You're a Big Girl Now

by Neil Gordon

  9.

  He is a medium-sized, very stocky man, perhaps thirty, with a shaved head, directly across from her on the other leg of the horseshoe. The bar is more crowded now, with a couple—a guy with long hair and his girlfriend, both drinking martinis—down and around the bend. To her right there are a few singles—a middle-aged man with something on the rocks, and a middle-aged woman drinking white wine. Next to the man addressing her as buddy, there is another, the same age but taller and with a short-cropped crewcut drinking what appears to be a tall glass of ice water. The short one is drinking tequila shots and chasers, and smiling at her and instantly, unwillingly, as if driven by an adrenal response, she is watching him with the enormous clarity of the very drunk.

  “Hey, welcome back.”

  His eyes are steady under open lids. His face, too, is open as only a bald face can be, and it puts her instantly, instinctively, on the defensive. It is composed and cocked toward her on its neck at a slightly pugnacious angle. His smile is, while belligerent, slightly, just slightly, self-mocking, but it is such in a way that she recognizes immediately as dangerous: once you have implicitly accepted that he is mocking himself, you can’t complain when he mocks you, which he will. She recognizes the maneuver. She has used the maneuver. And she is able to see, in it, three things about this guy. First is that he is very, very smart. Second is that he is very drunk, but not as drunk as he plans to be. And third, that he hates himself. That makes him dangerous, and she thinks to herself, You just watch out there, won’t you? This man comes on like a wagging dog, but he does not want to make friends. He wants to make someone else hurt like he does.

  “Tell me what you were daydreaming about and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  She shakes her head.

  This elicits a small smile. Without moving his eyes from hers, he says something sotto voce to his friend. Then he raises his voice.

  “Okay, then you buy me a drink and I’ll tell you what I just said about you to my friend.”

  She shakes her head again, still without smiling. But she’s lost already, and she knows it. Both barmaids are watching, Toulouse Lautrec more intently than Degas. Toulouse Lautrec, she suddenly sees with clarity, is the one he has already fucked, which is interesting because she’s Isabel’s pick too. She looks at his left hand and sees a wedding band.

  “You got to be from out of state. Turning down a southern gentleman’s offer of a drink? You was a man, I’d be handing you my glove.”

  She tried one last time.

  “Nothing personal. Just flying solo tonight.”

  “Naw, a lady looks like you? That ain’t no way to be. Where from, then?”

  “England.”

  “Cor blimey. That’s smashing. You hear that, Richie?” He pokes Richie with an elbow. Richie wakes, nods, smiles to her, then looks attentive as his friend goes on. “Let me offer you a confederate welcome. Bygones be bygones, what say? 1776 and all that. Napoleonic wars. The big ones made us friends, didn’t it? Plucky little fellows, Battle of Britain, that shit. Then Afghanistan, Iraq, and now you’re more or less blowing us, aren’t you? What brings you to our fair state? Can I buy you a drink?

  This time, she answers carefully. “Work brings me. I’m a journalist, come down to cover the School of the Americas protest. I got to be back there in the morning. So this qualifies as my nightcap. But thanks.”

  “Hey, baby, we’re just what you need! We’re both from Fort Benning. Don’t let the civvies fool you—I’m a captain. Richie too. Captains Delaney and Jacobsen at your service. Jacobsen with an “e”—otherwise I’d be a j-e-double yew.”

  “Captains.” She nods. “What unit?”

  “Training Corp. We train our boys at the School of the Americas as well as for the Near Eastern theaters. See, this is your lucky day. Formerly of the 32nd Airborne, two tours of duty in Plan Colombia”—he pronounces it Co-lum-beeya—“one in Ko-reea, one in Eye-raq. Detailed to counter-insurgency, staff. Richie here flies a Black Hawk, also counter-insurgency but what we call ‘hot ops;’ insertion, exfiltration, all that good shit. Been in Eye-raq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and a bunch of places we can’t even tell you—Richie’s hot shit, man. What you need for your article is an interview with me and Richie.”

  Does she? Only maybe. She watches him for a moment, as does Richie, she notices, with some care. Then she speaks slowly. “Well, sure, Captains, if you want to talk about Fort Benning, you’re very welcome. On the record, though—I tape with this little here thing. And you’ll need to start by a full ID with rank and name for my fact-checkers.”

