Preparation for the Next Life

by Atticus Lish

  On her break, she did not exercise. There was no time anyway. She put her chopsticks in the shared tub and lifted out a wet nest of greens and dropped them on her rice and sucked them up into her mouth and kept sucking rice and chewing with her head down in the time allotted.

  When deliveries came, she unloaded boxes with the Mexicans, and outside of work, she did double distance, sometimes running west in the evening towards Corona. Then she might get on the train and head back towards Skinner, getting a free transfer on the bus when she was tired. Her sneakers were falling apart, the soles completely flat. She looked in the window of a Footlocker.

  A broad-shouldered black youth wearing the store uniform spoke to his friend and came outside to see if he could help her. He licked his lips and said, What you lookin for? She was standing hipshot in her jeans, reading prices. Can I be of service?

  She got smile lines by her mouth. But she was calculating days until they paid her.

  Yeah, I see you. Would you care to step into my office where it’s warmer?

  Even then, with rent, she would be leaving herself with next to nothing.

  Now, now, now—no need to go. I’m here to give you the service you desire.

  Before letting her go, he insisted on shaking her hand, which he kissed, and she yanked her hand away, laughing. He called after her as she went down the block:

  I see you! Think it over, ma!

  In the morning, she ran farther out in the park, crossing a road after which the park continued on in the direction of the tall isolated buildings that she thought of as mountains. She came to a basketball court where Afghan men and boys were playing soccer in leather sandals in twenty-degree weather. The men had imam’s beards and the boys had loosely jointed running styles from birth defects, depleted uranium.

  When she got paid, she bought an off-brand pair of sneakers in a 99-cent store. They tore her heels and she put tape in them to make them better.

  When no one was around, she went beneath the steam table and took out a plastic shell and then, after looking around first, picked up a stainless steel cover and checked beneath it. There was nothing under it but water, and she let it go—it sounded like a symbol when it dropped—and wrung her burned hand. She grabbed a dipper and flipped up the next one with the handle. Steam flowed up. She heard someone coming and put it down and stood aside. The cook, Rambo, was coming out, bent over fast-walking as if trying to catch up with a tub he was carrying in front of himself, gripping it with rags. She backed out of his way. He heaved it down, flipped up a lid, and slammed it home. From where she had retreated to, she watched the heat coming off the rice. He took her dipper and flipped the covers up and caught them like a juggler of spinning plates in an oriental circus. She pretended to be organizing drinking cups. He squatted and dialed a flame up. She put the shell back and went and got her rag in the closet with the jackets and purses and the starch. They had shopping bags with their own greens in them sitting on the floor. Box thorn, Shanghai cabbage sprouts. Someone had come in with coffee. She went back out and saw the girl at the register eating a pastry—crumbs on a napkin, coffee rings on a napkin—you could smell the milk and sugar.

  What you doing? Hiding back there?

  She had wanted a piece of stringy beef.

  When she went into the kitchen to wash dishes during the rush, Rambo saluted her.

  Leaving work at night, she was cutting through the parking lot to Roosevelt Avenue. In the projects across the street, someone was running across her line of sight. She watched a figure in sweatpants vault over a railing and run up to a steel door and start bouncing her ass back and forth. The door banged open and others came out in ball caps, laughing and making noise. The girl jumped around and clapped and another girl jumped into it with her, clapped at exactly the same time—they slid sideways on cue, danced a couple steps in sync together—the whoop came to Zou Lei from across the avenue—and then they dropped right in step with everybody else, the group of kids passing under the streetlight and becoming a squad of shadows, just their energy moving out into the nighttime and the voice or two that carried back.

  Then Zou Lei had a stroke of luck on the street, on Junction Boulevard. She found clothes out front of a thrift store, everything on the rack three dollars. She bought a pair of jeans at the Colombiana. The label, which she could not read, said Euphoria, but they were good as new and cut her way. She did three hundred squats one night at home and put them on and they fit her nice and tight.

  Polo was speaking to Sassoon.

