by Atticus Lish
You live here?
She had stopped to get her key out.
Yes. I go home.
Let me come in with you.
No.
It’ll be cool, I swear.
No. We say goodbye.
He tried to reach for her and she caught his forearm.
What? I was just holding the door.
She let him hold her hand.
You don’t know what it’s like, he said.
I know.
Let me do this. That’s all I’m doing. That’s all I did last time.
Okay, it’s enough. Be a good boy.
Okay, he said.
8
SHE TOOK HER JEANS off and squatted on the mattress, barelegged beneath her t-shirt, and poked in the plastic bag which contained her things. She changed into tracksuit pants, hiking the ankles above her knees like shorts, her muscular calves flexing as she walked, bent, squatted. She took her jeans to the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub. A box of detergent had been wedged behind the toilet. She took it out and slapped it to knock the powder loose and poured out a handful of blue and white gravel and mashed it into her wet jeans. A cockroach decorated the wall. Humming, she grabbed the denim in two fists and rubbed them together.
The cockroach waved its antennas at her. You’re not so formidable, she told it.
She turned the faucet off, wrung her jeans out, hung them on the shower rod.
Still humming, she dried her arms, threw her peelings out in the wet bag in the kitchen. She rinsed her hands and looked outside at the expressway. It was the middle of the afternoon, the traffic sounds seeming to come through cotton wadding. She took the trash out and swept the grit up off the floor and put their sandals back in front of their respective sheds. She went back to check her jeans. When she squeezed the ankles, water ran down her wrists. She took them down and went outside.
Yesterday, she had bought a sweatshirt on the street for three dollars from an African. I’m cool guy now, she said, pulling the hood over her head like him, speaking English to herself as if he were here to hear her.
She went down a road beneath trees arched overhead, passing low-rise buildings in the trees, an American flag nearly shredded, the colors washed out, an old wide rectangular car beneath a rusted gate. The foundations were tagged with spray paint. At the end of the tunnel of trees a bus went by. Then the sound carried back to her.
At the laundromat, she spent her last quarter drying her jeans, leaning on the dryer, feeling the warmth through her side, hypnotized by the ticking and the lifting, falling, and lifting and falling of her clothes as the drum turned.
A Puerto Rican woman said do you mind? and Zou Lei moved.
A male wearing a massive down coat came in walking with a cane. His pitted face was very white. He sat down with his legs out, the only adult male, eyes hidden by the brim of his cap. The Puerto Rican pulled her kid over to him. Hold him. Don’t let him run.
When the drum stopped, she opened the door and put her hand in to feel.
Well, that’s not bad. And if they shrank, then even better when you put them on. Oh, you better not be crazy! I am a little bit. Fold them, smooth them out. Make them sharp. Everything military spirit.
In his shorts, his calves were white. He had low-bodyfat calves, which striated when he walked in the gym, across the corrugated rubber floor. From the back, he had a V-cut torso. Without his black hoodie and camouflage jacket, just in a skivvie shirt, you could see the apelike way he held his arms out, his stiff-legged jock walk, which resulted from his injured back.
They gave him a white towel and he carried it around with him from machine to machine, his image rippling along the mirrored wall, an olive drab torso with a yellow insignia on the chest. On his back, it said Third Battalion – Desert Tour – Playing in Ramadi – We Bring the Heat. He loaded plates on the leg machine, one at a time, as if pacing himself for untold hours of labor. He sat down in the sled, put his boots up on the black sandpaper treads, and released the brakes on each side. The plates clanked. Sharp ridges appeared in his white calves as he let the weight come down onto him and, straightening his legs, pressed it up again. When he was done, he swung up to his feet and changed the weight. He took a plate off and carried it over to the steel tree and slid it on. In the mirror, you saw his thick tattooed forearms, his head carried forward and down, as if he were sullen, but that was not exactly it. There were things he did not see. His towel fell and he walked on it.
How many more you got? he was asked.
A bunch. I got a lot of work to do. His attention seemed to spin off sideways following his uncentered eyes. Go ahead and work in.
That’s okay. Is that your towel?
What?
Possibly he had been angered by the question and he was left alone. He did leg presses for an hour. When he changed the weights around, he went back and forth to the weight tree, stepping on the towel, which he left where he could step on it. Eventually, he kicked it with his boot without looking at it as he carried a forty-five-pound plate in front of his chest and it went where he wasn’t going to walk on it.
Then, when he was done with the leg machine, he picked the towel up and threw it in the laundry hamper on his way into the locker room. His clothes were tossed in the bottom of a locker with no lock. There were other individuals in the locker room behind him. When he took his skivvie shirt off, revealing his ribs and spine, there was a catch in their conversation. Their discussion of good places to go bicycling on the weekend—up the Henry Hudson to the George Washington Bridge or even over to the Palisades where you could do a good ten miles if you were feeling strong—hung fire for a moment.
He put on his Army Strong shirt, the black one. Flipped his hood over his head. He looked like a monk. The pills rattled when he dug in his jacket for his Velcro wallet. He clumped out of the locker room in his boots. Noticing that they weren’t tied, he took a knee on the corrugated rubber mat and did up his laces.