  “Why sure.” The short one got up right away, Richie’s a little slower and, somehow, less willing. To the bartender—Degas, she notes: “Beautiful, set us up yonder and get the ‘reporter’ whatever it is that ‘reporters’ drink.”

  Here, she speaks up. “I pay or we don’t talk. No kidding.”

  “Well then, hey, sweetheart, I warn you, I am not a cheap date. Richie is. He’s driving. But not me.”

  Isabel knows already that she has lost. But that you can’t win with this kind of asshole. She is already his date.

  As one of the barmaids brings the drinks—tequila and beer for him, bourbon for her, water for Richie, she hands over her credit card and tells the barmaid to hold on to it. She is not so fucked up now. She watches them rounding the bar. Something must have happened earlier between Jacobsen—with an e—and the longhaired guy, sitting to her left with his girlfriend over martinis, because Jacobsen-with-an-e claps a hand on his shoulder and another on his neck, as they pass, and shakes him slightly, all the while saying something that only he, judging by all their faces, finds humorous. To her surprise, though, the longhair brushes it off and goes on with his discussion with the girl. Clearly they are here for the protest. One of us is misreading this situation, Isabel thinks to herself: either I am overreacting, or this guy doesn’t understand the danger he’s in.

  On balance, though, she is going to stick with her view. She thinks this bald, short guy is dangerous. She thinks he’s an enlistee, a combat veteran, an angry little country boy; she thinks he’s filled with rage and bent on mayhem. And she thinks that Richie, with his iced water, is designated driver tonight, wing man while Jacobsen-with-an-e gets shitfaced with an a. Later, she’s able to confirm this: she overhears Richie telling someone on his cell that he’ll be at his local bar by midnight, after he’s dropped Hal off because “Hal’s up tonight, I’m babysitting.”

  Hal, meanwhile, sits with her on his left at the bar and Richie on his right and picks up her iPhone to speak his name, serial number, unit, posting. Then he puts it down and hits his drink. He is, she thinks, well on his way.

  “So then you’re writing about those faggot assholes down here this weekend. You planning on getting our point of view? Or is this just more of your northeast bullshit?”

  She doesn’t answer. This guy has the knack of posing questions with no right answer. A typical bully. What she does say is: “Are you authorized to speak for the US Army?”

  “Why, ah don’t need to be, Miss. Ah’m an American citizen, I’se allowed to say whatevah I wants.”

  Then, switching accents again: “Remember US v. Hernandez, 2008? A soldier cannot have his First Amendment right to speak to the press abridged even in theater of war. Supreme Court, baby—a ‘superprecedent,’ just like good old Roe v. Wade that gives folks like Jewboy shithead here”—he motions down the bar with his head to the longhaired guy—“the right to kill babies.”

  Now he pauses, this little smile playing onto his lips. “If you don’t know the ruling, I’d recommend Haynes Johnson on it in the Nation, or even Ronald Dworkin’s New York Review coverage of the trial. Or you could just read the opinion, if you’re up to it: Roberts wrote it, great juridic stylist.”

  She doesn’t respond, which satisfied him no end: “See, you liberals always do the exact same thing. Think cause I’m a southern boy in the forces I’m an idiot, right? Well, the rank and file—Negros, Hispa
nics, the like—I’m not saying. But you are in the south, young lady, and I’m an officer and a gentleman. My daddy was an officer before me, his granddaddy before him. And don’t you just know his granddaddy fought for the Confederacy. I been through the Citadel, and the army sent me to Duke for my MA in American history. Might just go for the old Ph.D. one day.”

  By way of response, Isabel raises her eyebrows and hits her bourbon.

  “So I can say what I want, see. The only limitation is the self-imposed one. We members of the armed forces keep ourselves from ever criticizing our Commander in Chief. That’s why you never hear any of us say anything about Obama, even though we all think that bitchass Secretary of State and all New York Jews that put him in office should all have been sent back to Israel. Until he’s out of office, that is. Then I can stop being polite and tell you what I really think.”

  Thanks for sharing, she says, but only to herself. To him, she says: “So what do you think of the School of the Americas protest?”

  He smiles, widely and happily. “Waste of fucking time. Mine, Muscogee County, yours. You know what we do in the camp? We fucking go about our business. This protest isn’t a pimple on our lily-white asses. Like this dude here.”