  Everyone has their own characteristic. You look: One, two, three, four… One the style of Taiwan, one the style of Hong Kong, another one Japan. Polo paused for reflection. Another one Thailand, another one Singapore, another one Korea. More and more, on and on. The more modern style.

  But we, we, what are we? You think.

  Sassoon waited for him to tell her.

  We provide the modern flavors, he said. The front line. That is our characteristic. You look: Sa-cha. Thick soup. Oyster. Everything is leaning to Hong Kong-Taiwan. This is the front line. Not just smell. Flavor. Also culture. The big plate. Why a big plate? Because this is modern. Look, someone is eating—he pays money, he is eating, but the plate is small! Just like twenty years ago! Just like village! I feel so poor! Why do I pay? I am unsatisfied. I want a big plate. The big plate generates the atmosphere of freedom. The modern culture. Ah! Now I am so free, so magnanimous, so relaxed.

  You understand this? He observed his listener, before going on.

  You know sushi? Haha! He hooked his fingers towards his mouth. Sushi is advanced. This one—he pointed at another counter—provides sushi. You love to eat sushi? How do you know it? I am your senior and I just found out about it. I will invite you. You can taste it. What do you think? Hahaha.

  You have to study the meaning. This meaning is very deep, this, this characteristic. If you understand this characteristic, you can advance, you can expand your market share. This is your capital. Otherwise no one will know you.

  Little by little, you are learning. You must keep working. You will have your own business.

  Too old, Sassoon said.

  Maybe hair style? Maybe beauty? You will have your own business and be my competitor! He raised his pompadour and laughed hahaha.

  Too old. I’m looking for a husband. A rich one. Let the husband work.

  What will you do?

  Bodyfit!

  Bodyfit! What? The disco, aerobics… He smiled, raised his arms up, to the sides.

  Lose my weight. I love to lose my weight, Sassoon said. She danced in her seat.

  Ah, the boss said.

  A boy from Cardozo spoke to Kay or Angela across the register. You scared about you image. There’s no girls here. Don’t be afraid. I protect you. I got to protect mines own image. Yeah, right. Yeah, right, he said. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. I told you first. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. They let you touch the money. Let me touch the money? Don’t even think about it. KC. K-sahp-C laaaaaa! They the one who crazy. Mou aaaaaaah! Talk less. You boyfriend in the gang. So why you talking? I know you take it. Speak about the thing you understand. You take the money. Shut up already. You at the register all day… so much temptation for girl like you. Let me get twenty. Let me get a hunnie. Lemme get a knot. Seriously, chill with that. I’m on camera. There are four camera on me all the time. X film. For real. XX film. Watch the porno of you. Mental illness. He must suspect you. This place does mad good. How much is mad good? Twenty dollar? Phat knots? Try like way more. You got stacks. Word? Bossie got mad dollars. He live in Jersey. What kind of car he drive? He push a Escalade. Escalade… The big black one. You likes the Escalade. Ahh yeah. She smirked and curled her tongue up over the front of her teeth. You on his shit. She hummed a little tune. Never know. No way. I could get behind the wheel. She put her fist up and steered, rocking her narrow body from side to side.

  The men said, She is healthy.

  The three of them were sitting at a table at the far end o
f the food court from the counter and they had a view of the women clearing trays in their orange hats and aprons.

  You give her steak and she eats it, that kind of girl. Our Chinese girls are not like that. They have a modesty, that is their characteristic. When they show their flowers and branches it is different.

  Miss, miss, don’t be angry. I sit on a chair, you sit on the ground. I eat watermelon, you eat meat.

  It rhymed in their dialect from coal country. They had been discussing real estate, taxes, and how to beat a traffic ticket in American court.

  She’d make a good bit of goods for Polo.

  His blood isn’t red enough.

  He’s a man of higher quality. He wouldn’t be interested, I’ll tell you.

  If he did, you-know-who, the ghost-face one, would do away with herself.

  He’s frightened of that leopard.

