I’m going down. Like a slide show, alive, dead, alive, dead, alive, dead. Billy was doing about ten different things at once, unpacking his medical kit, jamming a fresh magazine into his rifle, talking to Shroom, slapping his face, yelling at him to stay awake, trying to track the direction of the incoming rounds and crouching low with absolute fuck-all for cover. The Fox footage shows him firing with one hand and working on Shroom with the other, but he doesn’t remember that. He thinks he must have been cutting Shroom’s ammo rack loose, pulling the release on his IBA to get at his wounds. Is this what they mean by courage? Simply doing all the things you were trained to do, albeit everything at once and very fast. He remembers the whole front of his body being covered in blood and half-wondering if any of it was his, his bloody hands so slick he finally had to tear open the compression bandage with his teeth, and when he turned back to Shroom the big bastard was sitting up! Then going right back down, Billy sliding crabwise to catch him in his lap, and Shroom looked up at him then with his brow furrowed, eyes burning like he had something crucial to say.
“He’s your sergeant,” Shroom said that day outside his Conex. “It’s his job to make your life as miserable as possible.” Then he went on to explain to Billy how Dime’s mastery of the psyche involved intermittent doses of positive reinforcement, intermittent being a more effective behavior-modification tool than a consistent program of same. Whatever. From all his reading Shroom knew lots of useless stuff, but what Billy is thinking here at the Stadium Club is, Thank you for making us feel like shit, Sergeant! Thank you for ruining this delicious meal! Probably the last non-Army-issued or — contracted-for meal they will get for some time, but no matter, they are scum-sucking shitbag frontline grunts and their task at this moment is to shut up and eat.
Dime snaps, “A-bort, what the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m texting Lake, Sergeant. Just saying what up.”
Dime can’t very well object to that. He scans the table for other targets, but everyone’s staying low to his plate, shoveling it in. Then Albert starts chuckling.
“Here, take a look at this.” He passes the BlackBerry to Dime.
“Dude’s serious? Can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid he is.”
Dime turns to Billy. “Dude’s saying our movie’s another Walking Tall, but in Iraq.”
“Ah.” Billy has never seen Walking Tall. “Was Hilary Swank in that?”
“No, Billy, Hilary Swank was not — Jesus, never mind. Albert, who are these people?”
“Twerps,” Albert says. “Nerds, wimps, liars, they’re a bunch of skinny mutts with not much brains chasing a fake rabbit around a track. Content scares them, no, absolutely terrifies them. ‘Is this any good? Ewwww, is it bad? Ewwww, I just can’t tell!’ It’s pathetic, all that money and no taste. You could hit them over the head with another Chinatown and they’d say let’s stick a couple of cute little dogs in it.”
Dime is casual. “So you’re saying we’re screwed.”
“Whoa, did I say that? Did I say that? Oh no indeed, I don’t think I did. I’ve made a living in this business for thirty-five years, do I look screwable?” The Bravos laugh — well, no, screwable does not leap to mind when considering Albert. “Hollywood’s a sick, twisted place, I will most certainly grant you that. Corrupt, decadent, full of practicing sociopaths, roughly analogous to, say, the court of Louis the Sun King in seventeenth-century France. Don’t laugh, guys, I’m serious, sometimes it helps to visualize these things in concrete terms. Gobs of wealth floating around, obscene wealth, complete over-the-top excess in every way, and every jerk in town’s got their hustle going, trying to break off their little piece of it. But for that you’ve got to get to the king, because everything goes through the king, right? But that’s a problem. Huge problem. Access is a problem. You can’t just walk in off the street and pitch the king, but at any given moment there’ll be twenty, thirty people hanging around the court who can get to the king. They’ve got access, influence, they’re tapped in — the key is getting one of those guys attached to your deal. Same thing in Hollywood, there’s maybe twenty, thirty people at any one time who can make a project go. The names might change from year to year, but the dynamic’s the same, the number stays about the same. You get one of those people attached to your deal, you’re gold.”
“Swank,” Crack offers.
“Swank is gold,” Albert confirms.
“Wahlberg?” Mango asks.
“Marky can make a project go.”
“How ’bout Wesley Snipes,” says Lodis. “Like, you know, say we got him to play me.”
“Interesting.” Albert ponders a moment. “Not this movie, but I tell you what, Lodis. I’ll see if I can get you the bitch part in his next film, how about that.”
Aaaaaaaannnnnnnhhhhhhh, everybody slags on Lodis, who just grins with food mashed all over his teeth. They’re interrupted by a Stadium Club patron who wants to say hello. It’s never the young or middle-aged men who stop to speak but always the older guys, the silverbacks secure in the fact that they’re past their fighting prime. They thank the soldiers for their service. They ask how is lunch. They offer praise for such assumed attributes as tenacity, aggressiveness, love of country. This particular patron, a fit, ruddy fellow with some black still in his hair, introduces himself with a lavish trawling of vowels that comes out sounding like “How-Wayne.” Soon he’s telling them about the bold new technology his family’s oil company uses to juice more crude out of the Barnett Shale, something to do with salt water and chemical fracturing agents.
“Some of my friends’ kids are serving over there with you,” How-Wayne tells them. “So it’s a personal thing with me, boosting domestic production, lessening our dependence on foreign oil. I figure the better I do my job, the sooner we can bring you young men home.”
“Thank you!” Dime responds. “That’s just excellent, sir. We certainly do appreciate that.”
“I’m just trying to do my part.” And that was cool, Billy will later reflect. If he’d just said enjoy your meal like everybody else and returned to his lucrative patriotic life, but no, he got greedy. He had to squeeze just a little bit more from Bravo. So, he says, just from your own perspective, how do you think we’re doing over there?
“How’re we doing?” Dime echoes brightly. “Just from our own perspective?” The Bravos fold their hands and look down at their plates, though several can’t help smiling. Albert cocks his head and pockets his BlackBerry, suddenly interested. “Well, it’s a war,” Dime continues in that same bright voice, “which is by definition an extreme situation, people trying very hard to terminate each other. But I’m far from qualified to speak to the big picture, sir. All I can tell you with any confidence is that the exchange of force with intent to kill, that is truly a mind-altering experience, sir.”