  He motions at the couple down the bar. “Down from Washington, Christ sake. And his do-good girlfriend. You know that bitch has been giving me the eye all evening? Guess it’s free love, right? Pardon me a second, will you?”

  While he’s speaking, Hal’s eyes have several times darted to the couple sitting around the bend of the bar. Now he rises and moves toward them, but before he goes, he orders another round. While he’s not looking, however, she covers her glass with a flat hand and shakes her head slightly at the barmaid. Then she looks at Richie, who meets her eyes with an impassive expression. He looks away before she does.

  So Richie’s the weakest link.

  She registers the realization by pronouncing it to herself, several times, hoping that it will survive however drunk she is about to get.

  Now Hal has his arm around the guy again, only this time he holds his bicep with his other hand, hard, and edges his body between the guy and the girl. She doesn’t know what he’s saying, but he says it with a smile. The guy has the good sense, she sees, to look alarmed. Still, when Hal moves away with a last squeeze and a cheery wave, the guy keeps sitting there.

  Isabel is thinking: Idiot, you get the fuck out of here while you can, won’t you? But she can’t, of course, say anything to this clueless bastard, and in any case, who knows? She’s not sure Hal would let him leave. Hal, she is fairly sure, is planning on keeping this guy on reserve until later this evening, and, when he’s good and drunk, he’ll beat the shit out of him. Then Richie’ll scoop Hal up and into a car and home. Now, next to her again, Hal notices her half-empty glass and motions to Toulouse Lautrec who, avoiding her eye, serves her. Then he goes on: “All this bullshit out there. Stupid fucks don’t realize that the only reason they can carry their dumbass signs around here is because we’re getting killed overseas. Free Lori, sheeee-it!” He puts on a black accent for that one. “You seen that shit? Bitchass aids and abets a communist military group in Peru, and that’s a fucking human rights cause? What, you stopping drinking?”

  She answers: “Bourgeois has combat duty in Vietnam.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Exactly my point. Vietnam. Conscript army. Goddamned enlisting one step ahead of the draft. Bullshit. I know all about guys like him. Fragging officers. Doing smack. Throwing their medals back at the White House, just like John Fucking-A Kerry. Then taking their fucking divinity degrees to aid terrorists killing our allies in South America. Hate the war, not the soldiers, blah blah, fuck you. And you wonder why we fucking lost in Vietnam? Bullshit. I am Plan Colombia, I am Iraq, right here, right now, and so’s Richie. I am the war.”

  Which is bad, but the worse thing is, she knows that if she doesn’t argue at some point, he’ll think she’s humoring him, and that will make him even more dangerous. Worst thing you can do with a drunk is humor him, isn’t it? Isabel knows that the drunk have a radar for it, and she knows this firsthand. So she says, softly: “I’ve never heard anyone accuse Roy Bourgeois of anything like that. He’s a southern boy himself. New Orleans, you know. And he’s an ordained priest.”

  “Um-hmmm yeah.” He agreed readily. “Exactly. A Catholic. So were the Kennedys. Old Joe with his fuck-buddies McCarthy and Hoover. Jack running around the White House with hookers. Him and Bobby in so deep with the Eye-talians they get their asses shot dead. And Teddy, for fuck’s sake. Rudolph the Red Nose Kennedy. You know the real problem here, lady?”

  He has ordered again, but this time it’s Degas and when she serves only him, he motions to her glass. She gives Isabel a questioning look; she shrugs. Then she motions, with a forefinger, toward the cash register, where her credit card is propped up on the keyboard. This part, Hal doesn’t seem to have noticed, because he had bent over the bar, his face right in front of Isabel’s, talking not just to her but around her to Richie.

