proofs of proud. Yes ma’am, proud, Bravo has achieved levels of proud that can move mountains and knock the moon out of phase, but why, please, do they play the national anthem before games anyway? The Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears, these are two privately owned, for-profit corporations, these their contractual employees taking the field. As well play the national anthem at the top of every commercial, before every board meeting, with every deposit and withdrawal you make at the bank!
But Billy tries. “I feel full,” he says, and the women cry out and a pillowy sort of scrummage ensues with much hugging and pawing, many cell phone snaps, three or four conversations going at once and more than one woman shedding actual tears. It is a heavy Group Moment and about as much as he can handle, and when it finally tapers off he puts his head down and makes for the lower level because, like Custer’s line of retreat at Little Bighorn, there’s really no place else to go. People smile and greet him as he moves through the crowd. Someone holds out a drink, which he takes; later he’ll realize they were merely waving at him. He comes to the bank of stadium seats and starts down the stairs. Three of his fellow Bravos are hunkered down on the bottom row, a refuge, a small redoubt amid this crowd of dangerously overstimulated civilians.
“Jesus Christ,” Billy says, dropping into a seat.
The other Bravos grunt. Being a hero is exhausting.
“Bears won the toss,” A-bort announces. “Up fifty already, homes.”
Holliday snorts. “You dah man, A. Showin’ some real fine savvy with that call.” He turns to Billy. “Where’s Lodis?”
“Up there.”
“Actin’ a fool?”
“He’s doing all right. Any word about halftime?”
The other Bravos grimly shake their heads. They’re all feeling it, not just the usual performance anxiety but the soldier’s innate dread of cosmic payback. They’ve accomplished two weeks of remarkably glitch-free events, so perhaps the natural or even necessary climax of the Victory Tour—like they’ve been saving up! — will be the mother of all fuckups on national TV.
The Cowboys kick off to the Bears. Touchback. From the twenty-yard line the Bears run off tackle for three, up the middle for two, then a weakside sweep for four, but there’s a flag. Between plays there is nothing much to do except watch bad commercials on the Jumbotron and worry about halftime.
“Do you think we’re being rude?” Mango asks.
Everyone looks at him.
“Sitting down here by ourselves. Not mingling or anything.”
“Rude as fuck,” Day says.
“Let’s put up a sign,” A-bort suggests. “ ‘Dysfunctional Vets, Leave Us Alone.’ ”
They watch a few plays. Mango keeps sighing and squirming around. “Football is boring,” he finally announces. “You guys never noticed? It’s like, start, stop, start, stop, you get about five seconds of plays for every minute of standing around. Shit is dull.”
“You can leave,” Holliday tells him. “Nobody say you got to be here.”
“No, Day, I do got to be here. I gotta be wherever the Army says I gotta be, and right now it’s here.”
The Bears punt. The Cowboys return to the twenty-six. There is a long wait while the chains are moved and the football replaced. The offense and defense trundle onto the field. The offense huddles while the defense mills around, huffing and puffing with their hands on their hips. Goddamn, Billy thinks, Mango’s right. Between plays is sort of like sitting in church, if not for the infernal blaring of the Jumbotron everybody would keel over and fall asleep. One of the Filipino waiters comes by and asks would they care for anything. The Bravos check to make sure Dime isn’t lurking, and since he isn’t they order a round of Jack and Cokes. Billy chugs his accidental cranberry vodka and keeps a fond eye on Faison. The drinks arrive. They help it be not so much like church. The Cowboys advance to the Bears’ forty-two, then lose sixteen yards when Henson takes a sack, and Billy begins to intuit the basic futility of seizing ground you can’t control.
“Please tell me there’s no booze in those drinks,” Dime wharls. The Bravos jump. Dime drops into the seat next to Billy, a pair of binoculars swinging from a strap around his neck.
“Not hardly,” says A-bort. “We were about to complain.”
“C’mon guys, I told you—”
“Yo Dime,” Day breaks in, “Mango says football is boring.”
“What?” Dime instantly rounds on Mango. “What the fuck do you mean football is boring, football is great, football kicks every other sport’s ass, football’s the fucking pinnacle of the sports world. What’re you trying to say, you like soccer? A bunch of fruits running around in little shorts and knee socks? They play for ninety minutes and nobody ever scores, yeah, sounds like a lot of fun, the game of choice for the vegetally comatose? But fine, if you’d rather watch fut-BOLL, Mango, you can just go the fuck back to Meh-hee-co.”