Redeployment(80)

“I don’t want to teach people anything,” she says.

“Or maybe have them fix potholes for seven months. That’d teach them. Shit. There’s the title for your play—Fixin’ Potholes with Wilson and Jenks. The people’ll come by the f*cking thousands.”

Jessie looks through the window of the bar. “I thought it might be good for him,” she says, “to tell his story to a civilian who’d really listen.”

I think about lighting another cigarette, but I’ve already left Jenks too long.

“You think we should get out of Afghanistan?” I say.

Jessie laughs. “You know me,” she says. “I’d like a national draft. Do it serious.”

We both start laughing. Then we head back inside. Jenks looks okay, and he waves to me as I enter.

“Hey,” Sarah says before I can sit back down, “Jenks has been telling me you and him are like the same person.”

“I don’t have Jenks’ style,” I say. But that’s not enough, so I add, “He’s who I should have been.”

Sarah gives a polite smile. “So what was he like, when you first met him?”

He was like me, I think. But that’s not what I tell her. “He was a bit of an *,” I say, and I smile at Jenks, who stares back with one of those looks I can’t interpret. “To be perfectly honest, he was a worthless piece of shit. No subject for a play, that’s for sure.” I smile. “Good thing he caught on fire, right?”





UNLESS IT’S A SUCKING CHEST WOUND




When the call wakes me and I see the name “Kevin Boylan” glowing in the middle of my phone, I don’t want to answer. I’m still in that half-dream state, and I’ve got this sense that if I pick up it won’t be Boylan on the other end of the line, but Vockler, which is impossible because Vockler is dead. And when I do pick up and hear Boylan’s voice telling me he’s coming into town, it throws me even further. With a guy like Kevin Boylan, captain in the USMC, it’s not just an old friend calling. It’s my old gods.

“I’m coming to New York to get blacked the f*ck out,” he slurs into the phone. “Prepare yourself.”

I should mention that Boylan has a Bronze Star with a combat distinguishing device for valor. My old gods have their idiosyncrasies.

“When?” I say.

“All I know is I’m coming,” Boylan proclaims. “I just got back.”

He means from Afghanistan.

“I just got a job offer,” I say.

“Sweet!” he says. “How much they gonna pay?”

Not the sort of question I’m expecting, but it’s Boylan, so I answer. “A hundred and sixty thousand dollars,” I say. “Plus bonuses.” Before he called, I’d been depressed about the job. As soon as I name the figure, though, I’m suddenly delirious, saying it, but also feeling like a schmuck because anybody with an Internet connection can find out exactly how much Boylan—an O3 with no dependents and six years in—is making. Hint: Less.

“Dude!” he says. And I’m smiling, because it’s a big deal to him and because my fellow law students at NYU couldn’t give two shits. Most of them are heading to the same sorts of firms, most of them knowing how much they’ll hate it because they’ve already done the summer associate thing.

There’s a pause and then he says, “One hundred sixty… whoa. I guess you made the right choice getting out, huh?” And there it is—the least hint of approval from a real Marine and I’m swelling with pride. Though I’m not even sure he actually approves. There was a German zoologist, Jakob von Uexküll, who claimed a tick would try to feed off any liquid at the temperature of mammalian blood. Law school has left me starving, and I’ll take what I’m offered.

I ask Boylan how he’s been and he tells me, “Afghanistan’s not Iraq, dude,” which makes sense but probably needed to be said, because Iraq’s what I’m thinking—the sound of his voice sending me nostalgic, as if I’m missing Iraq. I’m not. What I’m missing is the idea of Iraq all my civilian friends imagine when they say the word, an Iraq filled with honor and violence, an Iraq I can’t help feeling I should have experienced but didn’t through my own stupid fault, because I went for an MOS that wouldn’t put me in harm’s way. My Iraq was a stack of papers. Excel spreadsheets. A window full of sandbags behind a cheap desk.