Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

THE PROUD GOOD-BYE

WHY MAKE A MOVIE anyway? It seems pointless to go to all that trouble when the original is floating out there for all to see, easily available online by searching “Al-Ansakar Canal,” “Bravo snuff movie,” “America’s throbbing cock of justice,” or any one of a couple of dozen similar phrases that summon forth the Fox News footage, three minutes and forty-three seconds of high-intensity warfare as seen through a stumbling you-are-there point of view, the battle sounds backgrounded by a slur of heavy breathing and the bleeped expletives of the daring camera crew. It’s so real it looks fake — too showy, too hyped up and cinematic, a B-movie’s defiant or defensive flirtation with the referential limits of kitsch. Would a more polished product serve better, one wonders — throw in some story arc, a good dose of character development, artful lighting, and multiple camera angles, plus a soundtrack to tee up the emotive cues. Nothing looks so real as a fake, apparently, though ever since seeing the footage for himself Billy has puzzled over the fact that it doesn’t look like any battle he was ever in. Therefore you have the real that looks fake twice over, the real that looks so real it looks fake and the real that looks nothing like the real and thus fake, so maybe you do need all of Hollywood’s craft and guile to bring it back to the real.

Then again, everybody always says how much like a movie the Fox footage is. Like Rambo, they say. First Blood. Like Independence Day. Or, as one of their new neighbors in row 6 says, a perky, chatty, twentysomething blonde who’s shown up with her husband and another young couple, “It was just like nina leven all over again. I sat down and cut on the news and got the weirdest feeling I was watching a movie on cable.”

“You guys rock,” says her husband, a handsome, strapping fellow in a Patagonia parka and heirloom-quality cowboy boots. “It felt damn good to see us finally getting some payback.”

The other young husband and wife echo the sentiment. They aren’t much older than Billy, these two young couples who’ve migrated down from the upper deck for a sampling of the money seats at garbage time. They remind Billy of certain kids he went to high school with, the sons and daughters of the small-town country-club elite who were firmly embedded in the college track, and now here they are in their midtwenties, duly credentialed and married, starting out their grown-up lives on schedule. The young couples are eager to meet the Texas Bravo, but for a moment they don’t know what to make of him in the flesh. “You’re just a kid!” one of the wives cries, breaking the ice, then they’re introducing themselves and thanking him for his service, the two young wives breathy and fond, the husbands racking his arm with welcome-to-the-frat handshakes.

“Awesome,” they say, “outstanding,” “an honor to meet you” and so forth, their words sloshing around Billy’s brain like soft ice cubes

Billy resumes the aisle seat. Sleet pounds down around them like a spray of fine-grained fertilizer pellets. “No deal?” Mango asks, and Billy shakes his head.

“So what’s that about?”

Lodis and A-bort are leaning in, they want the story too.

“Norm’s just a cheap bastard, I guess. What can I say.”

“We thought Day was shitting us when he told us the deal. Fifty-five hundred—”

“—shit’s cold,” A-bort breaks in, “all the coin he’s got running through his pockets, and that’s the best he can do for us? Dude’s got millions.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s got millions,” Mango points out. “He’s careful with his money.”

“I be careful with my money, I had some,” says Lodis, his splotch of lip quivering like a big juicy booger, or a nib of entrails dangling from a gut wound. Josh comes down the row calling their names and handing out manila packets. Inside his packet each soldier finds an assortment of Dallas Cowboys swag: headbands, wristbands, a combination key chain/bottle opener, a set of decals, the cheerleader calendar for the upcoming year, a glossy eight-by-ten photo of the Bravo shaking hands with Norm, signed and personalized by the great man himself, along with several eight-by-tens of the Bravo posing with his trio of cheerleaders in the post-press-conference scrum, signed and personalized by each of the girls. The Bravos sort of shrug once they’ve gone through their packets. Outright derision is beneath them. Billy’s cell buzzes and it’s a text from Faison.

Meet after game?