He went to the supplement counter where they sold protein shakes. Sweat was welling out of his bad skin. He was asked what he wanted. The mass builder, he pointed. He circled the weight room floor, drinking from the paper cup with the heavy chalky liquid in it.
He went to the preacher bench and set his shake down on the floor. It was the middle of the afternoon and there was hardly anyone in the gym except a Caribbean woman folding towels. He leaned forward for the bar and started doing curls. Between sets, he poured the mass builder in his mouth and swallowed.
A manager appeared across the steel and white room and came over to him. Skinner, who seemed to be watching several things at once, kept curling the weight. The manager was over six feet tall. He had muscular arms and wore his jeans pulled up in a way that divided his butt cheeks.
Excuse me, sir.
It was not clear whether the manager had his attention. The hooded sweatshirt concealed Skinner, draped him, radiating clammy heat, and the stink of sweat and metal, rubbed off the weights, came off him.
Excuse me, sir.
Air hissed out of Skinner’s teeth. He dropped the bar in the rack.
Yeah.
The manager, who outweighed him by perhaps sixty pounds, said:
We don’t allow boots on the exercise floor, sir.
I’m almost done.
Finish your next set, and then you have to change into sneaker attire.
I’ve got like five more, then I’m done.
But the manager insisted he change immediately. So he went into the locker room and pulled his boots off and tossed them in his locker. Then he went back out and worked out in his sock feet until he was spoken to again.
They were wrestling in a doorway. She pushed him off and pulled her sweatshirt down. Come on, come on. It’s cool. I won’t. He backed her into the door until she pushed him off. No wait no wait just trust me. It was cold. He tried to grind against her. She raised her knee. He jerked back. She put a finger in his face: I am you sister. I don’t have a sister. She h
eld his wrists and when he broke her grip, she dodged away laughing. He hugged her and she took his hands off and forced them to his side. No touch. Just let me go like this. No. What’s wrong? They look at us. He turned to see who she meant, but there was no one there.
That’s funny. Come on. He leaned into her. He got his hand inside her sweatshirt and managed to touch her breast just barely as she struggled.
Stop! she ordered. She shoved him off and kicked him in the leg. He turned sideways and she punched him in the arm.
Let’s not fight.
She grabbed the fabric of his clothing as if to choke him with it or rend it. The strap of his assault pack got caught in her grip.
Wait up.
He stepped away and readjusted his pack behind him.
All right, game on.
No. You are bad boy.
Aw, come on. Come back.
No.
Seriously. Come back.
No. You are the wild boy. Out of control.
He followed after her as she went out onto the main avenue where there were people and lights. She acted as if she were browsing the markets, surveying this and that. She clasped her hands behind her back.
Look at this apple.
He had caught up with her.
Are you mad for real?
She looked at the crowd of people buying things.
Look at this peach. Pear. Melon. No.
They stood on the edge of the light from the bare bulbs that had been set up in the market so that people could see the produce, him in his pale loose camouflage gear, both of them unhooded, with their strong heads like two animals who had wandered in from the dark out of curiosity.
I carry maybe one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand of this melon, she said. Me and my mother.
She knocked one with her knuckles.
He rubbed it.
Feels like somethin to me.
Look at this fish, she pointed.
The fish were large and heavy. She read the cardboard sign planted in the ice. Six dollar. Hm, she said.
You into fish?
It’s expensive.
They wandered along the margin, shoppers streaming around them out into the night. He took a chance and put an arm around her. She said, No, like this, and took his arm in hers.
Wanna hit a bar?
But she said, No, we go up here.
At the top of the hill, there was a silver cart with a minaret spinning on top and smoke billowing out almost invisibly in the dark. You could smell the smoke. Painted on the side of the cart were the words Xinjiang Shaokao One Dollar. The vendor, who had a bag of charcoal by his cooler, wore a surgical mask and military fatigues. He was fanning the grill with a piece of cardboard. They watched the coals glow like red teeth. One by one the vendor turned the skewers over.
Liangge yang! Zou Lei sang out.
Two lamb, the vendor repeated in Chinese, from under his surgical mask.
What’d you tell him? Skinner asked.
I order the lamb kawap. I tell you before, I will invite you the real Chinese food.
Lade bulade?
Lade.
What’d he say?
He ask if he make it spice or not spice.
The vendor took a pinch of spice out of a cup and sprinkled it over the grill. When the meat was ready, he snipped the ends of the skewers off with meat scissors. Two lamb! He handed Zou Lei the skewers like a bouquet and took her money.
Your nanpengyou? the vendor asked.
You could say that.
American fellas have money, don’t they?
I wouldn’t know.
Everyone knows except you. Why don’t you have him pay?
You’re so concerned!
The vendor pulled down his surgical mask, revealing a lean face. He addressed himself to Skinner. You, he said, rubbing his fingers together. Money.
What? Skinner said.
The vendor went on with tending the fire and turning the meat and checking in his cooler.
