Preparation for the Next Life (41 page)

They hired a new boy, a friend of Angela’s, who went to Cardozo, and Polo marveled how he understood everything right away, he knew computers too, he was a talent at the age of seventeen. The young man went by the name of Monroe. Sassoon put him in the front even though he was surly and openly rude to her. He had a loud voice and you could always hear him. He complained about everything, saying, This job suck dick. People liked him very much for his good looks.

On the schedule, Monroe’s name appeared where Zou Lei’s name used to. They had given him one of her afternoons. She asked Sassoon how this was going to affect her pay. Sassoon told her she wasn’t in charge of pay, just hours. The issue of pay was between her and Polo and Polo wasn’t available to speak with her. Zou Lei said that that was very convenient. Several other employees who were afraid that Sassoon would lose her temper interceded. They told Zou Lei not to worry about her money, the boss wasn’t about to steal from her. They told her that she was getting jealous of the talented young man.

There, there. It doesn’t do to be jealous.

Released from work early, Zou Lei went outside and found it raining on the street, the rain coming down so hard it turned white when it hit the asphalt. She ran four blocks with her jacket over her head and took shelter under the scaffold in front of Footlocker, the aluminum drumming overhead, and stared at the sneakers on Lucite pedestals. Water squished out of the holes in her sneakers when she
went into the air-conditioned store. Hip-hop was playing. The back of her denim jacket was soaked through. She took it off and folded it over her arm and picked up a Nike women’s running shoe so light she could hardly feel it. When she tried to put it on, she found it anchored to the wall by an antitheft cable in a plastic sheath. She looked at another Nike and an Asics and then she checked the prices.

Under her jacket, she was just wearing her uniform shirt and you could tell she was cold in the air conditioning through the orange fabric of her shirt. She threw her wet hair back and picked up a Reebok Mountaineer, which was fifty percent off, and inspected the hard new well-defined treads.

Next paycheck or the one after next. Something like that. She bounced her hip to the stereo beat. The rain was going to end and the sun was going to come out and shine on her while she sweated, running for the horizon like a camel.

The downpour ended and she put the Reebok down and headed back uphill. As she passed the open drains, she heard the sewer rushing like a waterfall.

When she got home, the immigrant apartment smelled like a wet rag and she found all their shoes had been piled in front of her accordion door. The TV was playing out of another tenant’s shed and the tenant, a stocky woman, was in the hall working the plastic-handled mop inside the kitchenette, pushing the black stuff on the floor around. The kitchen window was open and you could see the rain beginning again.

Going to her room, their hips collided. She parried the mop handle. The woman wasn’t looking. They did not speak, only the television did—in the common language of Mandarin. The woman had mopped the hall until it smelled like the latrines in China.

The pile of shoes fell over when Zou Lei opened the accordion door and she used her foot to shove them out of her way.

Kicking them just makes everything disorderly, the woman said.

Where do they go? Zou Lei asked.

It doesn’t matter. Just line them up.

They lined the shoes up in pairs. Zou Lei went to wash her hands afterwards with the liquid soap she had always thought belonged to all of them.

Everyone has their own products, the woman said. That’s civilization.

38

A
GUY WAS PUTTING
baby oil on his chest in front of the library, in front of the Falungong table with the photographs of atrocities. He had fresh pink scars on his chest from stab marks.

Yo, what’s up, Jimmy Irish.

Jimmy responded to his greeting affably, and you would think it was because of the sunshine on this first of the hot days of summer, when you could smell the concrete and the grass growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk, as well as the baby oil and the coconut butter and Davidoff’s Cool Water and African oil in the subway crowd and Diorissimo coming from women’s blouses. You would not think that Jimmy had just received the news that his common-law wife Vicky had taken his kid and moved to Bayonne. He wanted to take his mother’s car and go look for them. His mother warned him that he would wind up back in prison if he did this.

The guy slapped himself with baby oil: arms, stomach, chest. They watched the Chinese schoolgirls going by with teddy bears attached to their knapsacks on key rings.

Yo, what’s up. How old are you?

He turned on his phone, which played on speaker, playing a Motown love song. I need you, a man whispered, so badly.

