I ain’t scared, I’m comin’ through,
I ain’t scared, I ain’t scared,
Big man can’t you handle this good love I’m offerin’ you?
Far across the field the Cowboys cheerleaders have formed a kick line, and even at this distance, through the haze of sleet and fireworks smoke, Billy’s eyes go straight to Faison, his groan a mere drop in the ocean of sound. Destiny’s Child is mounting the stairs, pausing every few steps to throw sassy looks over their shoulders, T&A bait for the TV cameras. Billy doesn’t so much as twitch when they pause on his tier, a fulmination of animal heat roaring at his side. For as long as they pose he doesn’t move, but once they’re gone he raises his eyes to the sky, then lifts his face a few degrees to get the weather’s full effect.
The sleet stings, but he doesn’t blink. He lets it come, the spray of ice like a billion needles showering down on him, then it’s like the sleet is dangling and Billy’s flying through it, zooming toward some unnamed but promising place. Everything else falls away and he’s happy, free, the sting in his eyes is all speed and upward motion. It feels like escape velocity. It feels like the future. He’s still standing there, rocketing toward the world to come, when Day taps him on the shoulder and says halftime is over.
IF IN THE FUTURE YOU TELL ME THIS IS LOVE, I WILL NOT DISAPPOINT YOU
NO ONE COMES FOR them. They gather around Sykes and wait as instructed for the woman in the Russian officer’s cap, but Bravo has fallen through a crack in the collective mind and so they stand there marooned while a roadie crew swarms over the stage and ash from the fireworks settles on their heads. They have been through the wringer of a world-class spectacle and need some time for their nerves to recover. Like, about six years might do it? Bravo is roasted, toasted, and ready to pop, or maybe already popping in the case of Sykes, who sits himself down on the bottom step and weeps sparklers of racy little hopeless tears. “I don’t know why I’m fuckin’ cryin’!” he squawks when Lodis asks. “I just am, dammit! I just am!”
“You guys have to leave,” the roadie foreman barks at Bravo.
“Well fuck you too,” Mango mumbles as the guy stalks off, and the Bravos stay put. Day and A-bort sit down on either side of Sykes while the rest of them mill around feeling torn and frayed, fluttery hands shoved deep in their pockets.
“Dudes, we finally saw Beyoncé,” Crack points out.
“Woo, ain’t we special.”
“Yeah, but we saw her up close.”
“Uh-huh, she’s hot and everything. But I’ve had better.”
They manage a few yuks at that. Billy finds himself standing next to Dime, and confides:
“Sergeant, I feel sick.”
Dime gives him a once-over. “You look okay to me.”
“Not like sick sick. More like bent. Baked.” He taps his head. “Halftime sort of skitzed me out.”
Dime laughs, at-at-at, a machine-gun rattle high in his throat. “Son, try to look at it this way. It’s just another normal day in America.”
Billy’s heart melts a little at that son. The stage is disappearing around them like a mortally wounded ship beneath the waves.
“I don’t think I even know what normal is anymore.”
“You’re fine, Billy, you’re fine. I’m fine, you’re fine, everybody’s fine. He’s fine.” Dime nods at Sykes. “Everything is fine.”
Billy looks at Sykes and starts to ask, Yeah, what are we going to do about him? but the foreman is coming at them again, snapping at Bravo to get the hell off his stage.
“So where we supposed to go?” Crack snaps back. “Nobody told us where to go.”
The foreman stops, spares them a harried moment’s regard. He’s well over six feet, bearded, broad shouldered, with a face slack and frowzy as a blown-out air bag, but there’s a shot of chemical voltage in his eyes, the crazed-lumberjack look of the veteran roadie. His gaze lingers for a second on the hot mess that is Sykes.
“Look, I have no fucking idea where you’re supposed to go, but you can’t stay here.”
“All right, Rufus, tell you what,” Crack answers. “We’ll go right after you’re done sucking my dick, how about that?”
Later, thinking back on it, Billy will be struck by the fact that he never saw an actual punch being thrown. It doesn’t last long — ten, fifteen seconds at most? Though in the way of such things it seems to go on for hours. At first the foreman tries to lift Crack like he thinks he’s going to bodily throw him off the stage, so he’s bigger than Crack but not that much bigger, and what a bummer it must be for the guy when he finds himself locked in a young-buck clench. For an instant the two men hardly move. Only their bulging eyes and necks betray the tons of thrust at work, then they’re twisting, spinning, they are the hub of a free-radical swirl of bodies that slides off the stage onto the field. People are pushing, chesting up, there’s much half-assed shoving and garbled smack talk about who dissed who and who crossed whose line and of course everybody’s gotta have their boy’s back. A melee, you’d call it. A fracas. Not quite a throw-down brawl right here on the sacred turf of Texas Stadium. Billy is skying on a full-bore adrenaline rip as arms, hands, faces go crashing by, then there’s Dime stroking past like a man swimming rapids, pushing through bodies to pry Crack clear. A roadie swipes at Dime’s back and Billy grabs his collar and there’s the guy’s wild look as he twists around, and Billy thinks: Whoa shit, don’t let go now. The guy reels as Billy rides him from behind, riding, riding, he wishes it didn’t look so much like he’s humping the guy but he hangs on until the cops wade in, and all it takes is a word from Dime for Bravo to disengage, “like a bunch of excellent hunting dogs” as he likes to say of his squad.
Casualties, minor. Crack has taken an elbow in the eye; Lodis’s lip is split and bloody; Mango’s ear tenderized by a roadie headlock. The cops herd Bravo down the sideline and hear out their story, then send them packing across the field toward the home sideline. “Somebody over there can tell you where to go,” the cops say, so like the remnants of some long-lost jungle patrol Bravo makes its straggling way across the field. They’ve passed the first hash mark when Billy looks up and sees, oh mother of mercy, Faison coming out to meet them, her head cocked at a questioning skew, face full of concern. She’s pumped, Billy can tell. This is a girl who likes her drama.
“What happened?” She peers up at him, touches his arm as they meet. The rest of the Bravos lapse into reverential silence.
“It was stupid, just this stupid little thing. We kind of got into it with the roadies over there.”
“Were yall fighting? We couldn’t tell if yall were fighting or goofing around.”
“I guess we were fighting. Though you couldn’t call it much of a fight.”
“All we did was ask if we could help!” A-bort says, and everybody yuks except Sykes, who breaks down all over again.
“Are you hurt?” Faison asks Billy, then she’s speaking to all the Bravos. “Is anybody hurt? Oh my God, look at your lip!” she cries at Lodis. “Who’s supposed to be taking care of you guys?”
She’s incensed to learn that Bravo has been left on its own. “All right,” she says, turning, motioning Bravo to follow, “yall come with me, we’ll get this figured out. I can’t believe they just left yall stranded out here, that is so NOT the way we treat our guests.”