by Atticus Lish
Inside the bar, Rick was circling the pool table. Turn on the light. I wanna get a tan. I used to have a beautiful chain, he told the house painter who was showing him several pieces of jewelry, spreading them out on the pool table. Forty-two pennyweight. I had it in hock. I got the notice it’s in the pawnshop, they’re about to pawn it. I forgot all about it. A year later, my mother asks me, Where’s my chain? You lost my chain. It cost a hundred seventy-five dollars. I says, What are you, crazy? The price of gold is up now.
Emmett came inside and felt the chains, pouring them from one hand to another and draping them over his fingers, to see them in the light that Ray had turned back on.
Manhattan was bought from the Indians for less than that.
Where’d you get these? Emmett asked and laughed his queasy laugh.
What’d you say your name was? You from the DA’s office? Detective what?
Rick pulled out a roll of cash, all hundreds. Here: Take five hundred dollars. He threw money on the pool table. The house painter folded his jewelry up in a bandana, looked over his shoulder, folded it up and put it away.
Who’s the toughest guy in this bar?
You are, Rick.
On the street, Stan, from Alaska by way of North Carolina, was telling Jimmy about the automatic ninety days they gave you in Orlando. I was lying on a bench and there was a bottle nearby—it wasn’t mine. The biggest building in Orlando is the jail. Jail has gone corporate in this country.
The neighborhood has changed, Jimmy said.
The Chinese, they’re taking advantage of our religious freedoms. Why do you need thirteen churches on one block?
He had drunk boilermakers with Pat Murphy back in the day. That was his drink, your dad. A boilermaker man. Hey, Gladys, Gladdie. When was the last time you saw Pat?
Pat? Patrick Murphy? I saw him at St. Andrews. That’s his kid right there. Wait, he was right there.
He’s right here. I’m talkin to him.
Oh, my mistake. Hey. I thought you were there. What’s up, how you doin? Jimmy! Aw, c’mere!
She hugged him with her ropey arms, wearing a black tank top, with her large nose and ghoul’s face. Ya gotta light? So, she said, blowing out her smoke, When I heard you was back, I said it’s about fuckin time.
Jimmy blew out his smoke, nodded down to her, glanced at the street.
This is a good area, but we’re getting bought out.
Skinner was asleep in his room when he was awakened by a sound. It was eleven in the morning and the house was otherwise quiet. A diffuse gray light devoid of shadows came in the grating. He had fallen asleep four hours ago and his last memory was of birds trilling in the dawn. He heard the sound again, got up and opened his door and saw Jimmy looking under his sink.
You again, he thought.
He went behind him to the refrigerator, took a beer out. Neither man spoke in the fifteen-by-ten-foot kitchen. The other’s hunched shoulders and long hair moved beneath the sink. Skinner went back into his room and put his headphones on. He would forget everything staring at the wall. He would be like that for hours, dealing with his depression.
There was nothing ever wrong with the sink, he said later. Why mess with it?
And he crushed his empty beer can and dropped it on the floor.
As time went by, he would notice that sometimes during the quiet part of the day when no one was around, he would hear soft sounds coming from somewhere overhead, possibly the landing. They were very faint and subtle, so he didn’t pay any attention to them, but they would continue, their location seeming to shift, and he would think that they were coming from the basement. But this could have been his imagination. He was usually too depressed to get up and look. By the time he did, he never saw anything or anyone. He thought he was hearing things because of mefloquine. The whole thing was so vague, it didn’t mean anything until later.
35
SHE WAS LEARNING CANTONESE because she had to. Gwat was bone and river rice meant slippery noodles, tuber stem of water lily, fatty meat and offcuts of the pork. She greeted Rambo in Cantonese and he ignored her, told her to mop the floor. She learned to say, Hougeng, which meant wonderful. Hougeng! she said as she fetched the mop. She said it whenever they made her do something. She found herself saying it all the time.
