Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (33 page)

Billy and Mango look at each other. The damn movie.

“So it’s either that or . . .” Dime looks up at the scoreboard. “Albert, we’re running out of time.”

Mango turns away, hissing something low and hot in Spanish. Down the row Sykes has launched into the old boot camp chant,
Pick up your wounded, pick up your dead
 . . .

“He’s right here,” Dime says, glancing at Billy. He listens for a moment, then asks Billy: “Are you available for a meeting?”

Billy laughs. “Am I
what
? Sure, yeah. When?”

“Now. With Norm. Josh is coming for us.”

Billy’s throat knots up. “Okay.”

“Yes he is available,” Dime says to the cell. “Anybody else?” Dime listens, then grunts and clicks off. For several moments he just crouches there, staring at the field.

“Sergeant, are you okay?”

Dime snaps out of it. “I was just thinking, rich people are crazy.” He turns to Billy and adds, with feeling: “Don’t ever forget that.”

“Roger, Sergeant.”

MONEY MAKES US REAL

THEY COME UPON ALBERT
in the corridor outside of Norm’s suite, head down, back propped against the wall, tapping on his BlackBerry with his silver tapping stick. He beams when they turn the corner.

“Guys! What up?”

“Up, down, all around,” Dime answers.

“Let’s hang here a minute, I’ll bring you up to speed.” He turns to Josh with a pleasant, pointed look.

“I’ll go tell Mr. Oglesby we’re here,” Josh says.

“Excellent idea.” Albert herds Dime and Billy down the corridor some distance from the suite. “Looking good at halftime, guys, you did yourselves proud. You meet Beyoncé and the girls?”

“Hell no,” Dime grumps.

“What? No? That’s lousy. So what was that about down on the field, after? Looked like a flash mob or something, Black Friday at a Wal-Mart out in North Jersey. We couldn’t figure out what was going on.”

“It was nothing,” Dime says. “Just boys being boys.”

“Somebody giving you a hard time?”

Dime looks to Billy. “Was somebody giving us a hard time?”

“No, relatively speaking,” Billy answers.

“He’ll go far,” Albert says to Dime. “All right fellas, here’s the deal.” He pauses to smile at a passing couple, waits for the swish of their fur and cashmere to recede down the hall. “Norm’s in. He wants to put together an investor group to make our picture, but that’s not all. He’s
inspired,
shall we say, you guys have inspired him to think big thoughts today. He’s decided to form his own production company and start making films.”

“Might as well. His football team sure sucks,” says Dime.

Albert sniggers, glances up and down the hall. “Apparently he’s been mulling it over for quite some time, then we show up and he figures that’s God’s way of telling him to make his move. And frankly why not, the studios are looking to slough off risk any way they can. A guy who comes in with his own product, his own money, this is a very desirable commodity in Hollywood these days.”

He pauses while several more couples pass. One of the men snaps his fingers at Dime.

“Hey, great job at halftime!”

Dime snaps his fingers back. “Hey, you too!”

Albert waits until they’re gone. “It helps that he’s going all in, we’ll have that much more credibility shopping our picture around. With a one-off deal you’re sort of a lame duck, but if they know you’re sticking around? All the more reason for him to make a statement with this picture. Anyway, as far as our deal goes, as soon as he gets the company formed I’ll assign my option over to it, then when we’ve got the package together the company exercises the option, you guys get some money, and we go into production.”

“Cool,” says Dime.

“I’ll need you guys’ consent to transfer the option over.”

Dime hesitates. “But you’ll still be our producer.”

“You better believe it.”

“What about the Swank situation?”

“He’s still got a blunt up his ass about Hilary, but we can deal with that. All kinds of ways to deal with that. Believe me, having her in the mix is nothing but good for us. But listen.” Albert coughs into his fist. “You need to know going in, Norm’s got somewhat of a problem with the option price.”

“What kind of problem.”

