Preparation for the Next Life (40 page)

She disagreed, saying that she had been working on the line but that Sassoon kept sending her to the back.

What was the date?

The date when I worked on the line?

Yes. Date, hour. I check with Sassoon.

She was at a loss to give him the exact dates when she had worked on the line. I mean, there was a Sunday. Zhuojin was here.

Zhuojin is not a manager, he said.

What are you trying to do to me? Are you trying to rip me off?

I discover that Little Zou doesn’t really have military attitude. The military attitude: Yes, Sir! No matter what, follow the orders. Right? Not question them. Question, question, I have question—more like Angela. Not the traditional girl.

I do have military training.

Oh, I see. What military training was that? Maybe I don’t understand.

Mrs. Murphy’s door opened and she called down the stairs.

Skinner? Could you come up here a minute?

He went up to her kitchen where she was sitting behind her table reviewing him, her cigarette going in her hand.

I’ve got some mail for you.

There was a letter from the Department of Defense. He took it off her table.

I hear that things are a mess down there. Is that true?

No. Only in my area.

What do you mean your area?

Like my room.

The room’s a mess?

It’s not a mess. It’s messy. It would be fine if I put everything away.

Well, I’m hearing it’s more than that.

What are you hearing?

I’m hearing that the room is getting damaged. There are beer cans all over the floor and it smells like pot. You wanna tell me about that?

Tell you what about it?

That you’re doing drugs in this house.

Not me.

Not you?

No, he said. No. No way. Clean and sober.

I’ve heard that before.

No, really. He pulled his shirt off and turned around, ignoring her instruction to keep his shirt on. Take a look, he said. An evenly spaced line of large red boils formed a train track through the keloid scar on his ribcage and tapered off into purple marks higher up on his shoulders half-camouflaged within his tattoo, left there by surgical staples. You see that? I’m taking painkillers for that.

She put her hand up. Do me a favor, put the shirt back on.

He continued pleading his case as he struggled to pull the shirt back on.

We’re not going to get anywhere talking about it. You’ve been told.

He nodded vigorously.

You’ve been given a warning.

I got it.

She told Erin later, he’s lucky the warning came from me. He’s got smut magazines down there, from what I hear. Patrick would have thrown him out, as in thrown him out.

Smut magazines?

Nude smut opened up right on the floor. And he’s got pills, don’t forget pills. I can’t get down there myself to see this, thank God. Jimmy was the one who brought it to my attention about the pot smoke. So heavy he got a high from walking in the room. He goes, ma, it gave me a contact high from going in.

The women looked at each other.

Yeah. My thought exactly. If it gets his attention, it’s gotta be good. So that’s what’s downstairs.

If you think about it, she added, there is a good side though.

What?

The fact of who I heard it from.

Like as far as?

That it’s coming from Jim. Instead of Jim keeping it to himself so he could have a buddy down there to get high with. Which is what would have happened ten years ago.

He was wearing a brown nonmilitary t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and he was sweeping his floor. She could see where his army tan ended at mid-bicep. He was sweeping the lightweight plastic broom into the dustpan, trying to get the dust, which was sticking to his bristles, up off the linoleum. His clothes had been picked up, his bags were packed, and the sun was coming down through the grate.

He dumped his dustpan in a Hefty bag he had in the corner. He replaced his broom and dustpan against the wall. Almost everything that used to be scattered around the room was packed away in his two bags—the camouflage duffle and the assault pack. She also noted that the window was open. Was he spring cleaning?

Field day.

I think you are going somewhere.

No. Just neatening up.

It’s very neat.

Did I do good?

You are good, she said. But I think you go somewhere.

I’m not going anywhere.

I know I have to go somewhere. Somewhere far. I always know.

You mean China?

I don’t know. Maybe I go more far. Maybe go to America. Meet a man. A man his arm has the tattoo, tattoo of American flag. A man who sweep his room.

They lay down on his poncholiner together to rest, not have sex.

I was picking up my bags, he told her.

He showed her what he meant, getting up and slinging the bags on his shoulders while she watched from the bed. The sun was going
dark and it was getting chilly in the room. He stood awkwardly burdened in this way for several minutes. She got up and joined him. She put her arm around his neck and stepped into his arms and he picked her up and held her. He held all his belongings and her as well for as long as he could while the sun went down.

There was no proof that anything had happened to his magazine except the fact that he couldn’t find it. The last he had seen it, it had either been on his night table or in the john. He was bad about locking his room door even when he left the Berretta at home and it would have been easy to take. On the other hand, it was just as possible he had misplaced it. The only thing he knew was he didn’t have it anymore. It was, or had been, hardcore pornography, before it disappeared.

He unpacked his gear looking for it, wondering if he was crazy. As he pulled his clothes out of his duffel bag, they smelled like pot. He looked at his pills and tried to figure out if he had taken too many and done something to his head, had a blackout. He found another prescription bag of medications with three full pill bottles in it, which he had not known he even had, and set them on his bedside.

He found the letter from the Defense Department that Mrs. Murphy had given him and for the first time he opened it and read it. An army med board had determined that his psychological trauma had not been caused by the war and he wouldn’t be getting any money for it.

Fuck you, army doctor motherfuckers.

He went around the basement motherfuckering them for a long time, talking aloud and steadily, picking things up and putting them down. He was looking for something but he had forgotten what it was.

