Preparation for the Next Life (32 page)

26

A
FTER FOUR DAYS OF
him not calling her, her anger turned into something else, into something like a weight that was too heavy for her to carry, and she stopped running.

She went to work, where she forgot what she was doing. She watched her hands cleaning trays and wiping tables and wondered why she was working. On her break, she stood on the loading dock and stared out into space beyond the fire escapes.

Sunnie said, You didn’t eat. You will be unable to work well.

You’re right, Zou Lei said. Her mind felt hollow like her stomach, and she got a strange smile on her face.

She called up the bootlegger from Wenzhou again, who met her and gave her the latest American movies, which he had videotaped at theaters on 42
^nd
Street. He gave her some more martial arts and some pornography with titles like Virgin Blossom Grows Up. He gave her a different cell phone number and then he drove away to safety. She carried her backpack full of movies down into the Flushing Main Street subway station, where the NYPD had been checking bags all month, and, as if sleepwalking, she walked right in front of the cops’ table and went through the turnstile. She felt them look at her, and her brief fear felt better than her loneliness.

She boarded the train and rode with her head pressed to the window, watching the rooftops going by, the buildings becoming houses, the treetops coming up, disappearing again, the great splashes of graffiti.

The track made her think of a highway down which a truck will come towards a girl on the roadside and he will not be on it.

Then Skinner came back from wherever he had been and she thought, God was with us.

The delivery man backed inside pulling his hand truck over the threshold, braced his Timberland against the rung at the base of the hand truck, gripped the top box, and set his stack down. The weight levered his other foot off the ground. He wore a turtleneck sweater, gloves and a wool-lined Red Army hat with ear flaps. He went down the stack of boxes, slapping them as he went: Superior King, ocean scallop, eel fish, mushroom ears, lotus, oyster, sesame oil, chilies, brill fish, cornstarch. He pinned the invoice against the Superior King box, took a ballpoint pen out from under his earflap, ripped away the pink copy after they had signed it. He tipped the stack, hooked the rung with his boot, pulled the blade out from under the load, spun the hand truck around and wheeled out.

He wheeled down the loading dock ramp, threw his cart in the back of his graffitied-up Isuzu. His door slammed, the engine roared. She could hear it from the hallway. The cab would smell like takeout noodles. She saw him driving out beneath the fire escapes, turning by the Sheraton. She saw the sun through his windshield as he bounced in his seat, shifting the gear stick, the engine rattling him. On the dash, he had a book of invoices and a road atlas to navigate by. Every day he went somewhere different, navigating the alleys that fed out onto Northern Boulevard, the Silk Road.

27

O
N DAYS WHEN HE
could function, he worked out in a one-room gym above a furniture store on a side street. It was in the area, but it was hard to find. He went there in his boots. It was just a room with a rotted floor with weights in it. It had an old-fashioned sheet metal ceiling embossed with flowers and leaves and painted over white, and he took her there.

They went past Kissena Park, mist hanging above the ground, the baseball diamond obscured. He led her past the high school. A man in construction boots was stretched out sleeping beneath the under-hang. She heard birds in the mist in the high oaks.

They went up a back street across from the cemetery. The street had a guardrail below which a highway travelled east to Long Island, shaking when trucks passed. Residential houses lined the street, yellowed newspapers and dead leaves piled against the curb. There was a graffiti drawing of a face with vampire teeth on a wall. His gym was in a cinder block building that looked like a small factory with a roll-down metal gate instead of a door and when you looked inside, you expected to smell fluorocarbons and see workmen in respirators painting autobodies.

They went in the cement doorway and climbed up the rubber tread stairs, each of them in turn stepping over the spit on the stairs. Skinner stepped over it first in his boots and Zou Lei coming after him stepped over it next in her Closeout City sneakers when she came to it. From the stairs, you could hear the weights banging and the hip-hop playing.

They went inside and checked in at the wooden counter, which displayed a sign saying Dues Must Be Paid. There was a blender behind the counter, and they sold American Bodybuilder Nitro Speed Stack, Cellmass, Animal Pack, Creaforce, Isopure, and Rage. An autographed picture of Bernie Cole advertising Valeo elastic wrist wraps hung above the pay phone next to where the rates were posted.

This was her first time in an American gymnasium, she said. She insisted on paying the five dollars herself.

On the gym floor, a short guy with a stud earring took three quick breaths as if he were about to jump into icy water and heaved a pair of dumbbells over his chest. He lifted them five and a half times while his friends stood around him, ready to spot him. Come on! they said. He straightened his arms. Six! they said. That’s the one! He dropped the weights and they hit the rubber floor with a huge thud—she turned at the sound—that rattled the entire gym, from the plaster walls up to the sheet metal ceiling. When he jumped up after, his friends congratulated him. He pointed at someone the way athletes point at fans in the stands, and winked. He wore jeans and a gold chain bracelet.

Skinner asked her if she wanted him to help her, but she said not to worry about her, she knew what to do: she had brought her magazine pages. At her insistence, Skinner went off on his own, and she maneuvered around the lifters in boots, gold chains, sweatpants, and do-rags to hunt for a pair of dumbbells that were light enough for her to use. The rusted dumbbell rack ran the length of the plaster wall like one of those knee-high bars for locking up bicycles. She found a pair of ten-pound weights and started doing lunges.