Yes, he answers, love blanketing his heart like a slab of melting cheddar. Where u be? he adds, then waits, phone in hand, while the ranch fantasy does a number on his head. Maybe, he thinks, pondering the possibilities. She was into him. She got off on him. He and Faison shacked up at the ranch doesn’t seem much more extreme than anything else that’s happened lately. He scrolls through his call list to the unknown number, intending to see what kind of vibe might come of staring at it, but an incoming call beats him to it. He clicks on.

“Billy.”

“Hey, Albert.”

“Where are you guys?”

“Back at our seats.”

“Is Dime there?”

“Yeah, he’s here.”

“He won’t pick up. Tell him to pick up for me.”

Billy yells down the row and says Albert wants to talk. Dime shakes his head.

“He says not right now.” For a moment they’re silent. “So did the general…”

“You’re good, Billy. He’s not going to make you guys do anything.”

“What’d Norm say?”

Albert hesitates. “Well, it’s kind of tough on him. Like he said, he’s addicted to winning.” Albert allows himself the softest of snarky laughs. “It’s okay. He’s one of those people who could probably use some humility in his life.”

“He’s pissed,” Billy concludes.

“Just a little.”

“Are you?”

“Pissed? No, Billy, I can honestly say I’m not. I love you guys way too much for that.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks.”

Albert chuckles. “Oh, well, you’re welcome.”

“So what happens now?”

“Well, I’m in the main suite right now, Norm’s back there in his hideaway. Maybe he’ll come out with another offer at some point. We’ll just have to see.”

“Okay. Uh, Albert, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Billy.”

“When you ducked out of Vietnam, I mean, you know, when you got your deferment and everything, how did it feel?”

Albert gives a little yip, the way a coyote might as it dodges a sprung trap. “How did it feel?”

“I mean, like, was it hard. Did it feel like you were doing the right thing. How do you feel about it now, I guess is what I’m asking.”

“Well, it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about, Billy. I won’t say I’m hugely proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either. It was a very fucked-up time. A lot of us really struggled about what we had to do.”

“You think it was more fucked up then than it is now?”

“Huh. Well. Good question.” Albert ponders. “You could probably make a pretty good argument that for the past forty years it never stopped being fucked up. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking, I guess. About why people do the things they do.”

“Billy, you are a philosopher.”

“Hell no, I’m just a grunt.”

Albert laughs. “How about both. All right, guy, hang loose. And tell Dime to call me.”

Billy says he will and clicks off. He dry-swallows two more Advil; the first three made no appreciable dent in his armor-plated headache. Mango asks for some, and Billy ends up passing the bottle down the row, never to return. A steady flow of fans is heading up the stairs for the exits, while a smaller contingent makes its way down, looking to squat in the premium seats for as long as the game lasts. A group of five or six guys piles into row 6, friends of the young marrieds it seems; they arrive with much laughing and razzing and immediately pull out pint bottles of Wild Turkey. “Bro!” one of them caws at Lodis. “Get some stitches in them dizzles!” They have the clean-cut, mainstream, Anglo looks that Billy imagines must be soothing to bosses and clients, suitable for careers in banking, business, law, wherever it is the money lives. The guy sitting in front of Crack turns all the way around.

“Dude, what happened to your eye?”

“It’s always like this,” Crack answers. “But, dude, what happened to your face?”

Brrraaaaahhhh, even the guy’s own friends send up a howl. “Hey, these are the Bravos,” one of the young husbands says. “Don’t mess with these guys.”

“The whos?” cries Crack’s new friend. “The what-hoes? Oh yeah yeah yeah I heard of you guys, yeah, goddamn, you’re famous. Hey, tell me something, what do you think about that whole don’t-ask-don’t-tell deal?”

“Stop it, Travis!” one of the young wives scolds. “You’re being a jerk.”

“I am not either being a jerk, I really wanna know! This guy’s a soldier, I’m just curious what he thinks about gays in the military.”

“I think more of them than gays not in the military,” Crack says. “At least they’ve got the balls to join.”