You concern yourself with a lot, Zou Lei said.
Just looking out for you, sister.
Oh, that’s how it is.
That’s how it is.
Keep your eye on that fire. Don’t burn your little sticks, Skinner said.
The man made a tolerant sound, as if he were humming a lullaby, placating a child.
Zou Lei took Skinner’s arm and walked him down the block. There were condominiums and trees. They left the avenue behind. The concrete sparkled where it was not in shadow. They leaned on the scaffolding to eat.
What’s with him?
Maybe he is angry. The Chinese is poor people. Maybe he don’t have enough money to get the wife, the family.
He can’t afford a girl.
Or they cannot afford to live together. A lot of family is apart.
So he’s a hater.
Yes, maybe. Maybe he is jealousy.
I get it, Skinner said.
They were eating, their chins covered in grease.
You ever have this one before?
Yup, he said chewing. At like haji shops and stuff.
You like?
Hell yeah. It’s good. Messed me up a little.
How it mess you?
He chewed.
Like digestion or whatever.
You are not used to it. But if you can be used to it, it is very healthy. The people who eats this one grows up up up up.
She put her hand up in the air above both their heads.
This one is not the best. In my home, it’s the best one. You cannot believe. The lamb is kill very fresh. In the morning, he is alive, run around. In the afternoon, he is hanging up. Cut the meat, put the fire.
He nodded.
You never eat so good in you life. The bread, my mother bake.
She went on:
In my home is the mountain, forest. River. Everything.
He watched her silhouette. She started to say something else and stopped.
What?
You guess.
Then give me something to go on.
I am not the Chinese.
I thought you were.
No. One half.
She leaned forward, the bottom half of her face coming out of the shadow. He stared at her chin.
What are you?
You guess.
He didn’t know.
The Muslim people. Eats lamb.
She grinned and bit her skewer and slid the meat off with her teeth.
Are you messing with me?
She walked around in the dark smiling at him.
He shrugged.
She poked his shin with her sneaker toe.
You surprising?
No. I knew there was something different about you.
Maybe you don’t want to play games anymore.
That’s not true.
To hug.
Yeah, I do. Quit movin and I’ll show you in a heartbeat.
They were in a KFC in a chaotic Spanish and black neighborhood. They had walked here, having travelled down a rolling stretch of tall trees and small houses, a narrow strip of sidewalk to go on, sometimes going in ranger file with her in the lead, stepping over sodden cardboard which could have been where people camped. The restaurant’s windows were steamed over, and gangs of teenagers in matching red colors and blowout afros were calling back and forth across the place. She saved a booth, her face windburned, eyes bright. He came back from the counter carrying their dinner, his boots just missing the feet in red and black Jordans which were extended in the aisle.
He set the tray in front of her. She clapped her hands.
We has everything!
I know. Here’s your Coke.
He sat down and something heavy in his pack, which he had again worn to see her, clunked the seat. He shrugged out of it and set it under the table between his boots. They reached into the chicken bucket. She leaned forward, eating with both hands. The skin came off his chicken and he put it in his mouth and wiped his fa
ce. He wiped his hands, which, even when washed, looked as if he had been handling charcoal, the nails outlined.
At the next table, a female voice was hollering, Is you ready to stop bullshittin? And a gale of hooting went up around the place. In ecstasy, one of the teenagers screamed and stamped the floor with his Jordans.
You want ice cream? Skinner asked Zou Lei.
Ice cream! Maybe, she nodded. Maybe it is nice.
I know I’m feelin it.
He got them cones. When they were halfway done, he moved around and sat next to her on her side and reached under the table and squeezed her thigh. There was no resistance in her leg, as if the warmth of the restaurant had relaxed her joints.
How’s that ice cream, baby?
Good!
She licked the side of the cone. He watched her, his mouth a flat line. Slowly he slid his hand up her leg. He swallowed. He put his hand all the way up between her legs and squeezed.
How’s that.
He glanced at her.
She nodded, concentrating on her cone as if he wasn’t there. He swallowed again. She kept her eyes straight ahead. His arm was working under the table. Heat through her jeans. He pretended to eat his ice cream. A minute later, she sighed and shifted forward, hiding her face from the loud restaurant and from him. She flushed, as if in mortification, and opened her legs. He heard her breathing. Her jeans damp. He kept working, glancing sideways again. Then she tremored—it was distinct. She swayed and went weak and pressed against his arm.
Outside, he held her around the waist, saying to her:
It don’t matter where we go, we just gotta go somewhere. You feel that?
He pressed against her leg.
Yeah, I feel.
He was scanning around for a black car that might be a cab.
You bring the thing?
The what?
The… the biyuntao?
What, a rubber? Yeah, I got that. There’s one. Let me flag this fool down.
A Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of them, aerial waving, and Skinner and Zou Lei got into the leather backseat, a wooden cross dangling from the rearview with the air freshener and reggaeton ratatatting from the speakers.
Dude, I want to go to a hotel near here, like not too far away. You got me? Like what hotels are there?
