Hooking Up

by Tom Wolfe

  Between the base and Fayetteville, Bragg Boulevard turned into the sleaziest commercial strip Irv ever hoped to see. Not a tree, not a blade of grass, not an inch of sidewalk, not a redeeming architectural feature from one end to the other—just a hellish corridor of one-story cinder-block sheds and wooden huts and blasted asphalt and stomped-sod parking lots and garish signs and fluttering Day-Glo pennants proclaiming pawnshops, mobile homes, trailer parks, massage parlors, pornographic-video stores, check-cashing establishments (KWIK KASH), dry cleaners (SPECIAL FOR FATIGUES), car washes, multiplex cinemas, takeout stands (SUBS, CAROLINA BAR-B-Q), automobile dealerships, motorcycle dealerships, auto suppliers, auto upholsterers, gasoline stations, fast-food franchises, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai restaurants, discount liquor stores, discount cigarette kiosks, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Black & Decker tools, concrete garden birdbaths and figurines, gun stores, attack dogs (K-9 C-Q-REE-T) and topless bars, topless bars, topless bars, one after the other, such as this one, the DMZ.

  Last night, before Irv’s very eyes, as soon as the sun had gone down, this appalling fever-line of late-twentieth-century instant gratification had lit up. Ten thousand backlit plastic signs and banks of floodlights came on in every hot toxic radioactive microwave pastel shade perceivable by the eye of man, until a look down Bragg Boulevard led your gaze right into the gaudy gullet of hell itself. Irv knew it was hell because of what he had seen late in the afternoon. Late in the afternoon, Ferretti had taken him—just him, not Mary Cary, because her face was too well known—over to a shopping center off Bragg Boulevard called the Cross Creek Mall. The place was mobbed, and with a clientele such as Irv could not have imagined. By the hundreds, the thousands, they swarmed over the Cross Creek Mall: young males with the sides of their heads shaved, young males whose ears stuck out, young males and their young females, young females and their young children and their children-to-be. To Irv all of them appeared to be … bursting … The males were all young, tough, sunburned, pumped up with muscles and bursting out of their jeans. So many bulging crotches! Made him think of codpieces in those old prints, they bulged so much. Fort Bragg was the training ground for the Army’s elite divisions, the Special Operations Forces: Green Berets, Rangers, unorthodox-warfare and psychological-operations (PSYOP) units, commandos of every sort. Testosterone on the hoof! So many soldiers from Fort Bragg had fought in Vietnam, they used to call Fayetteville Fayettenam. Even now many of the wives of these young soldiers, as anyone at the Cross Creek Mall could tell, were Asians. And so many of the wives, Asian as well as American, were bursting, too. They were swaybacked from being so grandly, gloriously pregnant with the next generation of swaggering … skinheads … Skinheads they were! To Irv it had come as a revelation, a flash of insight right there in the Cross Creek Mall. Skinheads! Sex and aggression! Hell on earth! These young males, bursting with testosterone, were but the officially sanctioned, government-approved versions of the skinheads of Germany!—or the survival cults of Montana! And at night they poured out onto this nightmare alley, Bragg Boulevard, unbound, free of Army discipline, through the very gates of Hell, where he now waited inside a High Mojave RV for his rendezvous with—with—with—

  What was he, a nice Jewish boy from New York, doing here, about to try to ambush—ambush!—three of this virulent, hormone-crazed species who had already murdered one man and would be primed with alcohol to … to do God knew what?

  Irv Durtscher, the Zola of the Ratings Sweeps, was terrified.

  Lola moved over beside Ferretti, who threw his arm around her shoulders. Even in this feeble light and these cramped quarters she rippled with sexuality beneath the little black cocktail dress. She touched Ferretti on the shoulder and whispered something to him. Then both of them looked around at Irv, who shrugged and arched his eyebrows in the look that says, “What can I tell you?”

  Ferretti hugged Lola to him in a jolly fashion and turned her back toward Irv and Mary Cary. Irv envied Ferretti. He was a jovial Alley Oop of a man with a grizzled beard he allowed to grow down beneath his chin and his jawline, covering his jowls. He wore a polo shirt that barely made it over his beefy midsection, a Charlotte Hornets Starter jacket, and a John Deere Backhoe cap. He lit up when he smiled. He had the common touch. He was perfect for field assignments because he could deal with anybody, high or low. He leaned over until his head touched Lola’s. He was purring to her.