The rowdies send up another howl. “I hear you, dude, hear you,” Travis says, laughing. “Serving your country and all that, very cool and everything. But I don’t know, it just seems kind of wack to me, say you’re in your foxhole at night and some queer comes on to you, what’re you supposed to do? Guys blowing each other in foxholes, that just doesn’t sound right to me. Like maybe it’s got something to do with why we’re getting our butts kicked over there, you know?”

“Tell you what,” Crack says, “why don’t you join up and find out. You can get in a foxhole with me and see what happens.”

Travis smiles. “You’d like that, dude?”

Billy wishes Crack would just smack the fool and be done with it, but his fellow Bravo merely stares the guy down. Perhaps one melee is enough for this Thanksgiving Day. Billy checks his cell. Nothing from Faison. Yet. He indulges in another episode of the ranch fantasy, but now while he and Faison are having sex ten times a day he’s also thinking about Bravo back at FOB Viper, getting slammed every time they go outside the wire. So he puts that inside the fantasy, how much he’d miss his fellow Bravos, he would mourn them even as they live and breathe. They are his boys, his brothers. Bravos would die for one another. They are the truest friends he will ever have, and he’d expire from grief and guilt at not being there with them.

So it seems the war is fucked and his fantasy no less so. He sends another text to Faison. Wd like to see u and say g-by after game. She responds almost immediately, Yes! but when he asks where and when, nothing. Dime makes his way down the row and kneels in the aisle by Billy’s seat.

“What’d Albert say?”

“Well, he’s not mad at us.”

“No, Billy, what’d he say about Ruthven.”

“Oh. He said it’s cool. Ruthven did just what you said he’d do.”

Dime smiles. “We need to send that man some flowers!”

“Albert said Norm might come back with a better offer—”

“Fuck that, we’re not doing a deal with that guy, not for any amount of money. Not for a million bucks apiece.”

Billy and Mango look at each other. “A million bucks—” Mango attempts, but Dime cuts him off.

“Look at it this way, say we do the deal and Norm makes his big-shit Bravo movie, gets everybody all pumped for the war again. What happens then? I think what happens is they’ll keep stop-lossing our ass until we’re dead or too damn old to carry a pack. Well, fuck that. I got no use for a deal like that.”

Dime turns and bounds up the aisle. The Bears score to make it 31–7, and the game has officially become a rout. One of the rowdies in row 6 drops his bottle, and the sound of shattering glass sends his buddies into hysterics. “Assholes,” Mango mutters, and Billy agrees. They’re too drunk, too loud, too pleased with themselves — more people who could use some humility in their lives?

Billy’s cell chirps, signaling a new text. He checks the screen.

“Faison?” Mango asks hopefully.

“Sister.” Billy waits for Mango to turn away before he opens it.

CALL HIM.

They r ready.

They r waiting 4 u.

Oh Jesus. Oh Shroom. What would Shroom do? What would he do if he was Billy, that is the better question, one that turns on the most intimate, pressing issues of soul, self-definition, one’s ultimate purpose in life. The two-minute-warning gun fires, which means, great, he has about 120 seconds to figure out what he’s doing here on planet Earth. Oh Shroom, Shroom, the Mighty Shroom of Doom who foretold his own death on the battlefield, how would he counsel Billy here at the Victory Tour’s end? He needs Shroom to make sense of the situation, to calm the neural scramble of Billy’s brain, but now the Jumbotron is playing the American Heroes graphic and the rowdies in row 6 send up a big whoop and holler, clapping, stomping their feet, the young marrieds try to shush their friends but there is just no stopping the fun.

“Brav-ohhhh!”

“Hay-yull yeah!”

“Woooo-hooooo!”

“Army of one, dudes!”

“See?” says Travis, twisting around to grin at Crack. “We’re all kick-ass patriots here, we totally support the troops.”

“Hell yeah,” yells one of his buddies.

“Hell yeah,” Travis woofs. “Listen, don’t-ask-don’t-tell, I’m totally down with that. I don’t give a shit if you guys are gay or bi or tranny or screw lesbian monkeys for all I care, you’re studs in my book. You guys are real American heroes.”

