Fobbit (23 page)

A stack of sheets and a pillow cradled in his arms, Abe briefly toyed with the idea of going AWOL. He forgot the exact contents of Article 87, but surely it couldn’t be worse than Certain Death. Then someone bumped into him, whooping like a siren and running full-bore in the direction of the base’s swimming pool. It was the freckle-face clerk and he had lust blazing in his eyes. “Last one in the pool is a lazy, limp-dick son of a bitch!” he screamed.

And just like that, Captain Abe Shrinkle was jostled back into his role as a commanding officer. “Hey, there, soldier, watch your language!”

The Fobbit slowed and looked over his shoulder with a scowl, which melted into an O-mouthed expression of surprise when he saw the rank on Abe’s collar. Soon, they would all be clad in the anonymity of civilian clothes but for now Abe played his role for all it was worth. It might be his swan song as a commander. “And stop running! You’re supposed to be resting and relaxing down here.”

“Ye-yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Okay, that’s better.” Abe allowed a grin to break his “commander’s face” and said, “Carry on, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.” The clerk snapped off an embarrassed salute, then turned and started speed-walking toward the pool.

Abe was still smiling as he fluffed the sheets across his bed and changed into the one set of civvies he’d been smart enough to pack in his duffel bag. He might be stripped of his command when he returned to Triumph but he wasn’t there yet, was he? He damn sure intended to make the most of his remaining four days as an officer and a gentleman.

Abe Shrinkle sat in the Qatar base’s Top-Off Club, nursing the second beer of his three-per. He’d ordered a ribeye and was going at it with knife and fork and all the concentrated ambition of an Olympic athlete when another soldier entered and sat down on the stool next to him. He whistled for the bartender, ordered a beer, and, when it came, tossed his head back. It went down like water.

“Easy there,” Abe said. “Pace yourself, buddy.”

The other soldier cocked his lean, black face at Abe. “This
is
my pace, man. Friend of mine said to slam ’em back, fast as you can. Said the buzz’ll last longer that way.” He whistled and twirled his finger for another beer.

The Top-Off Club neighbored the swimming pool and so it smelled of chlorine. Done up in 1970’s tiki refugee decor, with a bar that curved like a half-smile, it was also pathetic and scummy in the corners. The waitresses brought food to the soldiers from the Chili’s next door and by the time the plates were put on the bar, they were already cooling. Nothing about this place bespoke “fun, Fun, FUN!” as promised by the article in the
Lucky Times
—a puff piece if Abe ever saw one. No doubt the CG pressed his thumb on some junior officer’s soft skull and that officer then stabbed his sharp-nailed index finger into some NCO’s chest and that NCO then pounded his jelly fist on the desk of some low-level private who then went to his computer and wrote about how the division’s rest-and-relaxation program was fun-tastic—the next best thing to going home.

Abe forked another piece of steak into his mouth. It was starting to taste like liver. He hated liver. He washed it down with the last of his second beer then he, too, twirled his finger for another.

The other soldier pointed at Abe’s plate. “How’s the steak? Good?”

“All I can say is, there’s a definite shortage of dogs here in Qatar.”

“Shit, man. I was gonna order me one of those. Guess I’ll stick to nachos.”

“Probably safer.”

“Ain’t dat right. You permanent party here?”

“No, R&R. I’m from FOB Triumph. Baghdad. You?”

“Mosul. What’s it like down there in Bag City?”

“A car bomb every day. Sometimes three on religious holidays. It never ends.” The vision of a man clinging to the undercarriage of a truck, screaming as his skin barbecued in great black chunks, came roaring uninvited into Abe’s head. He tried slamming back his last beer but it leaked into his sinus cavity and he sputtered.

“Yeah, we get vee-bids every now and then,” the other soldier was saying. “Not as bad now as it used to be. Mostly we get mortared. And snipers on the roofs taking potshots at us whenever we go out.”

“Whole different world down here in Qatar,” Abe said, stifling his coughing fit.

“Ain’t dat right.” The other soldier nodded. “Man, when we came in on the bus, the guards at the gate wasn’t wearing no body armor or nothing. Not even carrying a rifle, just a 9mm. These people down here don’t know how good they got it.”

“True,” Abe said.

The other guy ordered, then slammed, his third beer. “I was gonna spend my R&R up at Mosul in my room just chillin’ but then a buddy of mine says, ‘Man, you gotta get you down to Qatar—you wouldn’t believe the women down there.’” He cocked an eyebrow. “Well I been here for a day now and I don’t know what he’s talking about. The dude-to-chick ratio sucks!”

They laughed and Abe sawed off some more of his meat.

The other soldier swayed a little closer and murmured, “Now, over there in the black top, she kinda cute.” He nodded toward one of the Top-Off Club waitresses, a Filipino like the rest of the staff. She leaned on the end of the bar and stared vacantly out at the room watching the other GIs clustered at their tables.

Abe gave a noncommittal “Hmm,” then tried to chew another piece of steak. Now it was like jawing liver-flavored bubble gum.

“Watch this,” the other guy said to Abe. He whistled and called out, “Hey, Mama-san! Over here!”

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.