She took a place on line without asking and started serving in the middle of the rush. She felt Sassoon watching her dipping Thousand Island dressing on a customer’s chunks of iceberg lettuce. She piled rice next to the meat in its jellied brown sauce and handed the dinner plate across the counter.
In her heart, she believed she was more Chinese than they were because the army was the marrow of the nation and she stood at parade rest behind the line while they slouched and texted on their phones, but China was a big nation.
Satay, made with onions, garlic, krill, and soy sauce, was pronounced sa-de in their dialect.
She overheard Angela telling her friend he ought to come to work at the restaurant as a summer job. The friend was a tall young man from Hong Kong who had been in her sister’s class in high school in Jamaica, Queens. The boss would hire him on her say-so, Angela said. We’ve got lots of room here. Daifong meant room. Zou Lei understood this.
She had spent years surviving around people she didn’t like and couldn’t understand. Her coworkers believed that blacks had large but nonworking penises, like dragons in southern superstition. She learned they called them jiekwan.
She couldn’t understand what a customer was telling her—whatever he was saying sounded very strange, the f’s and h’s were switched—and she leaned over the counter and asked him as quietly as she could if he spoke the common language.
Midway through the rush, Sunnie bustled in and Sassoon told Zou Lei, You can go now.
Hahaha, Angela said. You should see your face.
When she left the mall in the evening, the streets were awash with people coming off the buses, coming out of the subway station with every roar of the train coming in, welling up onto the street in waves. After a long shift, she had a great feeling of disorientation and had to get reacquainted with everything. The markets stood tilted by the weight of the produce trucked in from Sinaloa in the dusk. There was the money she had saved in her pocket against her hip—the point of her sixty-hour weeks down in the kitchen. She could feel the folded bills through her worn-thin pocket liner, touching her underwear, her skin. The faint outline of her progress.
She went to see him, prepared to talk about their plans, and as soon as she saw him, misgiving filled her. His room was heavy with the smell of sweat and smoke. He had been sitting for hours doing absolutely nothing.
I don’t think it’s good, she said.
I do, he said, staring sideways, his jaw working.
She was sitting on the corner of his bed—the only place to sit—wearing her jeans and torn t-shirt. She could feel her face getting older in his presence, the lines deepening by her mouth. For a moment, she observed him, wondering what to say.
Summer will be here. The sun will be shining bright, she said and grabbed his hard clammy white bare foot with her discolored calloused hand.
He did not answer.
Take a walk with me.
Skinner took his Marlboros off the bedside table, shook the pack, and caught a cigarette on his lip.
I don’t think so.
He was muscled and tattooed, but his shirt was off and there was a fold in the fat across his stomach, and even the permanently tanned parts of his body were turning the color of cigarette smoke.
Skinner.
What?
Did you take the meds?
Yes. I even drank the Chinese crap, I had two cups of it and it doesn’t do anything. Nothing does anything.
They sat with that statement for a while.
I won’t give up, she finally said. Will you? She touched his foot again. I think you promise to me. Do you remember?
What if—here was a thought that just came to her—he simply drove ahea
d, in military style, as if there were nothing wrong with him?
I think you can get the job.
He was sitting with one leg out, one leg bent, his thick Gothic-lettered forearm resting on his knee, the cigarette now burning in his fingers. The leg of his boxers hung open and she could see his genitals. He did not respond to her. He dragged on the cigarette, his brow knitted, and blew the smoke out, watched it spread, held the cigarette sideways while it burned and blew on it, made it glow, as if he intended to use it to start a larger fire, which would be instrumental in their survival in a manner she did not yet understand.
I think you get a job, Skinner, she repeated. I think it’s good. She gave him reasons, that it was healthy for the body to get out, to move, and healthy for the heart too, though what she was really trying to say was, it was healthy for the mind, for his mind.
When he didn’t respond to her, she wondered if as a man his pride had been offended by what she had said. She apologized if that was so. Shuwozhiyan. I sorry. But I tell you straight. Sometimes even the man listen to the woman.