  “Richie and me are always talking about this. The problem is we live in a polarized society. Not between left and right or white and black or any of that shit. Right, Richie? We’re polarized between the people who sit inside our borders enjoying the privileges of Americans, and those who go abroad to protect them. None of you understand what it’s like out there. None of you understand that there’s a fucking universe of ragheads out there who want to come here and take your precious First Amendment away from you, for no good god damn reason except that you have it and they don’t. Even V. S. Naipaul says it: we’re under attack by people who want nothing more than a green card, and he’s a damn raghead himself. The rest of us? The ones who go over there to their godforsaken countries, see them with their godforsaken women in veils and kids in rags while they fucking parade around with their endless supply of Kalashnikovs, killing each other, killing us, killing themselves, we understand what we’re facing. You know who else understands? The Jews understand. They learn it from Israel. So we end up being the Jews’ army, fighting their war, protecting their business. Now that’s a good name for a book, huh? ‘The Jews’ Army.’ Want to write it with me? ’Scuse me a second. That reminds me of something I wanted to tell my faggot-ass kike buddy over there. Hey, asshole . . .”

  And suddenly she knows—she knows—that it is time to move. As Hal stands, she stands, pockets her iPhone and cigarettes, and, God bless Degas here, as she brings it, she signs the credit-card slip. “Great to talk to you, Hal, Richie. Good night now.”

  This pulls Hal up short. “Whoa, now, baby, where you going? We’re just getting started.”

  But, see, he’s halfway down the bar. The couple is looking up, as are the bartenders. She raises her voice even slightly, and she can have the whole bar watching. And everybody knows it.

  Therefore, a big smile, and a raised voice. “No, thanks. I got work to do tomorrow morning. Have a good night.”

  “Hell, no way. Richie and me? We got so much to tell you. We got so much to tell you about Jew faggots like this guy here and his cunt girlfriend, and your commie buddy Bourgeois, and all those whole-wheat cocksuckers down at Fort Benning . . .”

  He’s moving toward her, but not quick enough. She steps back again, the heels of her boots on the floor. Now the whole restaurant is watching. She doesn’t answer him. Her second step backward had put her right next to Richie, and it is to him she answers.

  “Richie? You going to take care of your buddy, or am I going to have the editor in chief of the New York Times call your commanding officer tomorrow morning and complain about conduct unbecoming?”

  And now Richie is standing, and the guy down the bar is standing, and Hal, getting a hold of himself, is sitting down at the bar again, saying to the guy at the end, “Hey, buddy, don’t be alarmed. I’m just letting off steam. Let me get you and your lady a round . . .” And the guy is actually clueless enough to sit down—probably, as Hal says, an East Coast liberal afraid of offendi
ng the redneck—and now, feeling slightly guilty, but immensely, immensely relieved, she is out in the night air, feeling sweat drip from under her arm down her side, thinking to herself, Well, aren’t you just quick on your feet there, girl, aren’t you? And that is her last thought before, although she clearly crosses the parking lot and gets to her room and, by all evidence available the following morning, finishes her bottle of Glenmorangie and has an unpleasant encounter with the telephone, the entire night ends in her memory, unnegotiable, like the absolute silver and absolute black on Molly’s lawn in autumn, like a light switch toggling, from on, to off.

  10.

  She dreams that night about Molly, her green eyes like seawater in sunlight. Her house at night, the lit window when you wake. Then she is in the supermarket, and everyone is stunned because they’ve announced on the PA system that a girl is dead. She wakes in the morning and realizes that she’s been dreaming Molly’s dream, when she was in a supermarket when Kennedy was shot. It was the cold aisle in the Grand Union up in Tannersville, near where Molly’s husband grew up, where she went to tell her father-in-law that her husband had died, where her father-in-law had, in his grief, made indescribable noises and where, for a moment, the color had drained out of the world. The dream speaks to her across her lifetime, another’s dream about experiences before she was born. Like the Internationale spoke to her father. Hers, mine, theirs. The only difference a pronoun, something that only context, not morphology, denotes as subjective or objective. The difference ceases to make sense. That’s the heart of activism: you and they, insofar as the pronouns denote people with different kinds of interests, cease to make sense and your life must be changed in order to change their life. It’s a function of grammar, not of existence, and it was invented by novelists. So how is it to be captured, except in a novel? The sun is pouring through the hotel room’s window, which she seems to have left open the night before: her memory of yesterday evening stops after leaving Jacobsen-with-an-e. She lifts herself out of bed and goes to the window. Far away on the golf course there is a quartet playing toward her. The Glenmorangie bottle is lying on the green, below, empty, next to the Gideon Bible and ashtray. Also there is the telephone, its cord torn at the plug. It is nine, and she is due to interview Bourgeois in an hour.