  “For Christ’s sake, Irv,” he said with a big grin, “what’s this ‘skinheads’? These guys are yo-yos.” He hugged Lola again and said, “Yo-yos, baby, yo-yos!” He gave her such a squeeze and such a grin, it forced a reluctant smile out of her. “Besides, you don’t have to deal with ‘em. Mary Cary deals with’em, Irv deals with ‘em, these guys deal with’em.” He nodded toward Gordon and Roy, a Hawaiian and an Albanian, two great sides of beef in field jackets, the biggest technicians on Day & Night’s staff. (Irv had seen to that.) “You’re just the official greeter,” said Ferretti. “You issue the invitation. And Miss Lola, honey, when you issue an invitation, people are gonna come to the party. You know what I’m saying? The whole country’s gonna come to the party.”

  Ferretti was shamelessly reigniting Lola’s craving for stardom. Lola was currently performing as a topless dancer at a Bragg Boulevard joint called Klub Kaboom. Just how she and Ferretti had become such buddies Irv didn’t know; on this subject, Ferretti’s only comment was a smile. The deal was that for her part in the ambush, Lola would receive $2,500, and more important, 50 million panting Americans would get a look at the ravishing but hitherto unknown entertainer Lola Thong. Ferretti had provided Lola with an entire catalogue of girls who had made their fortunes through tangential involvement in sensational cases. But as the moment approached, Lola was getting cold feet.

  She started to say something, but Ferretti gave her another big hug and, keeping his arm around her, said to Irv, “Lola’s ready. How much longer do we give’em? We don’t want’em to get too bagged in there.”

  Irv said, “Well, lemme see …” He suddenly had the panicky feeling that he had lost the power to make decisions.

  Mary Cary broke in: “Lowe and Flory are on their third beers. Ziggy has switched to something called a vodka twilight. Or at least I guess that’s what twilat means.”

  “That kid,” said Ferretti, “he’s so fulla shit. Well, I say we don’t wait much longer. After three beers these fucking kids, they don’t know it, but they’re drunk. And after a few vodka twilats …” He grinned.

  Oh, Ferretti, the big Alley Oop, had the heart for this stuff. He relished it, and Irv envied him even more. Irv himself was torn. On the one hand, his visceral self, the instinctive part of him that knew this hide he had on was the only one he would ever possess, wanted to push the moment of ambush off, eternally perhaps. On the other hand, his rational self, the one who managed the career of Irv Durtscher the Bertolt Brecht of Broadcasting, knew he should start the ambush now. An ambush of three slavering drunks would not make for very convincing television journalism—and might be more dangerous. A fine balance was what they were looking for. The idea was to let the three soldiers have a few drinks first, not enough to get drunk, just enough to loosen up and lose their inhibitions, which didn’t seem to have a very high threshold to begin with.

  Irv spoke as resolutely as he could: “Okay, you’re right. Is everybody ready?”

  He looked at Ferretti, who nodded; then at Gordon and Roy, who nodded; then at Mary Cary, who not only nodded but also added a little exasperated twist of the lips, as if to say, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Irv, get on with it.”

  So Irv smiled at Lola as convincingly as he could and said, “You’re on.”

  Ferretti gave her another hug. “Nothing to it, babe,” he told her. “You know what to say. Just be Lola. This is a cabaret act, and you’re the star.”

  Ferretti opened the door in the false wall and led Lola into the RV’s forward section, and Irv followed. The RV’s big front windshield, which was high up off the ground like
a bus’s, framed a rectangle of North Carolina sky turned a hideous hot mauve by Bragg Boulevard’s inferno of lights. Through the windshield Irv could see the backsides of electric signs all along the strip. They blazed. They blinked to electronic beats. Hyperkinetic patterns raced through fields of lightbulbs. Signs pivoted and oscillated against the sky’s feverish dome. The entire strip seemed to be rutting and wallowing and doing a jack-legged Crazy Dance. Lurid streaks and blooms of light and shadow bathed the RV’s darkened interior, making it hard to see at first that it was actually a living room, or an American Recreational Vehicle version of a living room, in any event. There was a built-in couch, covered in an indestructible Alumicron tweed, along one wall, with a television set, complete with built-in VCR, opposite it, plus a compact stainless-steel kitchenette and a pair of plush passenger seats that could be folded down into beds. Up in the very front were the RV’s driver’s seat and a separate passenger seat, now swiveled toward the rear, both with thronelike backs that would make it hard for anyone passing by outside to peer inside. Curtains were drawn over the side windows.