He raises his arm for a high-five, but Crack just stares, lets him dangle. “No?” Travis flashes a smile. “No? Whatever, it’s cool. I still support the troops.” He laughs and turns away, reaching under his seat for his bottle. When he sits up, Crack leans forward and methodically, almost tenderly it seems, locks his arms around Travis’s neck and proceeds to choke him out. All soldiers learn this in basic training, how a forearm applied to the carotid artery cuts off blood flow to the brain, rendering your victim unconscious in seconds. Travis flops a bit, but it’s not much of a struggle. He grabs at Crack’s arms, kicks at the seat in front of him, then Crack squeezes a little harder and Travis goes limp. Several of the rowdies start to rise, but Crack warns them off with a grunt.

“What’s he doing?” hisses one of the young wives. “Tell him to stop it. Somebody please tell him to stop.”

But Crack just smiles. “I could break this asshole’s neck,” he announces, and shifts his hold, applies some experimental torque. Travis gives a spastic kick; his friends can only watch. They seem to understand he’s beyond their help.

“Crack,” says Day, “enough. Turn the motherfucker loose.”

Crack giggles. “I’m just having a little fun.” There’s a masturbatory aspect in the way he twists Travis one way and then the other, squeezing, relenting, squeezing, relenting, probing the physiological point of no return. Travis’s face is dark red, shading to purple. A full-on carotid choke results in death in a matter of minutes.

“Damn, Crack,” Mango murmurs. “Don’t kill the son of a bitch.”

“Stop him,” pleads one of the wives. “Say something to him.”

Billy thinks he might be sick to his stomach, but part of him wants Crack to go ahead and do it, just to show the entire world how fucked the situation is. But finally Crack relents; it’s as if he loses interest, the way he turns Travis loose with a casual slap to the head, and Travis sags into his seat like a broken crash dummy. In short order the rowdies decide it’s time to leave. They brace up their woozy friend and file out of the row, careful to avoid eye contact with the Bravos. “You guys are crazy,” one of them mutters as he sidles past, and Sykes shouts Hell yes we’re out of our motherfucking minds!, and adds a burbling Valium laugh that in fact sounds pretty batty.

Dime returns in time to watch the rowdies hurry up the aisle. He rubs his chin and regards his suspiciously silent squad.

“Something I need to know about?”

The Bravos manage a weak brah. “Mofo kept mouthing off,” Day says. “So Crack give him some, uh, training guidance.”

Crack shrugs, forces up a smile. He seems chastened and at the same time deeply satisfied. “I didn’t hurt him, Sergeant,” he says in all modesty. “Just messed with his head a little.”

Down on the field, the final two minutes of play have resumed. Dime looks at his watch, looks at the scoreboard, then has a moment’s communion with the storming sky. “Gentlemen,” he says, turning back to Bravo, “I think our work here is done. Let’s blow.”

The squad sends up a lazy or possibly sarcastic cheer. Josh says they’re supposed to meet their limo at the west-side limo lane, and he will show them the way. For the final time Bravo trudges up the aisle steps, Billy fighting the tug of all that horrible stadium space. As soon as they reach the concourse he pulls out his cell and texts Faison—

Can u meet west side limo lane? Look for white hummer limo

Bravo falls into line and follows Josh through the concourse. Sykes and Lodis have managed to hang on to their autographed footballs all this time, while the rest of the Bravos have only their swag packets, precious mainly for the cheerleader calendar and those trophy-cleavage photos. It’s going to be a long, lonesome eleven months in Iraq, long and lonesome being best-case scenario. On this final walk through the stadium no one stops to thank the Bravos for their service, to harry them for autographs or cell phone snaps. Cowboys nation is in full retreat; cold, wet, tired, whipped, they are bent on getting home as fast as possible, the hell with geostrategy and defending freedoms.

