Phil Klay - Redeployment

“I’m tired of telling war stories,”I say, not so much to Jenks as to the empty bar behind him. We’re at a table in the corner, with a view of the entrance.

Jenks shrugs and makes a face. Hard to tell what it means. There’s so much scar tissue and wrinkled skin, I never know if he’s happy or sad or pissed or what. He’s got no hair and no ears either, so even though it’s been three years after he got hit, I still feel like his head is something I shouldn’t stare at. But you look a man in the eye when you talk to him, so for Jenks I force my eyes in line with his.

“I don’t tell war stories,” he says, and takes a sip of his glass of water.

“Well, you’re gonna have to when Jessie and Sarah get here.”

He gives a nervous laugh and points to his face. “What’s to say?”

I take a sip of my beer and look him up and down. “Not a lot.”

Jenks’s story is pretty obvious, and that’s another weird thing because Jenks used to be me, basically. We’re the same height, grew up in the same kind of shitty suburban towns, joined the Marine Corps at the same time, and had the same plan to move to New York when we got out. Everybody always said we could be brothers. Now, looking at him is like looking at what I would have been if my vehicle had hit that pressure plate. He’s me, but less lucky.

Jenks sighs and sits back in his chair. “At least for you, it gets you laid,” he says.

“What does?”

“Telling war stories.”

“Sure.” I take a sip of beer. “I don’t know. Depends.”

“On what?”

“Circumstances.”

Jenks nods. “Remember that little reunion we had with all the ESB guys?”

“Hell, yeah,” I say. “Way we were talking, you would have thought we were some Delta Force, Jedi ninja motherfuckers.”

“The girls ate it up.”

“We did pretty well,” I say, “for a bunch of dumbass Marines hitting on city girls.”

Jenks gives me a look. Right around his eyes is the only place where his skin looks halfway normal; the eyes themselves are pale powder blue. They never really struck me before he got hit, but they’ve got a sort of intensity now in contrast with the boiled-pork-pink smoothness of his skin grafts. “Of course, that shit only worked because I was there,” he says.

Now I’m laughing, and after a second Jenks starts laughing, too. “Damn straight,” I say. “Who’s gonna call bullshit when you’re sitting there in the corner looking all Nightmare on Elm Street ?”

He chuckles. “Happy to help,” he says.

“It does help. I mean, you tell a chick, ‘Yeah, I went to war, but I never fired my rifle… .’”

“Or ‘Hey, I spent most of the deployment paving roads. Building force pro. Repairing potholes.’”

“Exactly,” I say. “Even the antiwar chicks—which in this city is all of them—want to hear you were in some shit.”

Jenks points to his face. “Some shit.”

“Right. Don’t have to say anything. They’ll start imagining all sorts of stuff.”

“Black Hawk Down.”

“The Hurt Locker.”

He laughs again. “Or like you said, Nightmare on Elm Street .”

I lean forward, elbows on the table. “You remember what it was like, going to a bar in dress blues?”

Jenks gets quiet for a second. “Fuck, man. Yeah. Automatic panty dropper.”

“No matter how ugly you are.”

He grunts. “Well, there’s a limit.”

We sit in silence for a bit, and then I let out a sigh. “I’m just fucking tired of chicks getting off on it.”

“On what? The war?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I had a girl start crying when I told her some shit.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Some bullshit.”

“About me?”

“Yeah, about you, motherfucker.” Now he’s definitely smiling. The left side of his face is twisted up, the wrinkled skin over the cheeks bunched and his thin-lipped slit of a mouth straining toward where his ear should be. The right side stays still, but that’s standard for him, given the nerve damage.

“That’s nice,” he says.

“I wanted to choke her.”

“Why?”

I don’t have an exact answer for that, and while I’m trying to find a way to put it into words, the door swings open and two girls walk in, though they’re not the girls we’re waiting for. Jenks turns and looks. Without even thinking about it, I size them up—one pretty girl, maybe a seven or an eight, with her less attractive friend, who isn’t really worth giving a number to. Jenks turns away from them and looks back at me.

“I don’t know,” I continue. “I was playing her. You know. ‘Oh, baby, I’m hurting and I need your soft woman touch.’”

“You were playing her,” he said. “And it worked. So you wanted to choke her?”

“Yeah.” I laugh. “That’s kind of fucked up.”

“At least you’re getting some.”

“I’d rather go to Nevada, fuck a prostitute.” I almost believe what I’m saying. Using money would be better. But I’d probably just end up telling the hooker about Jenks anyway.

Jenks looks down at his glass, his eyes tight.

“You ever thought of getting a hooker?” I ask. “We could check the ads at the back of the Village Voice, see if anybody catches your eye. Why not?”

Jenks takes a sip of water. “You think I can’t get some?” His voice sounds playful, like he’s making a joke, but I can’t tell.

“No,” I say.

“Not even a pity fuck?”

“You don’t want that.”

“No, I don’t.”

I look at the girls down at the other end of the bar. Pretty girl’s got dark hair slashing down the side of her face and a lip piercing. Her friend is in a bright green coat.

“Think of all those other burn victims out there.” I look back at Jenks and give him a big grin. “And really fat chicks.”

“And chicks with AIDS,” he says.

“Nah, that’s not enough. Maybe, like, AIDS and herpes combined.”

“Yeah, that sounds awesome,” he says. “I’ll put an ad on Craigslist.”

Now he’s laughing for sure. Even before he got hit, when things got shitty he’d start laughing. I keep a smile plastered on my face, but for some reason now I start feeling it, the same feeling I get when I talk about Jenks and I get into it for real. Sometimes, when I’m drunk and I’m with a chick who seems like she cares, I let it out. Problem is, if I do, I can’t sleep with her. Or I shouldn’t, because then I feel like shit afterward and I walk around the city wanting to kill someone.

“There’s plenty other guys like me,” Jenks says. “I know one guy, got married, he’s having a kid.”

“Anything can happen,” I say.

“It’s bullshit anyway.” There’s a bit of hardness in his voice.

“What?”

“Finding somebody.”

I’m not sure if he’s serious.

“I was okay at it before,” he says. “And in dress blues I was a fucking player. Now, it’d be insulting for me to even roll up on a chick.”

“Like, ‘Hey, I think you’re ugly enough you might fuck me.’” I put a stupid smile on my face, but Jenks doesn’t seem to notice.

“Nobody wants this,” he says. “Nobody even wants to have to look past this. It’s too much.”

There’s a little silence where I’m trying to come up with something to say to that, and then Jenks puts his hand on my arm.

“But it’s okay,” he says. “I’ve given up.”

“Yeah? That’s okay?”

“You see that girl over there?”

Jenks points to the pair of girls, and though he doesn’t specify, he’s obviously talking about the hot one.

“Before, I’d see her, and I’d feel like I had to come up with a plan, get her to talk to me. But now, with Jessie and Sarah”—he checks his watch—“whenever they get here, I can just have a conversation.” He looks briefly back at the girls. “Used to be, I could never just sit in a bar with a woman.” He looks at me, then back to the girls. “Now, knowing I got no chance, it’s relaxing. I don’t have to bother. Nobody’s gonna think I’m less of a man if I can’t pick up some girl. I only talk to people I actually give a shit about.”