“A size problem. A hundred thousand per Bravo, ten Bravos, that’s a tough nut to crack right out of the gate. We’re already looking at plunking half a million for the script, then getting a lead on the level of a Hilary, a Clooney, we’re talking multiple millions here.”

Dime turns to Billy. “Here’s where we get fucked.”

“No!” Albert cries. “No, no, no, no, Dave, have some faith! We’ve come this far together, you think I’m gonna toss you over the side
now
? Dave, Dave, you guys are
my
guys, either we make it together or we go down together. That’s what I told them in there, but I’m not gonna bullshit you, Norm’s not Santa Claus, he’s not spending one more dime than he has to. He, they, one of his guys—look, these are businessmen, okay? Understand they’re very crude in their thinking, just by definition. They floated the idea of dealing with just you two, they see your stories as the principal elements in this and the rest of the guys as, well, ancillary. I said I’d run it by you, but—”

“No.”

“—uh huh, total nonstarter, that’s what I told them. Bravo lives by the warrior code, I said. They won’t ever leave one of their own behind.”

“For them to even—”

“I know! But you have to understand that’s the mentality we’re dealing with here. Streamlining, return on capital, all that MBA shit, but I think they got the message. It’s gotta be all Bravos or no Bravos, nothing in between.”

“Damn straight,” Dime woofs, with volume enough to raise giggles from the busboys down the hall.

“David, relax.”

“I’m totally relaxed. Billy’s relaxed too, aren’t you Billy?”

“Totally, Sergeant.”

“Hang with me, guys, I’m gonna get you there. Right now what they’re offering is, well, what you’d be doing is deferring moneys up front for a net-profits percentage in the movie. You get an advance when the option is exercised, then you get another pop when we go into production—”

“How much?”

“—David, let me finish, please. Look, just ballparking this thing, if it has even decent success on the scale I’m thinking of, you guys will come out considerably better than a hundred thousand, but you’ll have to hang in there and be patient. When I set our up-front number two weeks ago I was thinking we’d be playing with studio money, but it’s a whole different game when you go independent. The numbers scale back across the board, people usually end up taking a profits percentage in lieu of cash. Even stars take percentage if it’s a project near and dear to their hearts.”

“Fine, I hear you. How much.”

“Well, initially it’s pretty minimal. Fifty-five hundred against profits when the option’s exercised—”

A gurgling commences in Dime’s throat.

“—but you’ll get that second advance when production starts—”

“Fifty-five fucking
hundred
?”

“I know it’s not what you were hoping for—”

“No shit!”

“—but then you’ll get that second advance—”

“How much?”

“Well, we’re still working on that, but usually it’s tied to production budget. The bigger the budget, the bigger your advance—”

“Not our deal, Albert. You said a hundred thousand up front.”

“I did, because I believe in your story so much, and I still think we’re gonna home-run this thing. Look, two weeks ago I thought we had a real chance of taking studio bids, you guys had such outrageous buzz coming in. But we get a couple of no’s, and Russell Crowe taking a pass, that really hurt us. It doesn’t take much for the buzz to fade, and I admit, maybe I got a little ahead of myself, I jacked up everybody’s expectations and now we’re all going to have to adjust. Plus the fact that the war’s put up some spotty box-office numbers, didn’t I say that might be a problem? So we’re bucking that too. I know fifty-five hundred sounds pretty lame after the numbers we’ve been talking about, but for young men like yourselves, young soldiers on Army pay, it’s not nothing, right?”

“Albert, don’t even talk to me like that.”

“Dave, I’m just trying to get you to think long-term here. This is equity, think of it as stock, stock options, you’re deferring a chunk of money up front for a shot at real money down the road. And you guys would be helping to build something, that’s what equity’s all about. If the company makes money, you make money, you’ll be fully vested partners with Legends on this deal—”

“Wait,
who
?”

“Legends. That’s the name Norm wants for his company.”

