Fobbit

by David Abrams

  The waitress peeled her eyes away from the other tables, then slowly made her way over to them.

  “Can I get me some nachos, sweet thang?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the waitress said in a voice that drooped on either end. “Anything else, mister?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Lemme think.” He cocked his head and pretended to study the tattered palm-frond ceiling. “Maybe later, out back, huh?” He winked and lifted one corner of his mouth.

  “I get nachos first, then we see.” She moved away with that slow seen-it-all, heard-it-all slouch.

  “Not as cute close-up, though. All those acne pits.” The other soldier shook his head ruefully. “She’ll do in a pinch, I guess.”

  Abe had been in Qatar just two days but he already had guys like this figured out. They came down here, all juiced-and-creamy at the thought of finally getting to see girls in civilian clothes—halter tops, tight T-shirts, bikinis at the pool. They had dreamed about a parade of Breasts on Display. But then they’re pissed off to find pasty-faced girls, chunky around the waist and making little effort to hide the volcanic pimples on their foreheads.

  Abe was thankful he hadn’t set the bar of his expectations too high. If he didn’t hope, he wouldn’t be disappointed.

  He left the Top-Off Club, his liver-flavored steak half-finished. The other soldier was still vainly snapping his fingers at the bored waitress, who didn’t even bother to lift her elbows from the bar when she said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I be there okay soon.”

  In the eye-searing heat outside, Abe fluffed his Hawaiian shirt, then headed for the pool—just to torture himself with the lousy chick-to-dude ratio.

  It was late afternoon and the thermometers showed no signs of releasing their grip on 104 degrees. He strolled toward the oasis of water.

  There were only half a dozen people lounging around the pool. Four dudes, two chicks.

  Abe picked out a lounge chair next to one of the men, who was reading a book, the glare bouncing from the pages onto his face. Even at this hour, there was no shade on the concrete apron surrounding the pool. The lounge chair was hot as a skillet. Abe had started to settle himself onto the plastic webbing but with a “Yee-owch!” he leapt to his feet.

  “Careful there,” the other soldier said from behind his book.

  Abe batted at his thighs as if to put out flames.

  “Most everyone else here spreads a towel on the seat first,” the other guy said.

  Abe grimaced. “I was just getting to that,” he said as he unfolded his towel over the lounge chair. He settled himself back down gingerly, careful to avoid the metal arms of the chair, which looked anxious to brand his elbows. “Hot day today.”

  The soldier put down his book. “Is that a joke?”

  Abe pointed at the book. “No, but that is.”

  “What’s wrong with Catch-22?” Abe’s pool companion said. “It’s a classic.”

  “Yeah, classic antiwar rhetoric.” Abe had never read the novel but he remembered how, during office hours, one of his West Point professors had gone on a vein-throbbing rant against “that ass-clown Yossarian,” who spent the entire book trying to weasel his way out of his patriotic duty. On the basis of that alone, Cadet Shrinkle vowed he would never touch Catch-22.

  “Why in the world,” he asked the other soldier, “would you want to read that book at a time like this?”

  The soldier grinned. “I can’t think of a better time to read it, can you? It’s helped me get my perspective skewed in the right direction. Sort of like an owner’s manual for this war.”

  Abe would have continued to argue against the book he’d never read, but—he had to remind himself—he was down here for rest and relaxation. He was damned if he’d spend his last hours as a company commander all knotted with patriotic fury. So he swallowed his bile and asked, “All that aside, how do you like Qatar so far?”

  The soldier shrugged. “So far, it’s not much different than life on Triumph. I just get more time to read and less time to deal with dickhead officers.”

  Abe cringed but continued to smile. “I’m from FOB Triumph, too—Second Armor. What about you?”

  “I’m in division public affairs.”

  “Oh, so you’re one of those Fob—” Abe caught himself “—uh, people who work at the palace.”

  “You can go ahead and say it: yes, I’m a Fobbit.”

  “You act like it’s a bad thing.”

  “To most people it is. But not to me.”

  “Oh, why’s that?”