  The former security man, whose name, Qing, meant Whisper in classical Chinese, told a story. There once was a labor organizer in our mine. He was connected to a clan, so we stayed clear of him. But he had a girlfriend we knew about, a fiancé. They weren’t married yet, you see. She was taken off the road, invited to a quiet place. We offered her a seat. Told her to get comfortable. We had made a hot fire. We helped her off with her coat and her pants. It’s too warm for that, we told her. Be careful of your health. We don’t want you to catch a fever. In our village, we grow beans, the product our village is famous for, besides coal. Now we prepared a funnel. This will remind you of your lover, we told her. Your tears are tears of impatience. A kilo of beans was heated till they were smoking hot in a brazier. They were put inside her using a funnel.

  One of the men, whose name meant Bell or Clapper, wanted to know if that was a true story.

  I don’t know, said Qing. Is it?

  That’s why we don’t have 9/11, the third one said.

  We have had 9/11. A nation as big as ours, we’ve had more than one 9/11, but you don’t hear about it. But that’s why we are catching up to America. Because we don’t allow backward people to slow us down. Here they have blacks, everywhere the blacks—taking drugs, playing with guns. If an iron fist were used with them the way we do back home, America would be a much stronger opponent.

  An open country.

  Too open. The women are open. Buy them a soda pop and they open their legs.

  Some of our Asian girls are getting like that too.

  Society is changing gradually, as the quality of life increases, the material level increases. People have levels. You can’t confuse a low-quality person with a civilized person. If people are not confused, then society will not be confused. But some people confuse society, telling lies, that kind of thing, and it holds the country back.

  Skinner listened to her voice on the phone while he smoked a cigarette, sitting in his boxer shorts, his hard white legs apart and his bare foot bouncing up and down, listening to her, looking around, listening to her, nodding occasionally in his empty room.

  Come over and kick it with me.

  She talked in his ear, her voice saying she could not.

  Aw, come on. Yes, you can—he laughed, his teeth yellow.

  I have to work. After work I’ll come. She had to work. After she had said no again and said goodbye, he rolled a spliff and went out on the avenue and smoked it. He paced under the naked trees and power lines.

  Ahead were the liquor stores and Chinese takeout counters on 162nd Street, Dutch-looking houses and shuttered storefronts and Mexican graffiti. Before he reached them, he turned back. He went back into the basement, the ripe smell of weed smoke clinging to his camouflage. He took a pill and sat there drifting.

  Sassoon started throwing things and yelling and demanded that Zou Lei come with her. They went into the hallway with the dumpster and she screamed at her. The Fookienese men working in the adjacent kitchen opened doors and watched.

  Everyone have to be careful, right? You know the saying, every man for self. The man, woman, kid, also. This is the life. You want me take my time, what you give me? Think about. That’s America. Everyone come here the same story. The one who take the boat, the fishing boat, the one who take the bus, get inside the truck, hiding, smuggle the people, Mexican. They die in there. Pay a lot of money the whole lifetime. The one is legal, the one is not legal. Everyone has the problem, the tears they cry—you no hear about it? I am the Cantonese. This one, she from my hometown. The same family. Don’t ask me for nothing, right? I don’t know you. This the life. You do the same to me. Don’t explain it, right? Just do it. America. The things is dead, the people is live. Everyday same thing, the things is dead. Chop the vegetable, chopping, peeling, washing. Maybe I tell you cut the meat, you cut the piece this big, supposed to be smaller. You get it wrong. That why I put you on the dish. You suppose to learn, daily, daily, the people is alive, supposed to change, right? You can’t get it right, basic common sense, I don’t need you. That’s fire. Fire. Hire the new one. The smart one get ahead.

  He cleaned up some of the garbage in his room. He checked his pistol, put it back in his assault pack. He arranged his boots neatly next to his bed.