  Ferretti opened the RV’s big right-hand door to usher Lola out, and the caterwaul of Bragg Boulevard came pouring in. Above the drone of the traffic rose the rutting wails and pounding thuds of the Country Metal music these … skinheads … loved, chundering out of their car stereos as they drove past the DMZ. From inside the DMZ itself you could hear the beat of an electric bass.

  Now Ferretti and Lola were standing on the ground, outside the door, and he had his arm around her and his head close to hers, talking to her. Beams of light ran up and down them as cars drove in and out of the DMZ’s parking lot, and Irv could hear young male voices talking in … rural Romanian … His heart began accelerating … But it was just more of the usual, more young, bursting soldiers heading on foot into the DMZ. Apparently they didn’t even stop and stare. A grizzly, paunchy fellow in a Charlotte Hornets Starter jacket and a John Deere Backhoe cap hugging and nuzzling an Amerasian cocktail waitress, or whatever she might be, out by a High Mojave touring van in the parking lot of the DMZ didn’t even rate a second look. After all, this was Hell; this was Fayettenam.

  Ferretti gave Lola one last hug, and she began teetering on her high heels along the stomped-dirt driveway toward the bar’s front entrance. Then he came back inside the RV and closed the door, shutting out the hellish noise, and he and Irv rejoined Mary Cary, who was standing in the doorway to the rear compartment.

  “Well,” said Irv, “she’s on her way. I just hope to hell she doesn’t blow it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about Lola,” said Ferretti. “She’s nervous, but once she walks up to those three meatballs and their eyes start falling out of their heads over her”—with both hands he pantomimed a big curve in front of his chest—“she’ll be in Seventh Heaven. Lola’s a born prick teaser. Excuse me, Mary Cary. A successfully teased—well, you know what I mean—it brings out the ham in Lola. In front of the aroused male animal she has true star quality.”

  “She’d better,” said Mary Cary. “I’d just as soon not have to go in there and get them myself.”

  But Irv knew—and he marveled over it—he knew Mary Cary wouldn’t hesitate to do exactly that, if she had to.

  “Well, we can watch the show,” said Ferretti. They went back into the rear compartment and shut the door and stood in front of the monitors receiving the live feed from inside the DMZ and put on headsets. Now Irv could see Jimmy Lowe, Ziggefoos, and Flory in their booth and hear the DMZ’s Country Metal band banging and sloshing away in the background in a slow number that seemed even sleazier than the usual bawling headbangers. Jimmy Lowe was leaning back on his side of the booth. He had one hand on a bottle of beer on the table. His head was thrown back slightly, which made his neck look massive. He was trying to sing along with the chorus:

  “She won’t abaout

  To give me no haaaaaaaaid,

  So all’s I got was

  A piece uvver mind …”

  Ziggefoos laughed and said, “‘Give me no haid’? Christalmighty, Jimmy,’at’s what ‘at ol’ gal Lucille told me she lacks about you. You’re so sent’mental.’Give me no haid …’ Hearing ‘em sweet words,’at’s every gal’s deepest desar.”

  “Yeah, and you kin deep’is here,” said Jimmy Lowe, extending the middle finger of his right hand, “and leave Lucille out uv it.” He managed to twist his lips into half a smile, but his voice had a testy edge to it. Ziggy and Flory both started laughing.

  Lucille, whoever she was, had come up a lot in the three soldiers’ conversations over the past week, chiefly as a way for Ziggy and Flory to rib Jimmy Lowe. Apparently she worked in the Wal-Mart on Bragg Boulevard and wanted nothing more to do with Jimmy.

  All three boys’ heads swung in the same direction, toward some point in the middle distance. At first Irv thought they must have spotted Lola. But it soon became apparent that they were looking at one of the dancers up on the bar.

  “Th’ow it, Sugar,” said Jimmy Lowe with no particular enthusiasm. “Beats me how the hale they do thayut.”

