Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge

with a couple of guys from Inside Plant and then walked to our favorite local
restaurant. I am sure it had an Italian name, but we called it "The Mama Mia
Pizzeria," because the first time we went there we spent two hours talking to
the daughter of the woman who did all the cooking, and the only thing we
understood, this was before Jeremy learned Italian, was that when she got
frustrated with us she would actually say "Mama Mia!" like a New York Italian
in a bad 50s movie.
We had an unspoken agreement to pretend it was a night like any
other. We drank the local wine, flirted with the daughter and the mother, joked
with the father, and when the evening was over ordered several bottles of wine
and two calzones to go.
Also by unspoken agreement, we did not check any of the bars or
restaurants to see if anyone was heading back to the barracks, but instead started
walking down the cracked concrete road towards the base. By about three a.m.
we were only a mile or so from base, and we stopped and sat down in the mid­
dle of the road to eat our calzones. To drink our wine. To talk.
"It isn't true. You know it isn't true don't you?"
"I know."
He took a long drink from the bottle and passed it back to me.
"This whole thing is a fucking lie. My roommate says he walked in
and saw me blowing one of the fags from Supply, but it isn't true."
"I know."
"It doesn't matter anyway. The Article 15 doesn't show up on any
civilian record. AU it means is that I go home a few months before you. We're
all going home soon. I heard on the radio in the Mama Mia Pizzeria that they
were tearing down the fucking wall in Berlin."
"The actual Berlin wall?"
I opened a new bottle, and Jeremy tossed the empty over his shoulder
into the field on the side of the rode.
"It's coming down man. The cold war is over. Russia folded. We win.
And, just like after World War II everyone will be going home. I guaran-fuck­
ing-tee it."
I could tell Jeremy was pretty drunk. He only swears when he has had
too much to drink.
"You are witnessing the last days of the military-industrial complex.
There is no way congress will keep throwing money at the military without the
Russians to fight-they would have to invent a whole new enemy, and that
ain't gonna happen my friend. That just ain't gonna happen. In three months
you will be stateside and the U.S. will have an Armed Forces the size of
England's."
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