Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

I am runner.

Runner? Like running?

Yes, runner.

Why’d you want to know if I was in the army? Skinner asked.

Why? Why I ask?

Yeah… why?

Because in my family, we are the army.

You were in the army? What army?

Not I am. My father. In the People’s Liberation of China. My father is the sergeant.

No way! Is that why you’re strong? You look strong.

Strong? Yes! She stood up and stepped forward into a deep lunge. Everyday I am doing running, gymnastic. Like this one — and she dipped up and down, touching her knee to the floor.

Skinner watched her legs flexing.

I do many of them. And… and yangwotui.

What?

Yangwotui, she said. Pushing, like this one — she mimed doing pushups.

Most girls can’t do them.

Yes! I can do.

I don’t know. I have to see this.

I show you.

She got down, brushed concrete shards away from her hands, and hooked one foot behind her ankle. Skinner gazed at her cell phone outlined in the back pocket of her jeans. She did a perfect pushup. Then she took a breath and did a series of them.

Wow, he said.

She got up smiling, dusting off her hands.

Ten, she said.

That was awesome.

Please! she said, stepping back with a sweeping gesture, offering him the floor.

Who me?

Yes! You are push! Please!

How many you want? he asked, pulling off his camouflage.

Oh! One hundred! In China army, boys can do one hundred. If you will be better than them, maybe, I think, one hundred twenty!

Is that all?

He got down and started pushing.

She watched the nape of his erect short-cropped head, the ridged plates of his shoulders going together and apart, his kinetic energy as he threw his body up and down. He counted off in a rapid mild voice. Her eyes went from the star on his neck down to the fulcrum of his boots. In the center of his spine, his shirt was getting damp. He paused with his tattooed arms locked out and his triceps twitching, sucked air and kept going. His neck turned red. He kept his voice even as he counted off the hard ones. Finally, he grunted, and his back bent and he came up slowly.

Fifty okay?

You are good! She gave him the thumbs up.

I don’t know. Used to be.

Yes, strong! Very strong! she said.

It’s nothing great.

She felt his arm. He flexed for her and she gripped his muscle.

You have Chinese word?

He pulled his sleeve up and showed her.

It says No Pain, No Gain. Can you read it? Is that what it says?

Somethings like this, she said.

Want to try this? he asked pointing at his chest. Soberly, she felt his chest.

How about you? You show me?

Yes. She flexed her bicep for him. They both looked at her bicep as he felt it through her long underwear shirt.

What about the leg?

Leg? Okay.

She took a step forward with a bent knee and he placed his large hand on her thigh. Man, he sighed. She let him slide his hand around to her hip. Good? she asked. She flexed for him.

Damn.

After a second, she hipped away.

Skinner stared after her.

I go to work now.

You have to go?

Yes, I go.

He grabbed his camouflage off the stairs and hurried after her. She led them back through the derelict hallway and pushed out through the fire door.

Hey, wait.

Zou Lei slowed for him.

I want to ask you something, Skinner said.

In the morning, on a steep side street lined with bushes and fences with the feeling of a mountain trail above a highway, Zou Lei sees a woman in a conical straw hat with her hair divided into three black rivers, one down her back and one over either shoulder, hanging down to her waist. She is pushing a laundry cart with her bottles laid up pointing in opposite directions, the necks interlocking. The forked hair hangs like a ragged black shawl. A thin woman whose age is hard to tell without seeing her face, just the romance of her hair, as if she has prepared herself for a lover and was waiting years for him, a lifetime.

The cell phone rang in her pocket while she was in a tile-walled sink room, chopping. She dropped her cleaver, wiped her hands on her apron and took her phone out.

Wai? she said. High-lo?

She checked the bars and listened but there was nothing there.

When she got her break, she went into the back alley and tried calling back again. Phone pressed to her ear, she walked back and forth beneath the fire escapes, hugging herself, looking up at the sky. It was bizarre and incandescent, like magnesium burning behind boiling yellow clouds. The line clicked and Skinner’s voice said hey.

Hai! she said. I call you back. I can’t pick up before. You call me, right?

A piece of squash was stuck to the heel of her work-swollen hand, and she wiped it off on her thigh, laughing at something he was saying. She leaned against the alley wall and rested her sneaker on the bricks behind her. He was saying we could get together. She was nodding.

If you’re free, he said.

Yes, I am free. As soon as work finish, I am free.

Listening to him talking, she tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled, dimples appearing below her cheekbones, her strong teeth visible, the paper-thin smile lines around her mouth.

THEY WERE SURROUNDED IN neon and headlights, striding through the darkness, going in and out of darkness and light among the Chinese signs and lights, Skinner almost shouting. Asians went around them. Zou Lei was marching with her arms crossed across her chest and her hair blowing around her face and she was laughing.

It’s funny story!

I’m like, no, dude!

This animal.

I’m like, do not do it! I’m like, think again!

Their combined momentum moved people out of the way. Or people didn’t move and Zou Lei and Skinner went around them and rejoined on the other side, Skinner saying:

I’m like, take a breath!

— continuing to talk through the silhouettes of people like paper targets who got between them.

He halted suddenly and she halted and someone bumped her and she didn’t notice. She waited, pulling her hair out of her eyes as Skinner lit a cigarette.

A puff of smoke lifted out of his cupped hands and rose up into the black and disappeared and when he dropped his hand, he had a lit cigarette in it. They started marching again.

There! I need that for this story.

She laughed, It’s funny. Unbelievable.

Look at it, I tell him. Look at what you’re doing!

It’s the crazy!

Somehow, you get it. I don’t know why you do. He didn’t.

When they were on the other side of Chinatown, he said:

I have no idea where we are. Do you?

He stopped again and looked around and she joined in looking around at the projects, train yard, the highway and cranes.

Fuck it! he started walking again.

Fack it! she laughed and made a fist.

Fuck it. It don’t matter. It makes no difference. We’re gonna force-march this way as hard as we fuckin can. It don’t matter if it’s a bridge or a hole in the ground. We’re gonna do things the army way. It don’t matter if it takes fifteen hours. Let’s just be stupid.

We will be crazy!

Oh, yeah, we’re gonna be crazy! We’re gonna shoot donkeys!

Oh my God!

I’m feeling the guy’s arm and he’s all shaking and terrified.

It’s funny.

It’s so stupid. We did so many stupid things. I really hope you’re not working tomorrow, cuz the two of us are not coming back.

They were hiking up over a bridge that went over the water and down to an industrial area on the shore where there were derricks and containers. She looked back at the small Chinese signs behind them.