  The soldier leveled a flat gaze at Abe. “I’m still here, aren’t I? Lot of door kickers can’t say the same.”

  “I guess. If you’re playing the odds.”

  “But this is all one big crapshoot, right?”

  “And so far you’re winning?”

  “So far.”

  Abe reached out a hand to the sunbathing soldier. “I’m Abe Shrinkle, by the way.”

  At the name, the other man visibly flinched, and hesitated to take the outstretched hand. When he did, Abe could feel the moist slick of fresh sweat. “Chance Gooding Jr.”

  “Wow,” Abe said, “that sounds like something out of Dickens.”

  “Trust me, sir, I get that—or something like it—all the time.”

  Sir? How did this other guy know he was an officer? Did he really wear it on his sleeve even when he wasn’t wearing a uniform?

  There came a shout and both Shrinkle and Gooding looked over at the pool. Two other men were in the water, vigorously swimming laps past the two girls who were now bobbing in the shallow end. From beneath their crawl-stroke arms, the men barked at each other in voices husky from bomb smoke: “I got you, motherfucker!” “Like hell you do, dick breath!” They churned the water in one final burst to the finish line, both of them touching the side of the pool to end the race in a tie. They glared at each other, first one, then the other, spitting with a pwut! to one side and waiting for a concession of defeat to come from the other swimmer. Without a word, one of the men climbed from the pool with a great wet outsuck like a breeching whale, then, still dripping, dropped to the ground and started knocking out push-ups, pumping up and down just long enough for the two girls to notice the hard ropes of his muscles. Then he bounded to his feet and swaggered over to his lounge chair for a bottle of ice water, which he chugged without taking a breath. The other male spit water between his teeth, growl-muttered, “Asshole,” then stroked back and forth from one end of the pool to the other.

  Abe stood and stripped off his T-shirt. “Well, Chance Gooding Jr., now that there’s a little less testosterone polluting the water, I think I’ll go for a dip.”

  Gooding nodded. “Have at it, sir,” he said, then went back to his novel. The little red man on the cover of the book danced across a sea of blue as Gooding hid his face behind Catch-22.

  Abe hoped he would never become so callous, so unpatriotic, so . . . so Fobbity. No matter what happened, he reminded himself, he was still an officer and a gentleman. They couldn’t take that away from him, could they?

  He eased into the water. It was just this side of lukewarm but to his throbbing skin it felt like crystal-blue water pouring from a glacier.

  The lap swimmer took one look at Abe, decided he was done with the pool (besides, his skin was starting to get as wrinkled as a nut sack), and hoisted himself from the water. He, too, dropped to the deck and piston-pumped a set of push-ups —going his buddy ten more just to prove he could—the eagle tattoo between his shoulder blades taking flight as he did so.

  The girls bobbed and whispered in the shallows, pointedly not looking at the muscle-bound show-offs.

  On the far side of the pool, Chance Gooding Jr. looked like he was deeply engrossed in his book but his eyes peeped over the top of the pages as he watched the disgraced company commander float in the water.

  Abe dog-paddled to the deep end, then stopped there, treading water as he listened to the music from the CD the MWR staff had been piping across the pool through
speakers concealed behind tiki statues. Abe recognized the CD, Boston’s Greatest Hits. “More Than a Feeling” started pouring out of the tiki men’s mouths. Abe bobbed up and down in Qatar, the pool water lapping at his skin, and tried to put everything in perspective. Despite the war to the north, this felt good.

  Closing his eyes, he was in another place, another time. The music rippling over the pool time-traveled him. As he floated, the water turned warm as blood, hot as memory.

  1987. Mid-May. A Friday night. The ballroom of the Ramada Inn in Colorado Springs.

  At that precise moment, Abe was in love with Cathy Kessel but he was consigned to a date with her best friend, Mona (whose last name has been lost over time). Cathy had a face like a hatchet blade, dark circles under piercing blue eyes. Her brown hair was curled and teased and feathered into a Farrah ’do (changes in hair fashion for Coloradans were at least a decade behind the rest of the country). Cathy hung with a tough crowd but Abe sensed a tenderness at her core, which gave him hope she’d at least notice him, a ghostly nobody in the halls of their high school.

