Redeployment(42)

“Relax,” he said. “I’m gonna buy you a lap dance. Then you ask the girl to take you to the VIP room.”

I looked around.

“It’s in another trailer,” he said. “You get there, she gives you another lap dance, you ask her if there’s anything else she could do. You tell her you like her so much and she’s so great and you just got back and is there anything else.” He pointed to the two twenties in my hand. “Don’t give her more than that. And don’t give it to her until after. And don’t settle for her letting you grope her.”

I looked down at the money. Two hours earlier, I’d spent more on whiskey at Alexander’s.

“It’s good here,” he said. He pointed to the corner of the room, where a tired-looking woman was standing, waiting to take the stage. “That’s my girl. She’s real sweet. We’re like an old married couple—we only f*ck once every seven months.” He paused for a second. “She’s good. After I finish, she stays with me till the time is up.”

I nodded. When the first girl got off the stage, Old Man paid for my lap dance. Then I did what Old Man had said.

The VIP lounge was a white trailer about fifty yards from the main one. We stepped out of the music into the fresh air, and I was excited, walking a step ahead of her. Inside, the trailer had a corridor and a bunch of little rooms. There was loud music in that trailer, too, so you mostly couldn’t hear what was going on in the rooms around you.

The woman was very polite. We settled on forty. I felt bad arguing for less than that, and she pulled down my pants. I wasn’t hard, but she took me in her mouth in a very professional way and then she put a condom on me and then we had sex and then I paid her the money Old Man had given me.

As I walked back to the main trailer, I didn’t feel anxious anymore. She had been a little dry, which made sense, but it had felt great right until the moment that I came and the world crashed back into focus.

Inside the trailer, Old Man was getting a lap dance, his face buried in the stripper’s tits. It wasn’t from the one he’d called his girl. It was another woman. This one looked something like my mother, before she’d died. When she finished, he whispered to her and they got up. He nodded to me and walked over.

“How was Nancy?” he said.

“Nancy?” I said.

“That’s her real name,” he said. “She’s good, but she can be kind of a bitch sometimes.”

“It was good,” I said.

He patted me on the shoulder. “Take your time with it,” he said. “Talk to the girls.” And he went back to where he was sitting and motioned to the one who looked like my mother. She climbed on top of him again and I looked away.

Nancy walked back into the trailer and started working the room. She smiled at me as she passed and then climbed on the lap of some civilian. I looked away from that, too.

Old Man had the keys in the pocket of his sweatpants, and there was no easy way to get them, so I waited in the back while he had his fun. I had a whiskey, then another beer. I was pretty far gone at this point, but I kept drinking. I waited and waited and I looked at the sad women onstage. Some looked zoned out. On something for sure. Old Man took his time. When he went to the VIP trailer with his girl, I counted the money in my pocket. I had more than enough. If I let myself get into it again, it’d be almost as good as not being there.





PRAYER IN THE FURNACE




Rodriguez didn’t approach me because he wanted to talk to a chaplain. I don’t think he even recognized who I was until I stood up straight and he saw the cross on my collar. At first, he only wanted a cigarette.

He had blood smeared across his face in horizontal and diagonal streaks. His hands and sleeves were stained, and he wouldn’t look at me directly, his eyes wild and empty. Violent microexpressions periodically flashed across his face, the snarling contortions of an angry dog.

I handed him a cigarette and lit it against mine. Rodriguez drew in, let the smoke out, glanced back to his squad, and his face again turned to violence.

Twenty years ago, well before I became a priest, I used to box light heavyweight. Rage is good for amping you up before a fight, but something different happens once the fighting begins. There’s a kind of joy to it. A surrender. It’s not a particularly Christian feeling, but it’s a powerful one. Physical aggression has a logic and emotion of its own. That’s what I was seeing on Rodriguez’s face. The space between when rage ends and violence begins.