Donny squeezed to the bar, ordered a Bud, forked over a buck and remembered, 'Keep all your receipts.
You can expense this. Our office will pick it up. But nothing hard. Bonson will fucking freak if you start chugging Pinch.'
'I've never even tasted Pinch,' Donny had replied.
'Maybe tonight's the night.'
'That's a big negative,' said Weber.
Donny sipped his beer. Beside him, a guy was in the middle of a bitter fight with a girl. It was one of those quiet, muttered things, but very intense. The boy kept saying, under his breath, 'You idiot. You unbelievable idiot.
How could you let him? Him! How could you let him? You idiot.'
The girl merely stared ahead and smoked.
The time passed. His instructions were clear. He was not to approach Crowe. That would be a mistake. Sooner or later Crowe would see him, Crowe would approach him, and then it would go where it would go. If he threw himself at Crowe, the whole damned thing would fall apart.
Donny had another beer, checked his watch. He scoped the action. There were some attractive chicks but none as cool as Julie, the girl to whom he was engaged.
Man, he smiled, I still got the best It was the football hero-cheerleader thing, but not really. Yes, he was a football hero. Yes, she was a cheerleader.
But he didn't really like football and she didn't really like cheerleading. They actually were sort of forced together as boyfriend and girlfriend by peer pressure at Pima County High School, found they didn't really like each other very much, and broke up. Once they broke up and started hanging out with other people, they missed each other. One night they went on a double date, he with Peggy Martin, Julie's best friend, and she with Mike Willis, his best friend. And that was the night they really connected.
Junior year. The war was far away then, happening on TV. Firefights in places like Bien Hoa and I Drang that he had never heard of. The napalm floating off the Phantoms and wobbling downward to blossom in a huge smear of tumbling fire across the jungle canopy. It meant nothing. Donny and Julie went everywhere that year. They were inseparable. It was, he thought, the best summer of his life, but senior year was better, when he'd led the Southwest Counties League in yardage, averaging close to two hundred a game. He was big and fast. Julie was so beautiful but she was nice, somehow. She was so nice. She was .. . good was the only word he could think of, and it was so lame.
'Jesus Christ!'
Donny felt a hand on his shoulder as the words exploded into his ear. He turned.
'What the hell are you doing here?'
Of course it was Crowe, in jeans and a work shirt looking very proletariat. He had--where the hell did he get that?--a camouflaged boonie cap on to disguise his hairless ness
He held a beer in his hand and was with three other young men who looked exactly like him except their hair was real, and long. They looked like three Jesuses.
'Crowe,' said Donny.
'I didn't know this was your kind of place,' said Crowe.
'It's a place. They have beer. What the fuck else would I need?' Donny said.
'This is my corporal,' Crowe said to his pals.
'He's a genuine USMC hero. He's actually killed guys. But he's a good guy. He only made me drop for twenty- five today instead of fifty.'
'Crowe, if you'd learn your shit, you wouldn't have to drop for any.'
'But then I'd be collaborating.'
'Oh, I see. Fucking up funerals is part of your guerrilla war on the grieving mothers of America.'
'No, no, I'm only joking. But the funny thing is, I can't tell my left from my right. I really can't.'
'It's port and starboard in the Marine Corps,' said Donny.
'I don't know them either. Well, anyway. You want to join us? Tell these guys about 'Nam?'
'Oh, they don't want to hear.'
'No, really,' one of the other kids said.
'Man, it must be fucking hairy over there.'
'He won a Bronze Star,' said Crowe with a surprising measure of pride.
'He was a hero.'
'I was lucky as shit not to get wasted,' Donny said.
'No, no war stories. Sorry.'
'Look, we're going to a party. We know this guy, he's having a big party. You want to come, Corporal?'
'Crowe, call me Donny off duty. And you're Ed.'
'Eddie and Donny!'
'That's it.'