Two other males were there: Frankie and a fourth guy, who was screaming about immigrants with his arms spread wide, screaming and screaming, backing up to the curb and running back in, winding up, and punching the air, showing what had happened in his fight at the gas station.

There’s too many of them! he screamed, holding his can of Bud Light.

Frankie, with his hair combed back wet, wearing a red tank top over his gut and gray sweatpants said, This nigga woke me up at five-thirty, beloved.

It was early and the gates were down on some of the stores, except for the bodega that a Pakistani ran, which specialized in lotto. The
casino bus waited by the bodega and the Chinese with their hands clasped behind their backs like Deng Xiaoping touring the brigade fields of the south waited to board it. The fourth guy stood in the middle of the sidewalk facing the procession of Chinese coming up the block towards the bus, carrying boxes, going to work.

Here they come, he said. He took a fast swig of the beer, throwing his head back, throwing it at his own face, and stared at them again, wiping foam off his mouth.

A woman from China in a lacy blouse and black skirt came up the street in heels with little bows on them.

What’s up, sexy? Goin to work? Look, she’s dressed up, lookin nice.

Gonna go whack guys off all day.

Her husband’s a jerk.

No more Similac. No more pampers. No more water. Somebody’s gotta tell’em.

Tell’em what, beloved?

Tell’em there’s too many of them.

The guy who was oiled up tried to bum a cigarette off Jimmy, who said, It’s my last one.

The fourth guy had tons of cigarettes. He had two packs—both of them Chinese brands in red boxes with gold—Jinlongmingpai Xiangyan—that he kept taking out of his pockets, opening and closing them, taking out cigarettes and putting them behind his ears, in his mouth, offering them to other guys.

Take one. Take one. Take one, brother, he said. We’re all white men. Go ahead. Go on, the fourth guy said, handing him more loose cigarettes, which the sunbather took in his mineral oil-covered hands and laid next to him on the stained granite.

Look at all he gave me!

Give me one, Jimmy commanded him. Give Frank one too.

Don’t take them all.

Gimme a light. Hook me up with fire.

They blew their smoke out, and the sunbather, holding his cigarette in his mouth, made the end bob up and down like an erection as he watched the women.

Bravo! he called to one and clapped.

The fourth guy picked his Bud Light up off the sidewalk and took another swig of it. We’re all white, American. I don’t play that shit.
What’s mine is yours, brother. What’s mine is yours. Look at me. What’s mine is yours.

Well, what’s mine ain’t yours, Jimmy told the fourth guy, who took this in stride, seeming not to hear. Because he was already screaming about the gas station again. He started really screaming, his neck turning red, really screaming, saying he couldn’t fight them all. He was wearing a number 25 brown jersey over a white shirt, khaki shorts with no belt that keep falling off, and he constantly had to roll the waistband over to make them tighter. There were slices all over his forearms. His hands were filthy. He was saying how he had kept slipping during the fight, which had been a punching, kicking, grappling fight, when they pushed him down, which he demonstrated, throwing himself down and jumping up again, momentarily knock-kneed like a little kid, and jumping up and kicking, his sneaker flashing within an inch of their faces. Jimmy yawned.

They had been smoking crack all night, Frankie said. With blunts, beloved.

Jimmy scratched the shamrock on his hand.

But I kept slippin down! The floor, it’s too slippery for me to fight them.

From the Armor-All, right? Frankie said. From the Armor-All on the floor.

Yeah. I needed to get out here, the fourth guy said, backing up across the sidewalk to the curb where the planter was and the Chinese bus was waiting. I needed to get out here to have room. Once I got room, I don’t care if there’re ten of them. I don’t care. I don’t care, I’ll kill them. That’s when I’ll kill them.

He poured beer in his mouth and bent over, still drinking out of the blue can, pouring it past his mouth, watering the planter with beer, letting the can drop, stamping on it with his sneaker, walking away from it, spreading his arms and yelling, I’ll fuckin kill’em.

Chinese people turned their heads.

They met people that they knew and people that they knew met them. A passenger hailed them from the cab of a graffiti-covered delivery truck with a gash in the peak, which had been inflicted by a low clearance, now taped up with garbage bags.