You didn’t come to work.

I know. I was busy.

Like hell.

You don’t wanna believe me, don’t.

I don’t believe you.

Jimmy shrugged. Patrick’s eyes got smaller. He took a drink.

What business are you in?

What are you talking about?

You’re busy, I’m asking what business you’re in if you’re a fookin businessman.

Ends.

What? What the fook are they?

Ends. Making ends.

Is that what you’re doing here at one-thirty in the afternoon, making your ends?

Could be. Is that why you’re here?

Never mind me.

It’s one-thirty in the afternoon. Why’re you here?

I fixed a lady’s toilet while you were sleeping, that’s why I’m here.

I wasn’t sleeping.

You were fookin sleeping.

Get your facts straight.

You were sleeping or doing your fookin junk.

I wasn’t doing that either. Get your facts straight.

You tell me to straighten my facts again.

You’re the boss.

You’re goddamn right I’m the boss. And you better learn to live with it or you’ll get trown the fook out.

Thrown out of what?

You better wipe that cocky fookin smile off. You’re gonna get trown the fook out. Out of my house.

It’s not your house.

The fook it isn’t.

It’s not your name on the deed.

You’ll get trown the fook out.

So throw me out.

I will, so help me.

Have another first. Get your strength up.

I’ll shove it up your ass another. When I was your age, I could go through ten men like you! Twenty men like you! You little sonofabitch.

By now the bartender and several other men had come between Patrick and his stepson. Hey! Hey! they were yelling, and Patrick
swore he’d kick to death the next man who touched him. Jimmy smiled at him.

Watch your ticker. You’re turning red.

You’re a fookin nigger. You’re a fookin waste and you’ve always been the same. All the time in there was wasted on you. You’re still nothing but a nigger.

Jimmy stood up and stopped smiling and the men in the bar finally convinced him to leave.

You’re the bigger man, they said.

Skinner had a dream and this was what he saw:

The house, the purple basement. The carpeted stairs going down into the basement. Someone is outside Skinner’s door, someone is in the basement. He sees this big guy moving around his kitchen. The guy doesn’t say anything to him.

Way up into the house: the front room, the sheets on things like a morgue. The parts of the house you do not see.

The back of the house: things are piled high. There are curios and yard equipment. You might open a door and it would hit a bed—a mattress on cinder blocks, there is laundry piled all over the room, a hamper, there is no floor space. There is a broken alarm clock. The screen is falling out of the window. It is ripped and it is in the room.

You go upstairs. First: The hallway. The hallway leads away from the mustard-colored kitchen. All the appliances: the stove, the refrigerator are mustard colored. They are old, from the eighties. The cupboards are from the seventies. There is a cuckoo clock, there are wooden things that are on the walls, there are sheets over the couches and chairs. Is someone lying under a sheet? No one has left by the front door of the house: we do not use it. There are things hanging from the eaves in front. The wind chimes hung by the six-foot daughter.

The hallway appears to have pictures on the walls, old pictures. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the walls are bare. It is blue.

37

T
HE HEAT WAS COMING
. She believed she knew what to expect. The summer would be celebrated by people of every nation in the city. People marauding after work, discontented. Thugs surfing on the sides of cars, flagging. Going into the garbage cans and throwing bottles in the street. Immigrants working, forever working, watching people going by who have days off, time off, while they don’t. Trying to stay cool. Families with five young children going to Dunkin Donuts for a night out together in the air conditioning. The littered floors, the strange lone males reading the newspaper. Cabdrivers and dysfunctional individuals sitting in the window of the all-night Tropical. Messed-up guys with Puerto Rican flag hats talking to waitresses, high-fiving them, saying when do you get off? Spanish girls with Indian blood, slave blood, mopping floors at three a.m. Caribbeans saying we were brought here as slaves from India. We got together with the blacks and threw the British out. Now we listen to dub step. Let me tell you where it’s hot like fire burning. Where the party’s at. Where you can get robbed, stuck, shook, bucked and maybe fucked down on one hundred and ninth going towards Far Rockaway. Where no one’s gonna feel bad for you if you have problems.

The Wenzhounese will sit outside in folding chairs in their pajamas on Cromellin Street, talking on the steps, fanning themselves in the gleaming night. The women will be pregnant and still they will be taking out the garbage, collecting bags of recycling, saving little fistfuls of money, little investments that, like children, will turn into something later.

But for now, we’ll all have to deal with the heat first—all of us no matter where we’re from.

A seventeen-year-old holding a pit bull on a leash will have a wing of hair over her forehead, tight short shorts, bare legs, mascara, and she will regard Zou Lei with hatred when the males turn their heads to watch Zou Lei as she goes by beneath the tracks. Because Zou Lei
will have found that you can literally buy a pair of shorts on 103
^rd
Street for a dollar ninety-nine and all the girls of every flag will wear shorts, including her.

People will try to sell her anything they can. They will need the money, but so will she. A South American in a soccer jersey with blue eyes who speaks no English will try to sell her a watch on Corona Avenue, but she will not buy it. At the end of the season, it will be in her nature to move on. Six to nine months in a place, no more. The graffiti on the rocks where the LIRR roars by Skinner’s house says GLCS. Pocos Pero Locos. There’s a spraypainted heart and the words: Brazalhax y Soldado. She sees herself and Skinner leaving come fall.