When he didn’t speak, she stared at him, waiting for him to say anything.
Nishengqima? You mad? Skinner?
She tried to make contact with his bruised-looking eyes, but he just kept staring sideways.
She began humming a song to herself.
He told her to shut up.
This pulled the power cord right out of her. She got up and left his room and went into the kitchen and held herself on the sink. He heard the water run in the sink. Then he heard some movement and then a door closed and then he realized that she had gone and left the basement entirely.
When he wanted another drink, Jimmy went around the bar and served himself. He described himself as a silent partner in the bar, ordering drinks for friends and saying that they were on the house. I only fuck with good people, he said.
A guy rode up on his bike and came inside and took off his shades and said, Turner, right? I was locked down with you, wasn’t I?
They shook hands Viking-style, gripping each other’s forearms.
This dude was good people, he told the bar after a couple of drinks. Is this where you hang out? I’m gonna bring all the boys.
You wanna talk some business?
They went into the airshaft and he gave Jimmy some red pills in his big hand and laughed with his pale blue eyes after they had both taken them, his sunglasses up on his sunburned forehead. He had fringe on his leather jacket sleeves and keys and a rabbit’s foot hanging from his belt. In the most ingratiating way he said, I’m sorry man, I’m gonna have to get some money for them later. He even apologized for that.
But that was no problem, Jimmy said. Business is business. They left the airshaft, acting secretive—the biker put his shades on—and Jimmy told Ray if anyone’s looking for me, I’m not here. They went out front and spoke in confidence in front of the man’s bike. He smoked a cigarillo and got on the bike and straddled it and demonstrated how he rode. Then Jimmy got on and kickstarted it and revved it. They came back inside, slapping each other on the shoulders, and Jimmy gestured for Ray to pour his friend a drink.
On you? Ray asked.
Jimmy pretended not to hear him.
On you, the biker told Ray.
It’s not on me.
He told me it was.
Hey, Jimmy’s good for business, Gladys said. Ain’t he Ray?
As long as it’s on somebody, Ray said and poured liquor in the glass.
Gladys put her arm around Jimmy’s neck. Jimmy’s shoulders tightened uneasily.
Hey, yo, Ray, don’t we make a cute couple? Hey, Ray, howbout a refill, baby?
She released Jimmy and sat on a stool around the angle of the bar.
What’s new with Vicky?
My kid’s in good hands. That’s the only thing I look at.
But Jimmy hinted that he was displeased with Vicky about something that had occurred while he’d been away. She tried to hide it from him, but he had found out, as was to be expected. He knew a lot of people, he had a lot of sources. She didn’t know he knew. How foolish of her. He didn’t care about the thing she had done in itself. It was her thinking that she could get away with lying to him that bothered him.
Totally, Vickie said.
She’ll learn.
You’re word’s gotta be bond.
She knows her place as far as motherhood. That’s all I look at.
Besides, he said, he was getting a TV from Rick—if Rick ever got off the Keno machine and fulfilled his obligations. He was going to get cable down in the basement of his mother’s house.
The reds were kicking in. He would, he said, have the walls covered in his artwork, dragons nine feet tall. It would be his new headquarters. Hit the remote and there’d be music throbbing through the floor. He could jam down there on his guitar and his artistry would provide a cover for his capers. He would be very selective about who he allowed into his abode.
In other words, your kid’s mother’s not invited.
No cops, no unreliable people, no snitches. No baseheads. No two-born bitches.
You’re smart, Gladys said.
When they fought, she was nearly incapacitated by sadness, but that was inside. On the outside, her limbs still moved: she pressed on, she went to work. She cinched her apron, centered the visor’s logo between her eyes as if it mattered. Inside, she was thinking, I’m alone. I’ve been alone since I was a child. Her face twisted at the thought. I will die, she said and she was angry. Her head did not feel right. The place she thought from felt deformed by a pressure. She was so lonely.