Oh my people. When they come in sight of the gate Josh leads them over to the side of the concourse, out of the traffic flow. “We’re supposed to wait here,” he tells Bravo. “Some people are coming down to see you off.”

Who?

Josh laughs. “I don’t know!”

The Bravos look at one another. Whatever. Presently there’s a surge of bodies into the already packed concourse, and from this Bravo infers that the game has ended. The fans move in a toilsome mass toward the exit, and in their numbers and necessarily shambling step they seem to take on allegorical weight, as if their gloom, their air of bedraggled wretchedness, is meant to conjure up the ghost of every tribe that ever bestirred itself to leave one place and journey toward another in hopes of a life of lesser evil. Billy thinks, in other words, that they look like refugees. His cell buzzes, and he turns to the wall before daring to look. It is a two-word text from Faison.

Coming. Wait.

His eyes close, and his head tips forward and clunks the wall, his silent thank-you released as a pent-up breath. Then he’s nervous. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He’s got no training for this, no drill, nothing to fall back on. He can visualize himself and Faison at the ranch, but the transition, the getting there, his mind won’t grant him that. Maybe if he actually rams his head against the wall? Suddenly Albert and Mr. Jones appear, popping out of the crowd in a cartoon sort of spurt.

“Hah,” Dime screeches in his Will Ferrell voice. “Like a dog returning to his vomit, here he is!”

Albert grins, he seems perfectly cool with the greeting, though he’s careful to keep some distance between himself and Dime. Albert, Albert, Albert, the Bravos woof, making a kind of song.

“What about our deal?” Sykes cries.

“Guys, I tried. Believe me, I tried like hell, and I’m going to keep on trying, you can count on that. If there was ever a story that’s made for the movies, it’s you guys’, and I’m fully committed to making that happen.”

“But dude—”

“I know, I know, it’s a huge disappointment, I really wanted to nail this thing while you were here. What can I say? We gave it our best shot, but it’s not over, hell no. I’m gonna keep working this deal till it happens, I promise you that.”

Monklike murmurings rise from the Bravos, thankyouthankyouthankyou. A car is waiting to take Albert to the airport; he’s flying back to L.A. tonight. Even though his option extends for an entire two years, this feels like the end of something, with all the nostalgia and melancholy natural to endings. Albert says he’ll walk out to their limo with them; evidently Mr. Jones is coming too, perhaps to ensure Bravo departs without further insult to the Cowboys brand. They join the weary masses moving toward the exit. A kind of drone, a bottom-register vibraphonic hum emanates from somewhere up ahead, from the threshold, Billy realizes as they draw near. It is the ongoing moan of successions of fans as they step onto the plaza, a windswept barrens of icy concrete with nothing between here and the Arctic Circle but thousands of miles of recumbent plains. The Bravos curse, lower their heads, jam hands in pockets. The sleet gouges micro-divots in their faces and necks. Josh calls the soldiers to him and does a head count, then leads them across the plaza toward the limo lane, limos lined into the murk as far as the eye can see, and, oh Lord, just among these dozen in plain sight Billy counts four in the snow-white Hummer style.

“Billy.” Albert has fallen into step beside him. “I think your sergeant is mad at me.”

“Well, he’s kind of a moody guy.” Billy wishes Albert was on his other side, to block the wind.

“Listen, you’ve got my e-mail, right? And I’ve got yours. Let’s stay in touch.”

“Sure.” Billy is scanning the line of limos. How Faison is ever going to find him out here…

“I admire Dave a lot, but sometimes I wonder how reliable he is. So how about this, whenever I can’t get up with him, I’m going to contact you. You’ll be my point man for the rest of the squad.”

“Fine.” Billy raises his windward shoulder, digs his chin into his chest. The wind cuts across the plaza like an unmoored guillotine.

“Listen,” Albert says, lowering his voice, “you’ve got the most sense of all these guys, you and Dime. I trust you. You’re developing into a real leader. I know I can count on you to keep the communication flowing in a positive way.”