Guado! they yelled across the intersection. The fourth guy ran out to him and climbed up on the step and talked to him through the window until the light changed and then ran back through the cars.

Frankie had been out a while. He had been in and out. This nigga got me locked up. Thirty days on the Island! He had been saved after his mother had died. Oh-nine oh-nine ninety-nine. Colon cancer, beloved. Dearly beloved. But he still lived down here, around the corner from the Punjabis in the low-rise projects on Blossom. His tattoos were 777. John 3:15. A tattoo of his skin being ripped by claws underneath as if a tiger were inside him. His hands were pink from scabs as if he had psoriasis, but it was from fighting. He had a black plastic bag on the ground by his foot, which he was stepping on. He bent down and took out a bottle of Arizona Ice Tea from it, spit on the cap, rubbed it. Took the cap off and drank from it. Offered it. It’s clean.

So you been out all this time, Jimmy said as if that were a nice thing.

I went down to the World Trade Center the day after 9/11 when it was still smoking, nigga. Ain’t nothin changing but the weather.

The fourth guy started talking about the fight at the carwash again. Here’s what we do. We go over there. Over on Kissena by my house. Fuckin immigrants. You got papers? You legal? Okay, fine. Only this time I’ll have somethin on me. He demonstrated what had happened, what would happen next time, obviously a natural athlete despite what he had done to himself. Because these Mexicans were going to stick him. He darted in and pressed his fist to Jimmy’s belly. A real fast city guy. But that’s when I go for eyes, throats. I’ll kill somebody without a knife. With an elbow. He backed up and ran in swinging his fist and stopping short. Frankie and Jimmy barely noticed, laughed. He got into your face, head-to-head, insisting that you listen, saying look at me, look at me, look at me. This is what I’ll do. I’ll get me a pipe. A nice pipe. A tire iron! Frankie interjected. Yeah, one a them. You hit somebody in the head with a pipe, you know it. I’ll get up early in the morning and go down there and do it.

Frankie called him Charlie. What’s your middle name? James, right? C-J! Your last name’s French, right? C-Rock! he laughed and winked at Jimmy, who was ignoring them both, inspecting the cigarette burning down to the shamrock between his battered knuckles.

Charlie took out his two packs of Chinese cigarettes again. He would give you the shirt off his back. He put another cigarette behind his ear. When he demonstrated how he had been fighting, in
the course of gesticulating, he dropped the cigarette he was smoking on the wet sidewalk at his feet, picked it up and kept puffing.

I need to get outside. It was too small. I needed to get outside where I had room. My father would have whipped a can of chew at them and hit them right in the face. A can a Copenhagen. I wanna go back there today. I should ask for the owner of the carwash and just go up and hit him right in the face. With my fist. With a Belgian brick. That would be the logical thing to do. That would take care of it, wouldn’t it? Or maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know.

But you kicked one of their’s food, Frankie said.

No. Yeah, I was mad. I kicked his food. Not him. A different one. This big one with gold all across his fuckin teeth. If I had a gun, I would of killed him. I would have killed seven of them. If I go back there, there’ll be seven dead guys. Fourteen of them. Then maybe I’ve got a chance. Self-defense is a right. But a white guy, a citizen? He beat the palms of his hands together for emphasis. What are the cops gonna do? Are they gonna listen to me, a white guy? A army vet?

He had slightly crooked teeth. Red neck. Hair in a graying high-and-tight.

You mean over an immigrant?

C’mon! Exactly. He put his hands together as if they were being handcuffed. He marched away from them and back. I’m gonna go to jail for a long time. A long time this time. The MS-13, the Mexicans’ll be there. The Chinese. I trust the blacks before I trust them. Maybe not so much. Not necessarily. I’m gonna go straight to the Aryans. Seig heil. I stand with them. Born and raised. Aryans. White power. I’ll be in jail with the fuckin MS-13—he imitated them making their devil horns, praying with their hands upside down to Jesus, Jesus save me—he imitated this with disgust. Get the fuck outta here… They don’t talk about this thing over here that happened, what they did to a girl, they shoved a pipe up her pussy, up her ass. They killed her, a poor Chinese girl. The Mexicans don’t talk about that. Oh no. Some people don’t deserve to live.