  “Luck at the lamb chops on’at ol’ gal,” said Flory. “Mussa hadda brought her up in a double-wide.” After several weeks of monitoring the three rednecks, Irv had deduced that a double-wide was some sort of jumbo trailer home.

  “What’s’at on her laig?” said Ziggefoos. “Lucks to me lack a open lesion.”

  “A open what?” said Jimmy Lowe.

  “A open lesion,” said Ziggefoos, “lack she’s got a vernerl disease.”

  “What the hale’s a lesion?”

  “It’s lack a—I don’t know, a sore, I guess, lack fum syph‘lis. There’s a whole cohort a vernerl diseases’at’ll fuck up yer skin, but you jes don’t hear’bout’em no more, because the onliest thang gits talked about no more is AIDS.” Irv tensed. Maybe Ziggefoos was about to get back on the subject of homosexuality—and Randy Valentine. “Hale, when I was ovair, I knew guys’at fucked evvy ho in Somalia—and you know how all the hose in Africa spose have the HIV virus?—these guys fucked evvy ho in a row, them and their sisters, too, and I never heard a one uv‘em catching AIDS. But plenty uv’em, they got syph’lis and the whole dayum cohort a vernerl diseases, until their goddayum dicks was falling off on the graound. But don’t nobuddy thank twice about thayut no more, because the onliest thang they wants to talk about is a buncha faggots with AIDS.”

  “Fuckin’ A, wale tol’,” said Jimmy Lowe.

  Irv stared at Ziggefoos on the screen. Where did he pick up this stuff? Lesions? Cohort? Cohort of venereal diseases? Or maybe, as Ferretti had put it, he was just fulla shit. Ziggefoos was not nearly as muscular and tough-looking as Jimmy Lowe, and yet to Irv, he had his own special air of menace. He was lanky and rawboned with a thin face, a long nose, and a long jaw. His eyes were set close together in a way that reminded Irv of a mean dog. His arms were not bulky like Jimmy Lowe’s but had big veins wrapped around the forearms like the servicestation mechanics and other intimidating types Irv remembered from when he was growing up.

  “Jeemy? Hi.”

  On the screen Irv could see the three rednecks look up. Irv looked over at Ferretti, who smiled and crossed his fingers. Jeemy. They couldn’t see the woman who had said it, but it could only be Lola.

  “You remeember me? From the Wal-Mart?”

  On the monitor screen Irv could see Jimmy Lowe staring, slackjawed. “I don’ zackly,” he said finally, “but I sure’s hale want to.”

  Then he grinned and turned to Ziggefoos and Flory for approval of his powers of repartee. This they gave him, and you could see the three of them drinking in the hookery glories of Lola Thong.

  “I’m Lola. You don’t remeember? Lucille’s friend?”

  “How could I fergit, I reckon.” Jimmy Lowe turned to his buddies again and laughed, and then all three of them laughed, and their eyes went up and down the vision before them.

  “You work at the Wal-Mart?” asked Jimmy Lowe. Lola must have nodded
yes, because Jimmy Lowe said, “Whirr you work at the Wal-Mart?”

  Oh shit. What was Lola going to say to that?

  “In the back.”

  “In the bayack?” said Jimmy Lowe, managing to turn back into two syllables. “If I was running the Wal-Mart, I’d sure’s hale figger out someplace to put you’sides the bayack!”

  All three laughed heartily and drank Lola in some more.

  “Well, I don’t always work at the Wal-Mart, you know.”

  She said this so coquettishly and got such a rise out of the boys that Ferretti, wearing his headset, looked over at Irv and put a thumb up and mouthed the words “Star quality.”

  “Come on, Jimmy,” said Ziggefoos, “ain’tchoo gon’ ask your fran to sit daown? Who you with, Lola?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Then you orta be with us. Move over, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy moved over. Now on the screens Irv and Ferretti could see Lola and her big bouffant hairdo and her long eyelashes and her flashing Asian eyes and her confidently smiling lips and her custom-made bosom sidling into the booth.

  “Wale, whudjoo lack to drank, Lola?” said Jimmy Lowe. “How’bout a beer?”

  “A beer?” said Ziggy. “You got abaout as much class as a Port-o-San vac’um cleaner, Jimmy. Whyn’t you have what I’m having, Lola?”