Redeployment(90)

“That’ll be you soon, Mister Hundred Sixty Thousand.”

“Not yet,” I say. “And since I’m buying all drinks tonight—no, I am—we’re getting the f*ck out of here.”

We take the 6 train to Astor and head to a dive bar with an all-night special of $5 for a can of PBR and a shot of what they call “Jameson.” I figure we won’t be able to spend more than $80 before going into comas. We head in and sit at the bar, and I order the first round as Boylan untucks his shirt and loosens his tie.

“I’m glad…,” I start to tell him, and I want to say I’m glad he’s alive, but that’s too maudlin even if it’s true, so I finish with, “To see you,” and he grins. Once the drinks arrive, he clinks his whiskey to mine and we shoot them back.

“Why didn’t you stay in the Corps, man?” he says.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent Boylan is already a bit drunk, and I wonder who, if anyone, he could have been drinking with. Near most stations they sell plastic bottles for the commuters to get hammered on the train. If that’s what he was doing, he wouldn’t be the only one.

“Why not, man?” he says. “You were good. Everybody says you were good.”

“Because I’m a *,” I say. “When you getting promoted to major?”

“Never. I got a DUI.” He gives a sheepish grin and before I can respond says, “I know, I know, I’m an idiot. No more drunk driving for me.” And then he starts asking me about law school, about if I’m dating anybody, about all sorts of shit, and I realize that as much as I want to hear about his war shit, he wants to hear some civilian shit.

So we talk civilian shit. I tell him about my girl and how the sex was good and the rest was bad but I wish her the best. And I tell him I’m going to go corporate and then figure shit out, because it’s impossible to figure out now. “A lot of people, their careers ping-pong back and forth between government and Big-law. Do something to feel good about yourself for a while, then go back and make money. Then feel good about yourself again. Then go back to Big-law and make some money. It’s like a karmic binge-and-purge.”

We get drunker, and eventually Boylan says, “You want to see a trick?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he crams the edge of the PBR can against his incisors, cutting into the aluminum. He rotates the can quickly, spinning it against his teeth until he slices it in a perfect circle, mouthfuls of beer spilling out the sides and onto his suit.

“Ha!” he says, holding the two halves out to me. “Whaddaya think?”

“Impressive,” I say. I notice he’s missing his tie, and I wonder if he knows where it is.

The bartender walks over and says, “Don’t do that,” and Boylan tells him to f*ck himself. Then he looks at me like, “You gonna back me up on this?”

Long story short, we head to my apartment and start in on some whiskey, and when we get drunk enough, we finally get to war.

I bring up the videos of air strikes they’d show us at the Basic School, grainy videos of some hajji hot spot and then, boom, dead hajjis. Though the explosions are never as big as you think they should be. Hollywood f*cks that up for you.

I tell Boylan, “It was like video games,” and he gets animated.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “You see any of the helmet cams?”

I haven’t, so he gets on my computer, standing by my desk and swaying back and forth while he tries to type into the YouTube search engine, his meaty hands spilling over and hitting multiple keys at once.

“Dude, this is cool,” he says.

Eventually he finds it, POV-style footage taken with a camera strapped to a Marine’s head during a firefight in Afghanistan.

“Now this is like a video game,” he says, and as the video plays, I realize he’s right. The Marine ducks behind a wall and I see the barrel of his rifle cutting across the screen in the exact same way it does in Call of Duty. And then he pops up and lets off a few rounds, just like Call of Duty. No wonder Marines like that game so much.

There’s a lot of yelling going on as well, and I catch a few commands but nothing clear. At the end of the video, one soldier has been shot, but not seriously.

“So this is what it’s like,” I say.

“Huh?”

“You’ve been in combat. This is what it’s like?”

Boylan looks at the screen for a second. “Nah,” he says.