“Jesus Christ, he’s already got the fucking
name
?”

“You better believe he’s got the name and that’s great, I got no interest being partners with a ball scratcher, and neither should you. He’s ready to
go,
Norm’ll pull a damn trigger—do you not realize the value of that? How freaking
rare
that is in my world? You die by the slow no in this business,
lemme get back to you, lemme get back to you, lemme get back to you,
everybody’s so scared of screwing up they’d rather lose a kidney than make an actual business decision. So here we are in Dallas, we meet this guy, he sizes up the situation and wham, he’s good to go. I’m not saying you have to love the guy, but you’ve got to respect the power of that.”

Respect this,
Billy can practically hear the Bravos woof. As if in pain Dime swags his head side to side.

“But Albert.”

“What?”

“You said they love us.”

“I did, David, but that was two weeks ago. People move on, they start to focus on other things.”

“So you’re saying this is the best offer we’re going to get?”

“Dave, I’m saying this is the only offer we’ve got.”

“Does Norm know?”

Albert shrugs. “He knows we’ve been talking to people.”

“So what he’s offering is, basically, fifty-five hundred bucks apiece. And that’s all he’s on the hook for. No guarantees we’ll get anything else.”

“Dave, you want a guarantee, go buy a microwave. No guarantees in my world unless your name is Tom Cruise.”

Dime sighs, and to Billy’s profound alarm he turns and asks, “What do you think?” but before Billy can answer an unmarked door pops open between them and the suite, and Mr. Jones leans out.

“Mr. Ratner, the third quarter’s about to end.”

“Thanks. We’ll be right there.”

Mr. Jones withdraws but leaves the door ajar. Albert turns to Dime and Billy, lowers his voice. “Guys, tell me what you want. You wanna go in there and talk, or should I just yell through the door no thanks.”

“No,” Dime says.

“No what?”

“This sucks,” Dime says to Billy.

Albert gives them a big smile. “Always, guys, always, it’s just a question of degree. Be thankful it’s not rectal bleeding.”

“What happens to the rest of it if we say no? His big production company, all the movies he wants to make.”

Albert drops the smile. “I think he’s planning to go forward with that. He seems committed.”

“Are you going to be involved?”

Albert’s mouth forms a tidy little purse. “Well, I’d be foolish not to consider every opportunity.”

“Albert, you’re an asshole.”

The producer doesn’t bat an eye. “Dave, I got you an offer. If you think you can do better, let’s go in there and talk to the man.”

“Okay, fuck it. Let’s go in there and talk.”

Billy says he’ll be fine waiting in the hall, but Dime gives him such a blistering look that he’s shamed into coming. Mr. Jones is standing just inside the door, which he shuts and locks behind them. They descend a couple of steps into a dim, cramped, low-ceilinged space furnished along the ad hoc lines of a waiting room at a car wash. It’s a super-private adjunct to the official owner’s suite next door, a man place, ripe with the muzzy smells of sweat, burnt coffee, vestigial cigarette smoke, plus a percolating flatulence that might be stale lunch meat. Everyone turns and smiles for the Bravos. “Gentlemen! Welcome to the war room!” someone cries, and they are urged forward, offered chairs and refreshments. TVs mounted on wall brackets are tuned to the game, the announcers nattering like parrots in a cage. A bare wet bar occupies one corner of the room. Norm and his sons are seated at a counter that runs the length of the plate-glass front. Scattered about the countertop are laptops, spreadsheets, loose-leaf notebooks, bottles of water and sports drinks; as his eyes adjust to the bad light Billy sees not a drop of alcohol in sight. Two Cowboys executives are moving about, big, burly guys with the trouser-hitching swagger of management who started out on the loading dock. Mr. Jones perches on a stool by the wet bar, still with his suit coat buttoned. Everyone else is down to loose ties and rolled sleeves, except for Josh, who’s doing his mannequin thing at the back of the room.