Read Online Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain - Free Book Online Page B

mistakenly left behind, for they are as brave as that, as trusting and loyal, how can they know they’re screwed from the start for Lake is six thousand miles and an ocean away? Not that these are appropriate thoughts for mealtime, but once these little movies get going in your head—
    “Billy!” woofs Dime. “You’re flaking on me.”
    “No, Sergeant. I’m just thinking about dessert.”
    “Thinking ahead, good man. God- damn I trained them well.”
    “They certainly can eat,” Albert observes. “Hey, guys, you can slow down. It’s not going anywhere.”
    “It’s chill,” Dime answers. “Just keep your hands and feet away from their mouths and you won’t get hurt.”
    Albert laughs. He is having only a mixed green salad and fizzy water, along with a barely touched “Cowboyrita” on the side. “I’m gonna miss you guys,” he tells them. “It’s been an experience getting to know you fine young men.”
    “Come with us,” says Crack.
    “Yeah, come to Iraq,” A-bort urges. “We’ll have some laughs.”
    “No,” Holliday objects. “Albert gotta stay here and make us rich, ain’t that right, Albert.”
    “That’s the plan,” Albert responds in a studiously mild voice, and there, Billy thinks, there it is in that soft deflation at the end, the almost imperceptible slackening of ego and effort that denotes the triage mode of the consummate pro. “I’d just get in the way,” Albert is saying, “plus I’m pretty much your classic pacifist twerp. Listen, the only reason I went to law school was to stay out of Vietnam, and lemme tell you guys, if my deferment hadn’t come through, I would’ve been on the bus for Canada that night.”
    “It was the sixties,” Crack observes.
    “It was the sixties, exactly, all we wanted was to smoke a lot of dope and ball a lot of chicks. Vietnam, excuse me? Why would I wanna go get my ass shot off in some stinking rice paddy just so Nixon can have his four more years? Screw that, and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. All the big warmongers these days who took a pass on Vietnam, look, I’d be the last person on earth to start casting blame. Bush, Cheney, Rove, all those guys, they just did what everybody else was doing and I was right there with ’em, chicken as anybody. My problem now is how tough and gung-ho they are, all that bring-it-on crap, I mean, Jesus, show a little humility, people. They ought to be just as careful of your young lives as they were with their own.”
    “Albert,” says Mango, “you should run for something. Run for president.”
    Albert laughs. “I’d rather die. But thanks for the sentiment.” The producer is clearly enjoying himself, a smiling, avuncular presence not so much slumped in his chair as taking full advantage of it, as comfortably shored against gravity’s downdraft as Jabba the Hut on his custom throne. “Why’s he fucking calling us?” Crack asked when Albert first got in touch, after a quick Internet search confirmed that he was what he said he was, a veteran Hollywood producer with three Best Picture Oscars from the seventies and eighties, plus the distinction of having produced Fodie’s Press and Fold, the biggest money-losing film in the history of Warner Bros. “It was that year’s Ishtar, ” he likes to say, laughing, wearing the flop like a badge of honor, for only an A-list player could engineer that kind of legendary bust, and anyway the third Oscar came a couple of years later, so he was redeemed. The midcareer sabbatical was his choice. The paradigm was shifting, the studios moving away from long-term producer deals, plus he’d just gotten married for the third time and was starting a new family. He had all the money he’d ever need and decided to step back for a while, but now, three years on, he’s itching to get back in the game. Thanks to old friends he’s got a solo shop on the MGM lot, with a secretary and assistant provided by the studio. “I like where I am right now,”