  They had snow. When you looked up, you saw a plain of snow like an inverted image in the mountains. The snowfall covered the lots and rooftops and car tops and the fields adjacent to the highways. The plows came rumbling out at night. She stepped through the slush-filled gutters wearing plastic bags on her cheap new sneakers, which were already coming apart. Work had made her tired. She fell asleep on his bed—in his room, the boiler in the closet—water puddling on his floor beneath her plastic bags.

  He pulled her socks off and laid them out like bacon strips on the floor. The ankles of her jeans had snow crystals on them. He unbuttoned her tight jeans and pulled them off. Even with the phone in her pocket and the water in the cuffs, they were light. He put the poncholiner over her.

  She felt it snowing in her sleep—enormous heaven making snow above their heads, falling on the grate above his window in the sidewalk.

  He sat next to her, plugged into his laptop, listening to anthem rock, and a sound—barely more than a premonition—reached him through the music. His eyes narrowed and he looked sideways at his door. Something was happening. He pulled the wires out of his ears like someone pulling off his EKG and listened to the house.

  She had heard it too. She was waking up, her brown hair in her eyes, confused.

  I hear somethings.

  Then, overhead, there was a burst of running pounding feet. A man’s voice shouting. Another voice yelling faded and came back. The pitch of the yelling rose. They heard furniture legs. Then there was an impact to a stud and the thud vibrated the frame of the house. Zou Lei sat up and pushed the cover off. The yelling turned into the sound of a woman screaming.

  Skinner got up and stood listening in the doorway. She tiptoed over to listen with him. The woman was screaming and screaming and screaming—and now they could hear that she was crying. They stared up into the dark at the origin of the sound. The man continued shouting at her. He had a brogue. Skinner cocked his head, trying to understand him. The man was shouting:

  I don’t keep whores! I don’t keep whores!

  The Murphy’s kitchen door smashed open and someone came running out breathless and slammed out through the side door of the house. At the bottom of the basement stairs, they heard whoever it was running away from the house and out into the snowy street.

  Their daughter, he said.

  They remained there, listening for whatever else would happen. They heard a voice say this:

  All the rent is is another four hundred dollars a month drinking money for you.

  Zou Lei asked what was being said.

  That’s my landlady. She’s telling him off.

  This was the last thing they were able to make out and then the voices faded.

  17

  HIS EPISODES OF WEEPING had not started yet, but they would. Her love, something he was so unused to, seemed to hasten the emotional outpou
ring. The not-sleeping and irritability were already there, were familiar. Her love was not to blame for any of it. But he looked around for something or someone to blame, and that was typical. He did not understand the process he was going through. He did not have a medical degree. It was not a healing process. The breaking down was the opposite of that. It was not catharsis. He didn’t know enough to be as scared as he should have been, or he might have gone to the VA.

  The day he moved in was a Saturday. His duffel bag and his assault pack lay on the floor of his new room. Skinner was sitting on the edge of the bed. In his hand, he held the keys Mrs. Murphy had given him. The door of his room, which he had opened with the keys, was half-open, and through it, he could see the stairs that led up to the street and the March afternoon.

  He spun the keys on a finger and caught them with a click. Yawned and rubbed his face. He dragged the duffel bag over to the edge of the bed and unzipped it and started digging through it, the insides coming out like the wadding of a car seat punctured by a round. He put the twisted jeans and t-shirts by him on the bed. Then he felt the significant dense weight of something L-shaped and the pistol tumbled out from a green army towel and thumped down on top of his socks.

  For a while, he pretended not to see it. He pawed through his clothes, hunting for his hygiene bag and other things. There were pills he had that were supposed to knock him out and help him sleep and he could take one now, he thought. Maybe that would be the best thing. Or he could go out. Was it raining? He looked behind him at the window above his bed. It didn’t look like it. He could see the grating in the ground and the gray white sky above it. He squinted. There was no rain.

  But his attention returned to the weapon. His foot was jiggling. He could hear the weight of people walking on his ceiling. This was their house. He listened to their voices, forming a picture of who was who, the woman presiding over her kitchen, smoking a Slim the same color as the gray white light coming in the window.