“Sure.” Billy is thinking if Faison hasn’t showed by the time Bravo is ready to leave, he’ll just bail, go AWOL right then and there. He’ll say he’s got to take a whiz or something, duck out of the limo; he’ll be as good as committed then, more so once he locates Faison and spills his guts at her feet.

“I meant what I said about the deal,” Albert is saying. “I’m going to keep working it. Sooner or later it has to happen, it’s just too good not to.”

Billy looks at him. “Really?”

“Well, sure. With Hilary basically attached, it’s only a matter of time.”

The plaza is lit like a prison exercise yard, all glaring white lights and jabby shadows. Billy turns to scan the area for Faison and almost at once registers a pattern within the crowd, a kind of rippling or cross-current aimed this way. There’s a blank moment, then Billy is opening his mouth, he knows what’s coming an instant before his mind forms the thought. He’s actually shouting as the roadies step from the crowd, then all he knows is that he’s down in a fetal curl as a ball-peen sort of thumping pummels his back. He realizes that’s himself he hears grunting with every whack, not that it hurts, it’s pressure weirdly stripped of pain, and about the time he figures out someone is kicking him here comes Mr. Jones stepping into the light. At this point time doesn’t slow down so much as congeal into a series of overlapping blocks. Here is Mr. Jones standing upright, pulling his gun from his suit jacket, then the massive body slam from behind that sends him flying, and the gun — a Beretta Px4, in the freeze-framed moment Billy sees it quite clearly — launched with great force from Mr. Jones’s hand. It takes off like a skate across the ice, skittering, spinning just beyond Billy’s reach, away it goes and he twists around despite the foot in his ribs because he has to see where it’s going—

Straight for Major Mac, as it turns out. With a veteran goalie’s timing and economy of effort, the major lifts his toe a couple of inches and traps the weapon under his shoe. He scoops up the Beretta, checks the safety, and chambers a round while holding the weapon down and away from his body, then with the elegance that comes of many hours of practice, he raises his arm and fires straight overhead,

BAM.

In all of tomorrow’s exhaustive media coverage of the game — the straight news stories, the human-interest piffle, the brain-draining chatter of the TV and radio jocks — there will be not a word about gunfire after the game. The Bravos will agree this is very strange. Surely thousands heard the roar of the gun; certainly those many hundreds on the plaza who ducked at the report, screamed, cowered, threw themselves on their children, or took off running, and whoever was kicking the shit out of Billy abruptly stopped. For some moments Billy simply lies there, enjoying the profound inner peace that comes of not being kicked. He tips his head to keep the blood from running into his eyes and watches Major Mac, who sets the safety on the Beretta and carefully places it on the ground. Then the major stands tall with his arms T-squared, not crooked at the elbows, not with his hands on his head, postures too suggestive of surrender. No, he stands with his arms straight out to the sides, simply to show the charging cops he is no longer armed.

“Major Mac dah man,” Billy mutters. He says this mainly to hear himself, to see if he’s basically all right.

It takes the police some while to sort things out. That there are so many different kinds of police seems to complicate things. Eventually the Bravo limo is located and brought forward, and the soldiers are herded into it while discussion continues on the plaza nearby. Albert and Dime are out there, and Josh, and Mr. Jones, all conferring with a cadre of the higher-ranking cops. Major Mac stands slightly apart, not in custody per se but with an officer meaningfully placed on either side. The handful of roadies thus far apprehended stand in a miserable clump, handcuffed, heads down, their backs to the wind.

An officer leans into the limo’s open rear door. “Anybody here need to go to a hospital?”

The soldiers shake their heads. Noooooo.

The officer hesitates. Almost every Bravo is bleeding from the face or head. The roadies came at them with wrenches, pipes, crowbars, God knows what else.

“Just checking,” the officer says, and withdraws.

They find two cold packs in the limo’s first-aid kit and pass them around. Mango has a gash over his left eye. Crack lost two teeth. A goose egg of a contusion is rising on Day’s forehead. Sykes and Lodis are bleeding from the nose and scalp, respectively. Billy’s cheek has been laid open, a two-inch tear along the ridge of the bone — that’s the shot that took him down, he guesses. His torso throbs with a muffled, tumbled sort of ache, nothing major, but he’s not fooled. He knows tomorrow it’s going to hurt like hell.

