Painful to watch, and lacking in essential dignity — is this why he’s always getting dissed? Tales abound of weird encounters — Norm mooned en masse on South Beach in Miami, mooned again from the infield at Churchill Downs, roughed up by a gang of frisky young hedge-fund managers in the men’s room of “21” in New York City. And yet he is the owner, so it must be working for him on some level. Billy runs his gaze over the rest of the Oglesby clan and they are working every bit as hard as Norm, they are keys jangling on the same live wire, all spark and flash and brassy salesmanship, and Billy tries to imagine living at such a pitch, always on, always playing to the wider stage, channeling all your best energies into the public realm.
Jesus Christ, it looks like a hell of a lot of work. More than sympathy Billy feels respect for them, for the discipline it must take to get up every day and carry the entire Cowboys nation on their backs.
Mr. Jones clicks off and turns to Billy. “Some Aleve’s coming down for you right now.”
“Thank you, sir.” Billy tries not to look at the holster bulge. “And thank you for all this.” He waves his cup at the crowd. “This is really nice.”
“Well, we appreciate you fine young men being with us today. It’s an honor to be your host.”
“You know what I’d like to know,” Billy blurts, suddenly bold or careless with that fresh hit of bourbon in his gut, “is how you do it? I mean, business. All this. How do you make it happen?” He falters, racks his brain for intelligent-sounding business vocabulary. “I mean, okay, like where do you start, where does the money come from for, well, the stadium? The land and construction and everything, then paying the players, the coaches, I mean we’re talking about some serious cash outlay here, am I right?”
Mr. Jones laughs, not unkindly. “Pro football’s a capital-intensive business, that’s true,” he says in a patient, teaching-a-retard voice. “The key is leverage relative to cash flow, whether you can generate enough of a revenue stream to service your debt and still cover your current obligations. So it’s a fair question. In a way it’s the question. You’ve definitely put your finger on it.”
Billy nods as if he knew all along. “Uh huh, but just from a tactical standpoint”—whoa, nice—“say when Mr. Oglesby decided he wanted to buy the Cowboys, what did he do? I mean, I know he didn’t just whip out his credit card and say, Hm, I think I’ll buy the Cowboys today.”
“No”—Mr. Jones smiles—“it wasn’t quite like that. But let me tell you, leverage is a beautiful thing. In the right hands it can literally move mountains, and Norman Oglesby, well, let’s just say my boss is a genius when it comes to structuring deals. I’ve never known anybody with his feel for numbers, and he’s the best negotiator I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched him take on a roomful of New York investment bankers and come away with the deal he wanted, and let me tell you, those are some big boys. They’re used to getting what they want, but not on that day.”
Holy shit, Billy thinks, we’re talking business. He is having an actual adult business conversation with a high-ranking Cowboys executive, an extraordinary Moment in his life even though he knows he’s barely or not even hanging on and Mr. Jones is totally humoring him. But still. He’s here. They’re talking. “Debt ratio,” Mr. Jones is saying,
Mr. Jones’s cell phone chirps. He checks the screen, flashes a smile at Billy, and steps away. Billy gets a refresher shot for his Coke and stands off to the side of the bar, thinking. Life in the Army has been a crash course in the scale of the world, which is such that he finds himself in a constant state of wonder as to how things come to be. Stadiums, for example. Airports. The interstate highway system. Wars. He wants to know how is it paid for, where do the billions come from? He imagines a shadowy, math-based parallel world that exists not just beside but amid the physical world, a transparent interlay of Matrix-style numbers through which flesh-and-blood humans move like fish through kelp. This is where the money lives, an integer-based realm of code and logic, geometric modules of cause and effect. The realm of markets, contracts, transactions, elegant vectors of fiber-optic agency whereby mind-boggling sums of mysterious wealth shoot around the world on beams of light. It seems the airiest thing there is and yet the realest, but how you enter that world he has no idea except by passage through that other foreign country called college, and that ain’t happening. He will not return to the classroom, ever, the mere thought inflames a whole host of piss-offs and associated grudges that go all the way back to kindergarten, not to mention the sheer soul-sucking boredom of those years. If there is real knowledge to be had in the Texas public schools he never found it, and only lately has he started to feel the loss, the huge criminal act of his state-sanctioned ignorance as he struggles to understand the wider world. How it works, who gains, who loses, who decides. It is not a casual thing, this knowledge. In a way it might be everything. A young man needs to know where he stands in the world, not just as a matter of basic human dignity but as determinants in the ways and means of survival, and what you might hope to gain by application of honest effort—
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.”