  Summoning every shred of courage, he’d asked her to the Spring Jamboree dance in a stuttering phone call so horrific it was blotted from his memory within a month’s time.

  Unfortunately, by the time he’d screwed his determination to the sticking point, he was too late. She’d already been asked by another eighth grader—Scott DiSoto (who, it turned out, would steal two other girls from Abe later in high school).

  But Cathy’s girlfriend Mona was available. Would Abe like to go with her?

  Sure, he said, supposing he should be happy with leftovers.

  Mona was tall and blonde and her hair was cut short, flaring at the ends like a little skirt around her neck. She’d pasted on too much mascara the night of their date and her breath smelled funny—harsh and decadent. She stood tall and stiff beside Abe at the dance and kept looking around the room like he wasn’t there. She was probably feeling like she got leftovers, too.

  “You want some punch?” she asked after five songs had gone by with the two of them standing there, pinned against the wall.

  “Sure,” he said, then watched her walk away to the refreshment table. All these years later, he still remembered the dress she was wearing—it was made of thin cotton and was tied in a neat little bow at the back of her neck, just under the skirt of her blonde hair. The dress was backless and, yes, it filled him with a hot pulse to know she wasn’t wearing a bra and, oh, how that tempting little bow at her neck called to his fingers, begging to be untied. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall of the Ramada Inn ballroom for support.

  “Here’s your punch.” Mona was back in front of him, holding out a glass of syrupy red liquid.

  “Thanks.” Abe swallowed and suppressed a gag.

  “I heard some kids were going to spike it with Everclear. I don’t think they did.”

  “Chickens,” Abe said.

  “Pussies,” Mona said.

  Abe didn’t know what to say to that. They both looked out at the crowded, wriggling dance floor. He could see Cathy with Scott DiSoto across the room. Cathy was all fluid arms and elbows and hips; Scott was doing a sweaty finger-point dance move (which, until this moment, Abe thought he himself had patented). The air of the ballroom was humid with teenage perfume and the sad smear of thick makeup. Abe didn’t know what to do with his hands. The drink felt slippery between his fingers.

  “You want to dance?” he blurted.

  Mona gave him a sideways glance from between her slits of mascara. “Ummm . . .” She looked out on the dance floor. Cathy and Scott came closer, moving to the outer edge of the dance floor. Cathy’s hips swirled like a cobra coming out of a basket; Scott seemed intent on pointing at a spot on the carpet while at his neck a gold chain lifted and fell, lifted and fell. They circled and boogied ever closer. Cathy winked at Mona, who then turned to Abe and said, “Ummm, how about we dance later? Okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Okay.” He pretended not to see the wink.

  Cathy and Scott moved toward the side door of the ballroom, which led out to the forest at the base of the mountain where the Ramada Inn had been built.

  “I’m gonna go out and smoke,” Mona said. “You wanna come?”

  As those words washed over his face, Abe knew what that wickedness on her breath had been. It had been mystery and desire and danger—most of all danger. Play-it-safe alarms went off in his head. Bad, adult-level things would happen in the forest. His parents would never approve. He told himself he’d better stay in the ballroom with the non-Everclear punch.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll just wait here for you.”

  Mona laughed. At the time, Abe thought it was a harmless laugh; two hours later, he realized it was a cruel, harsh, mocking laugh of dismissal. Mona never returned to the ballroom. She slipped out the door after her friends and together they went into the darkening woods to smoke their cigarettes and mock authority and, most of all, to mock Abe, still standing there at the edge of the humid dance floor, holding up the wall and wondering what Scott DiSoto had that he didn’t—though he knew all the while it was Scott’s willingness to not play it safe, to plunge into danger and sin.

  The fast song ended and another record dropped onto the turntable. “More Than a Feeling” filled the air of the ballroom. Abe closed his eyes and let Boston carry him away from the dance floor on this, the most miserable night of his teenage life so far.

