Ben Fountain - Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“He misses his wife.”

“Wow.” Faison seems impressed. “Really?”

“He’s kind of an emotional guy.”

She keeps glancing over at Sykes. She’s fascinated, or perhaps just troubled that nothing’s being done about him.

“Does he have kids?”

“One on the ground, one on the way.”

“Oh my God, I can’t imagine. Do you think I should go over and talk to him?”

“I think he just wants to be alone right now.”

“You’re probably right. Sheesh, the sacrifices you guys make! How long did you say you’re gonna be over there?”

“Through next October, unless we get stop-lossed again.”

“Oh Lord.” It comes out as a kind of rattling moan, oh Lord, like she’s rollerblading on a gravel road. “And you’ve been there how long already?”

“We infilled August twelfth.”

“Oh me. Oh my God. You must dread going back.”

“I guess. In a way.” Somehow their faces have ended up mere inches apart, and this seems like the most natural thing in the world, as basic as wind, tides, the magnetic north. “It is what it is, I guess. But we’ll all be together, that’s something. That counts for a lot, actually.”

“I think I know what you mean. There’s that whole bonding thing when you’re challenged as a group.” While she talks Billy is trying to memorize her face, the supreme excellence, for example, of the delicate butterfly clasp of the bridge of her nose, or the smattering of freckles high on her forehead, the way their gingery carotene tint matches her hair exactly. The desire comes over him to stretch his mouth wide open, as wide as a lion’s, say, and tenderly hold her perfect face between his lips for a while.

“Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing might be a mistake. I mean, I think we ought to be fighting terrorism and everything, but it’s like, okay, we got rid of Saddam, maybe we should just bring our guys home and let the Iraqis work it out for themselves.”

“Sometimes we think that too,” Billy says, remembering something Shroom once said: Maybe the light’s at the other end of the tunnel.

“Ha ha, no doubt.” She peers past his shoulder. “The second half’s gonna start in a minute,” she says, then pulls back and looks Billy in the eye. “Listen, can I ask you something personal?”

“Sure.”

“Are you seeing anybody?”

“Not me,” he allows bravely, with breezy resignation. He doesn’t care if she knows he’s not a player.

“Me either. So how about if we stay in touch.”

“Ye-uh,” he says, half choking on it, then “ yes. Yes, I think we should.”

“Good.” She’s suddenly very brisk and businesslike. “You’ve got your phone? Get out your phone and I’ll give you my information, then call me and leave a message so I’ll have yours. Because, frankly, I don’t wanna lose you.”

She says it just like that, a casually earthshaking statement of stupendous fact. Him, Billy, a person not to be wanted lost! His life has become miraculous to him. Maybe he should just go ahead and ask her to marry him.

“What’s your last name?” He’s got his phone out.

“Zorn.”

Billy clears his throat.

“I know, everybody thinks it’s funny.”

Billy says nothing.

“It means ‘anger’ in German.”

“Roger that,” he deadpans.

“Stop it! You’re so funny.”

She’s at his side, their heads practically touching as she watches him key in her information. The phone gives them socially acceptable cover for standing so close, good thing because it’s happening in front of thousands of people. Billy breathes deep, pulling in her clean outdoors smell, the sharp vanilla tang of snow and winter wind. It’s as if she’s absorbed the sweetest essence that the season has to offer.

“Who’s Kathryn?”

Billy is scrolling through his contact list. “My sister.”

“You’ve got a call from her.”

“I know.” He highlights the next name. “That’s my other sister.”

“They older, younger?”

“I’m the youngest. There’s ol’ Mom.”

“Denise? Not ‘Mom’?”

“Well, that’s her name.”

Faison laughs. “Where’s your Dad?”

“My Dad’s disabled. He doesn’t have his own phone.”

“Oh!”

“He had a double stroke a couple of years ago, impaired his speech.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right. It’s life.”

She’s holding his arm just above the elbow, her grip concealed by the bush of her pom-poms. “Are you going to see them before you leave?”

Billy gets a sudden clutch in his throat. “Ah, no.” He swallows. It’s fine. “We all said our good-byes yesterday.”

“That sucks.” She snugs a few millimeters closer.

“There’s you.” He’s scrolled all the way to the end.

“Zorn. I’m always last on everybody’s list.”

“I’ll change you to Anger, that way you’ll be first.”

She laughs, looks over her shoulder. The cheerleaders are moving toward the tunnel to welcome the players onto the field. “Sweetie, I gotta go,” she says, and gives his arm a squeeze. Her hand recoils as if electrically shocked, then she’s squeezing again, then palpating his entire upper arm.

“ My God, what a great body you’ve got. Do you have even an ounce of fat on you?”

“Not so much, I guess.”

“Not so much I guess,” she echoes in a gruff voice, and laughs. She’s still feeling up his arm. “You don’t even know how good you are, do you? That makes it even better!” she declares with lip-smacking enthusiasm, then gives him a fierce fast hug, as if grasping a buoy before the storm tears her away. Billy practically keels over in a delirium of bliss. How wonderful, how absolutely holy to be appreciated for yourself, to be handled, petted, groped, pawed, and generally hungered over. “Okay, I gotta scoot,” she says, releasing him. “Come see me at the twenty, same place.”

Billy says he will, and she goes trotting down the sideline after the rest of the cheerleaders. Bravo turns as she jogs past, their eyes helplessly drawn to the bounce of her bottom inside those teeny tiny cup holders that pass for shorts. Billy punches up her number and waits through six rings while watching her take position at the mouth of the tunnel. The first players come jogging onto the field like rhinos on the plod. The Jumbotron cranks up a Guns N’ Roses riff, the cheerleaders rise on their toes and wave their pom-poms high, and a swell of applause rolls through the stands like thunder rumbling down the mountainside.

“Hi, you’ve reached Faison! I’m not able to take your call right now…”

It makes for an odd sensation, watching her real-time person in the middle distance while holding her disembodied voice to his ear. It puts a frame around the situation, gives it focus, perspective. It makes him aware of himself being aware of himself, and here is a mystery that seems worth thinking about, why this stacking of awareness should even matter. At the moment all he knows is that there’s structure in it, a pleasing sense of poise or mental ordering. A kind of knowledge, or maybe a bridge thereto — as if existence didn’t necessarily have to be a moron’s progress of lurching from one damn thing to another? As if you might aspire to some sort of context in your life, a condition he associates with adultness. Then comes the beep, and he has to talk. The funny little message he leaves for her — two seconds after clicking off, he can’t remember what he said.

THE LAST FEW PLAYERS are straggling out of the tunnel and here comes Josh trotting with them, looking like he just stepped out of a Polo ad. How does he do it? Every hair, every thread, every crease and pleat in place, as if he’s sheathed in a varnish of pussy-boy perfection. “My bad, my bad, my bad,” he chants in a furious monotone, “I am so so sorry guys, we blew it, blew it, no way you should’ve dropped off the radar like that,” and he launches into a detailed explication of post-halftime logistics, the gist of which is he’s been waiting at prearranged point X for the past twenty minutes.