Dime climbs in and takes a seat. “Cops want everybody’s name and contact info,” he says, passing a clipboard and pen to Day.

“Sergeant, are we going to jail?” Mango asks.

“Nah, we’re victims, dawg.”

“How ’bout Major Mac?” Lodis wants to know.

“Major Mac’s a goddamn national treasure. Nobody’s putting Major Mac in jail.”

“Sergeant,” says A-bort, “we’re thinking conspiracy here. Norm put the roadies on us ’cause we wouldn’t take his deal.”

“I’ll mention it to the cops,” Dime says, not smiling. This is a joke. Billy’s cell buzzes and it’s a text from Faison, Which white hummer, and he bolts from the limo even as he’s punching in her number. One of the cops huffs, “Where do you think you’re going?” but Billy’s focus is such, all his being attuned to the one true thing, that a kind of godly aura repels the officer’s challenge.

Her cell barely rings and she’s clicking on. “Hey!”

“See where the cop lights are, all the cops standing around?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“That’s ours. I’m standing outside.”

“Stay there,” she says, “I’m walking that way.” Then, “I see you! Don’t move, I see you, I see you…”

He sees her cutting through the crowd, white boots flashing underneath a dark overcoat, and her hair, a muted silver under the horrible prison lights, spilling everywhere, over her shoulders, down her back, across her breasts. She looks so good that he feels himself empty out, no breath, no pain, no thought, no past, his whole life distilled to the sight of Faison striding toward him in all her sleet-spangled glory.

He must have started walking toward her, because they meet with a satisfying crunch. For several moments they can do no more than clutch each other. The crowd parts around them, so many people moving past that a kind of privacy is conjured from the sheer multitudes.

“What happened to your face?” she cries, pulling back, touching his cheek. “Omigod, you’re bleeding.” She glances past him at the cops and emergency lights.

“Those guys from halftime, the stage crew. They jumped us.” He laughs. “I guess they were still pissed off?”

“Oh God. Oh my God, you’re hurt.” She’s studying his cheek, fingers brushing the edge of his cut. “Trouble sure seems to follow you guys around.”

They kiss, hard. It is impossible for them not to be all over each other. “This sucks,” she soon murmurs, and pulls away just enough to unbutton her coat, a swift downward sweep of her hand and the coat is opening, wrapping around him. She pulls him close and moans as her chest meets his. She’s still in her cheerleader uniform. He moves his hands inside the coat and grasps her hips. She shudders, then rises on her toes, her pelvis striving for purchase on that hump in his pants, her mouth clamped so hard that his lips turn numb. “Go for it,” someone says, brushing past them. Another passerby advises them to “get a room.” After minutes or possibly hours Faison drops back on her heels and slumps against him.

“Oh God. Why do you have to go?”

“I’ll be back on furlough. Probably in the spring.”

She lifts her head. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” If I’m still vertical, he thinks.

“Then you better make time for me.”

“Count on it.”

“Seriously, I mean it. How about if you come stay with me?”

He can’t speak. He can barely breathe. She’s looking from his left eye to his right, back and forth, back and forth, always her two double-teaming his one.

“I know it’s crazy, but we’re in a war, right? All I know is that it’s right, it just feels right. I want every second I can get with you.” She shivers, shakes her head. “I’m not the type to get bowled over, not like this. I’ve never felt this way about anybody.”

Billy pulls her close; her head falls against his chest. “Me either,” he murmurs, the sound of his voice vibrating through their bodies. “Girl, I’d just about run away with you.”

She lifts her head, and with that one look he knows it’s not to be. Her confusion decides it, that flicker of worry in her eyes. What is he talking about? Fear of losing her binds him firmly to the hero he has to be.

She touches his cheek. “Baby, we don’t have to run anywhere. You just get yourself home and we’ll be fine right here.”