  How was he to know, eighteen years later, that that precise moment would be cupped in his mind as a golden memory? How was he to know he’d be drifting in a pool in a hot land three hundred miles south of a combat zone, listening to that same song and regretting all the chances that had slipped away from him?

  17

  GOODING

  When Staff Sergeant Gooding returned from Qatar, his tan was the envy of all the cubicle rats whose skin was the color of paper. With his beige glow, Gooding strolled into the palace, feeling radiant and refreshed (the real R&R, he thought). He felt like an actor in a toothpaste commercial who shows up with new breath and all his female coworkers swoon when he passes them in the hall.

  The palace was filled with an odd buzz when Chance came on shift his first day back—and it wasn’t just because he was bright with Persian Gulf sunshine. It turned out that most of the staff was distracted by a preseason NFL game.

  By the time he walked through the marbled hallways and entered the work area, it was the fourth quarter. As he passed the cubicles, everyone—officer and enlisted alike—was clustered around the satellite TVs or the computers with streaming live video feeds, all eyes focused on the little men in helmets bashing each other. Sitting at his desk, he could hear voices like rising sirens: “go, go, gogogoGO—aaawwww!”

  Even later, during General Bright’s morning brief, the officers had their chairs swiveled away from the SMOG station and turned toward the TV screen in the Information Ops section, only half-listening to the G-staff drone on with their reports: “Sir, we expect AIF activity to resume at April levels within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The majority of attacks are expected to be comprised of harassing small-arms fire and IEDs. Targets are likely to be—”

  There was a blast from the referee’s whistle and a cry of “What the fuck was that? Did you just see what happened? What the fuck was that?” from one of the officers throwing up his hands in dismissal at the quarterback on the screen.

  Even the CG seemed abnormally distracted while he sat in his third-floor office, SMOG earphones clapped to his head. Gooding figured he probably listened to the G-staff reports with one eye on his TV. At one point, he grunted his approval for G-4 to retrofit a fleet of uparmored Humvees with sheepskin seat covers because the soldiers in one unit had been complaining of hemorrhoids—and when was the last time you heard the CG give a tinker’s damn for the luxuries of life when soldiers should be focusing their attention on the immediate mission at hand (“cleaning up the streets by eradicatin
g Sunni ruffians and foreign troublemakers”)? That the CG seemed to care about the inflamed rectums of infantry soldiers showed he definitely had something else on his mind at the time.

  By midmorning, the football game was over and everyone had returned to their normal routine of plotting future operations and cataloging the results of current ops.

  In his cubicle, Gooding sat holding his forehead in one hand. The glow of his Qatar tan was already starting to fade. He was depressed because he’d just hung up the phone after learning one of their moneymakers had been hit with an IED, which had sheared off the lower half of his left leg. This meant Staff Sergeant Gooding would have to reschedule all the media opportunities he’d lined up for the guy, a specialist named Kyle Pilley. The specialist’s moneymaker days were over.

  That was Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad’s term for them: moneymakers. These were the soldiers caught at the crossroads of luck and bravery, the door kickers who rose to the occasion and did something true and honorable in the eyes of the U.S. Army, who participated in moments of selfless action that could then be packaged into a heart-stirring story and delivered to the media.

  Maybe it was shielding a little schoolgirl from the blast of a suicide bomber, taking the brunt of the shrapnel, which embeds in your flak vest but doesn’t kill you, just leaving a nasty set of green-brown bruises.

  Maybe it was befriending a Local National, a down-on-his-luck restaurant owner plagued with vandalism and robbery, someone in whom you take a personal interest and so you bring your squad back to the restaurant and spend your week’s one half-day off scrubbing away the graffiti. Still on your own time, maybe you set up a guard shift at night to catch the Sunni bastards who are doing this to the poor guy, and forever earn the Local National’s gratitude, winning his heart and mind.

  Or maybe, like Specialist Kyle Pilley, you are shot at close range by a sniper’s bullet and you bounce right back up onto your feet and, still sucking at oxygen you just thought was lost to you forever, you give chase to the would-be assassins, tackle them in a back alley, zip-cuff the bastards, and bring them to justice.