Guys wandered in front of her, getting in her way, their broad backs in her way, chests inflated, their arms held out from their sides. When they noticed her, they reacted like cattle who don’t know how to move for a truck as it crawls along behind them, honking in the road.

She moved to a far corner between an old BodyMasters universal and a window painted shut around an air conditioner.

She had started over doing her lunges when Skinner came to check on her, having seen her in the corner. Was she good?

I’m good.

Are you okay here?

I’m okay. I like it. I must get used to it.

He asked to see her magazine article.

She unfolded the pages for him, the creases soft as linen from being folded and unfolded so many times. He reviewed the pictures of Ms. Fitness’ routine.

Is this what you want to do?

It’s crowded, I think.

No, we can do this, he said. You’re gonna get your workout. Come on.

First he took her to the squat rack, which was free because all the guys were working on their upper bodies. He set up the bar for her and showed her how to stand and how to lift it off the rack on her shoulders. Together they figured out how much weight was right for her. When she was ready, he had her back out and he stood behind her with his arms under her arms to spot her.

Okay, he said, and she squatted and he squatted with her. She squatted very fast in a robotic military way that yielded nothing to the barbell or the pressures on her joints.

It’s okay to slow it down. Two seconds down, one second up. Feet through the floor when you’re going up. Eyes on the ceiling. One-two.

The next time she squatted, she did it slowly, which made it harder, and she laughed. You’re doing good, he said. She started getting hot, her navy tracksuit whispering between them. She felt him behind her, his arms brushing her ribcage as if he were about to cup her breasts. The exercise became very demanding on her legs and heart. The only thing that mattered was if she could make her legs stand up. When she was afraid to squat again because she thought if she did she wouldn’t be able to stand back up, she made a desperate sound that meant I quit.

They walked in together like two people in leg irons taking steps at the same time and racked the bar. Then she moaned aaiiii and wanted to collapse.

He changed the weight on the bar, putting the big plates on, and lifted the bar off the rack and backed out and squatted. The big plates rattled like dishes in a cupboard when a train goes by as he went up and down. There was no point in spotting him. It was more weight than she could ever lift. Halfway through his set, he started resting, sucking up air, before he squatted. When he squatted, he started straining at the bottom, exactly as if he were constipated and trying to force himself to shit. Then he would manage to stand again. She watched him. His face turned red, he was gasping.

She didn’t think he could do another. He squatted again and when he tried to stand, his back rounded forward. Thinking he was in trouble, she ran to help him. The barbell had 225 pounds on it. She felt his heart pounding through his back and his body shaking
as she struggled to help him. He groaned aaaghh and he stood up. She had no idea if she had helped him. He walked the barbell in and reracked it and immediately turned away from it as if it made him sick.

Thanks, he said, his chest heaving and his face covered in sweat.

He took his sweatshirt off soaked in sweat, threw it on the ground, and limped around to the side of the rack to take the plates off for her. Underneath, his Jack Daniels No. 7 Whiskey t-shirt was soaked through. His thick tattooed forearms were wet. The sight of him filled her with determination.

She took the bar off onto her back and got in position and began to squat, already expecting the pain before it began. She went to the last rep where she couldn’t hold herself anymore and he had to pick her up under her arms. She screamed out loud.

The pain made her angry and she stalked off. Then she returned, serious and ready to spot him. He loaded the bar deliberately, and she helped him do it.

They worked through her entire program, Skinner leading the way. He did everything that she did, set for set, even though it was a woman’s program. When they needed to know what was next, they would check the magazine pages, their noses sweating on it, the pages coming apart in her hands, and with his head down he would lead her to the next piece of equipment. She followed him, stepping around the men, a V of sweat down her front as if she had been digging sand all day.

Guys noticed them and said, That’s how you do it. Go hard or go home. They bumped Skinner’s fist, holding in their own fists the sponge or friction paper or other homemade device with which they gripped the weights.

The last exercise they did was flutter kicks. He and Zou Lei lay down on the floor and moved their legs like goose-stepping soldiers. They got to fifty and her feet fell on the ground. One hundred, he said. No, she said. But she pulled her feet up again. They continued kicking and counting together, chanting the way everyone does in group calisthenics. At one hundred, both of their sets of feet fell on the ground. She groaned and held her stomach. When they stood, they left behind sweat patterns in the shapes of themselves. She stared down at their spirit-patterns on the ground. The intensity of the exercise made her think strange things.

Now, they were resting on the back stairs, where the gym stored its ladders and junk. Plaster buckets, cardboard boxes, paint rollers blocked the fire exit below. He had bought them MuscleTech protein drinks in French Vanilla. Sucking the heavy liquid up the straw was another form of weightlifting for her neck. She patted his damp solid shoulder through his sweatshirt.

You give me a good working out today.

He reached over and pinched her behind.

That’s gonna be tired after today.

Aaii, she cried but leaned forward so he could feel it better.

Someone came down the back stairs looking for the exit, and he stopped gripping her until the guy figured out you couldn’t leave from here and went away.

Can’t get out here, dude, Skinner said.

When they were alone again:

You let your hair grow, she said and touched his damp head. His dark hair stood up stiff with no direction to it, just radiating out of his head. She made a fist in his hair, and he let her rock his head from side to side. Too much hair.