Once he turned on her in his basement and told her she had no right to be his friend so don’t try, she hadn’t earned it, who the fuck did she think she was, etcetera.
She left and broke down sobbing in a basketball court where boys were playing ball. In Uighur she cried, I know I’m not going to make it! I am so sad!—and the rending sound of her weeping echoed off the concrete surfaces.
She told herself that when she couldn’t take it anymore she was simply going to start walking, she was going to go and never stop until she crossed the continent or something happened to her and she became a ghost.
It took him calling her for several days to make it up with her. She would not meet with him and remained cold. She would say things like, I know I shouldn’t take my time with you. You are too young.
Please. Just please, he said.
He met her in the parking lot outside her job, his jaw scraped red from shaving, his hair still wet, throat smelling like sport gel deodorant. It was dusk and they hadn’t been near each other in a week. She went with him back to his basement. When she undressed, under her work clothes, she was wearing black lace lingerie that she had bought for him at a Spanish store on Junction Boulevard.
Love is hard, she said. You have to train the boy. Just like dog. The bigger the dog, the more you have to hit him.
Feel free, he said. I ought to hit myself.
He had held a gun to his head in the bathroom mirror, but he didn’t tell her this.
He swore he wouldn’t fight with her again and then he did. Instead of getting better, his anger started getting worse, spilling out into the street, involving cab drivers and other strangers. They started talking about it as the biggest thing he had to change.
When they made up, she experienced powerful well-being. Immortality flowed back into her like the juice in a plant stem. She immediately began to taste her life again and the two of them would plan for the future. This took the form of fantasy. He would forget the war. He would stop fucking up. She would get her green card. He would bench press three hundred pounds by August. They would have a few hours of this when things were pleasant and then the feeling between them would turn wrong again.
She began to watch for the signs of his mood changing. She began to expect her happiness to be taken away from her. The worse life got, the more she needed her happiness with him.
36
&nb
sp; THE TWO MEN WENT down the stairs into the basement, the basement of their own house, and woke the tenant up at 7:30 in the morning. We’re having a look at the boiler, Patrick said. The door was opened by Skinner in boxer shorts and combat boots. He barely looked at them, made a yeah whatever motion with his arm, and the men came in. Skinner went back over to the bed and surfed the Internet. They opened his closet and spoke to each other. Jimmy took the bucket from underneath the cock of the boiler and carried it to the bathroom and poured the rusty water in the toilet, which made it flush, while Patrick checked the risers. The bucket was replaced where it had been. They let out the boiling water for a minute until Patrick said that was enough to take the pressure off, and then left without speaking to Skinner, who lay not moving on his side. His cigarettes and beer cans were all over the room. There was a porn magazine in plain view with a big pink animated exclamation point, a star, covering the spot between a woman’s legs. Candy Spreads! He was trashing the room. You could smell the marijuana.
Her pay was less than it had been last time even though she had worked more hours. She took her envelope to the office in the back.
Look, Little Zou is here. What does Little Zou want? Your pay is wrong? You let me see.
He held his long hand out. She gave him her envelope and he looked inside it.
Why do you say your pay is not correct?
It’s not enough, it can’t be. What about the added hours? To make more, that’s why I came here. You know—she tried to say—there had to be something she could do. Working hard was not the problem.
He let her talk.
May I have Little Zou’s permission to speak? Have you learn the menu? You do not know it. Sassoon say you have not learn the menu. Why not? So that is one. There is two. Two is, the next step is serving on the line. In society, we are one step, another step, another step, another—very orderly. The gentle motion of his large, smooth, long-nailed hand. It is not chaos. He laughed, How can you not understand? I am here, he showed her, making a claw. I am one jump to top of mountain—one jump to sky—to heaven! You think it is real? No. No such thing. One at a time is real. We make small money today, big money tomorrow.