He doesn’t resist, because there’s just so much to lose. He will forgo the greater risk in favor of the lesser, even though the lesser — and isn’t this funny, funny! — is the one that might get him killed. He plants his face in her hair and breathes deep, trying to store enough of her smell to last for all time.

YO BRAAAAVOOOOOO booms across the plaza, Sergeant Dime’s parade-ground bellow. MOO-HOOOOVING OUT! LET’S GOOOO!

“That’s me,” Billy whispers. Faison moans, and they fall into another bruising kiss. There’s a violent moment when they try to pull apart — they grab at each other, pick and jab at clothes, body parts, a weird rage burning through them that they can’t quite control. Faison’s face suddenly crumples and she mashes into him.

BRAAAVOOOOO! NOW!

Billy kisses her lips and pulls away, and it feels like the last thing he’ll ever do. “Be careful!” she calls after him, and he raises his fist in acknowledgment. “I’ll pray for you!” she calls louder, and that just makes him feel hopeless. He’s dying out here, dying, and that thing in his pants makes it difficult to walk, the rock-hard prong of his virgin member like a flag that refuses to fly at half-mast. He knocks at it with his wrist, the back of his hand, trying to force the creature down without the whole world seeing, and then, oh shit, they’re on him, a group of seven or eight fans who want him to sign their game programs. So grateful, they say. So proud. Awesome. Amazing. This only takes a couple of moments, but while he’s scribbling his name it dawns on Billy that these smiling, clueless citizens are the ones who came correct. For the past two weeks he’s been feeling so superior and smart because of all the things he knows from the war, but forget it, they are the ones in charge, these saps, these innocents, their homeland dream is the dominant force. His reality is their reality’s bitch; what they don’t know is more powerful than all the things he knows, and yet he’s lived what he’s lived and knows what he knows, which means what, something terrible and possibly fatal, he suspects. To learn what you have to learn at the war, to do what you have to do, does this make you the enemy of all that sent you to the war?

Their reality dominates, except for this: It can’t save you. It won’t stop any bombs or bullets. He wonders if there’s a saturation point, a body count that will finally blow the homeland dream to smithereens. How much reality can unreality take? He’s in somewhat of a daze as he passes off the last program and starts walking toward the curb, hands fisted in his pockets to hopefully hide his crazed erection. Thank you! the nice people call after him. Thank you for your service! Sleet pecks at his eyes, but he hardly feels it anymore. The cops step aside as he approaches, revealing Josh and Albert standing by the limo’s rear door, and Albert is grinning, waving him on. “Hurry!” he cries playfully. “Come on! They’re leaving!” As if this was the ride you couldn’t miss, the one that would save your life? Albert gives him a quick hug as he slides past. Josh says good luck and squeezes his arm, then Billy is stepping off the curb, half-falling onto the limo’s rear banquette.

Albert slams the door behind him and throws out a final wave. “We’re good,” Dime calls to the driver. “Let’s go.”

“Hell yeah, get us the fuck out of here,” says Sykes.

“Before they kill us,” Crack seconds. “Take us someplace safe. Take us back to the war.”

“Seat belts, everyone,” Dime tells the squad, and Bravo paws around the seats, sorting out their belts. Dime notices the steeple in Billy’s lap.

“Looking proud there, soldier,” he murmurs, just between the two of them.

“Some things can’t be helped, Sergeant.”

Dime chuckles. “You say good-bye to your girl?”

Billy nods and turns to the window. He knows he will never see Faison again, but how can he know? How does anyone ever know anything — the past is a fog that breathes out ghost after ghost, the present a freeway thunder run at 90 mph, which makes the future the ultimate black hole of futile speculation. And yet he knows, at least he thinks he knows, he feels it seeded in the purest certainty of his grief as he finds his seat belt and snaps it shut, that snick like the final lock of a vast and complex system. He’s in. Bound for the war. Good-bye, good-bye, good night, I love you all. He sits back, closes his eyes, and tries to think about nothing as the limo takes them away.