Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

Oh. Hey. Like, real recently.

Skinner shuffled over to the vehicle.

The passenger wore a bomber jacket. The driver, who wore corrective glasses and a Jets hat, was leaning around him. They were both carrying pistols.

You deployed?

Did I deploy? Yeah, I deployed.

What were you? Not intelligence?

Maybe if I’d been smarter. I was in the infantry.

My man, the driver said. He reached his fist out the door and Skinner bumped it.

Hooah, brother.

Hooah, Skinner said. All the way.

I saw you in there, and I was, like, he’s one of my guys.

Definitely, Skinner nodded.

He thought you looked lost, the cop in the bomber jacket said.

No, I’m not.

You from around here?

No. I just came up from base.

You got somewhere to stay?

Oh, yeah. Hell yeah.

Cuz a lot of guys — it’s bad. They wind up, you know, like, making thinking errors when they get out.

Yeah.

They have the battle skills, but do they have the civilian skills.

Skinner nodded, his head lowered. Then he covered his eyes.

Both of the men in the car got quiet.

Skinner was having trouble controlling himself. Just a minute, he said. He walked to the back of the sedan, snorted up phlegm and hocked it on the pavement, wiped his eyes, and came back.

The wave had passed. Fuckin stupid, he said and hocked again.

Get in and talk.

I’m good.

You got any family?

Yeah, I mean, I do. I’m good though. I mean, I don’t need anyone worrying about me.

You gotta get over that.

I know.

If there’s a problem, you fix it, right?

I know.

Do you know who to call?

What, like the VA?

Anybody you can call if you get in trouble — the VA, your family, anyone from your unit, anyone like that. A friend, anyone. As opposed to — as opposed to — for example, drinking twenty-four hours a day.

The driver was staring at him, leaning out at him, neck stretched, mouth a clinched lipless line, glasses reflecting the vapor light.

Okay, Skinner said. Roger that. I appreciate it. I do. I’m good to go.

He’s good, the passenger cop said. He’s okay.

The driver took his Jets hat off. He was balding with long, dank strings of hair pasted to his dome, and when the hat came off some of them lifted away from his head. He gave a short nod.

Skinner looked across Roosevelt.

I think my bus is here.

His bus is here. Don’t miss it, guy, the passenger said.

The driver stuck his fist out the door one more time and Skinner bumped it again.

Be safe, bro.

Hooah, Skinner said, and went around their sedan and across the avenue towards the buses idling in the dark.

HE WENT UPSTAIRS TO pay his rent and found the apartment full of people drinking beers and eating subs from Fratelli’s pizzeria.

Mrs. Murphy was talking to several different people at once. She snapped her lighter, leaned back and aimed her smoke away from them up at her cupboards. She was wearing the same velvet house-coat that she had worn before and she had a cold cup of coffee sitting next to her on the table, as if she had just come out for breakfast. One of the people she was talking to was a big guy with red hair and the baritone voice of an athlete. He was wearing a Jets jersey in super extra large.

Come in, come in, she told Skinner, who came in. He gave her his rent check and she set her coffee cup on it. Take a beer.

This is Brad from downstairs. The tenant.

I’m John, the big guy said. I’m her stepson.

Yo, Skinner said and shook the guy’s hand.

There were about ten other people in the apartment: neighborhood women in sweatpants and hoop earrings, young men stopping off from work, their sweatshirts and jeans grimy with black dust from ironwork, faces red from the cold. They all talked with thick New York accents, which made everything they said sound Italian. Not everyone was quick to say hello. The males didn’t talk to people they didn’t know. It was unclear what the purpose of the gathering was. The big guy was Mrs. Murphy’s stepson. He had not grown up with her. He was Patrick’s son by another woman, and he was in the NFL.

Skinner popped the cap off a Michelob, hooked the neck of the bottle in his trigger finger, and lifted it to drink, his lips rolled under. His face was covered in stubble and he was in his socks. His heels were standing on his jeans, his boxers showing. He had just taken sertraline half an hour ago and it created a distance between him and the world. He heard the football player’s baritone across this distance.

He was talking about his tires. He had left them in the yard behind the house. A guy had done some work, some plumbing, for the family. Through some kind of fast talking, he had gotten the tires from Pat, who hadn’t known what they were worth.

Mrs. Murphy said, I know, I saw them. They were here six months. They were covered in mud.

New, they went six hundred dollars apiece.

They weren’t new.

Even old, you were talking nineteen hundred, two grand in tires.

Okay. Let’s call it that. What did you do about it?

I called the guy. I left messages on the phone. Finally he tells me he doesn’t have them.

Well, I doubt he does. He probably sold them.

That doesn’t help me much.

I know it doesn’t help you. She rolled her eyes. It doesn’t help me either.

I know.

If I knew what Patrick was going to do before he did it, I’d be a mind reader. I didn’t know what he was doing.

I know that.

I hope you do.

It’s just something that happened. Life goes on, the football player said.

Let’s hope it does.

How’s everything with that situation?

That’s what we’re gonna find out. At this point, we’re hearing April. But the system is so bad.

It’ll work out.

Yeah, well, we’ll see.

There was a woman with black hair sitting at the kitchen table next to Mrs. Murphy smoking a cigarette. She was sitting folded on the chair with her knees up and her feet pulled in. Sometimes her eyes took a quick measuring look at you and then went back to looking at the ashtray she was sharing with Mrs. Murphy. Her skin was yellowish and rough and she had high cheekbones. Her name was Vicky.

We’ll see, she echoed.

And turning to Mrs. Murphy:

Who was the guy he had a problem with?

Some guy named Rick.

Rick from Brooklyn?

From the bar right here.

Yeah. That’s Brooklyn Rick. They’re the same.

If you say so.

Real skinny? No ass?

That would be him, she said. You know him?

Vicky nodded and let the smoke out of her lungs and blew it upwards.

Oh yeah, she said. He’s a thief.

Okay. Figures I let him in my house. Look, he went by the book with me.

He did major time in the pen.

We all have something. Come on. If I was gonna go by that, nobody would be left in this house for a party. You know what I’m saying, Vicky? Let’s get real. The guy’s a sixty-year-old man with white hair. And him? Mrs. Murphy dropped her voice and looked across the kitchen at her stepson, who was talking to two short wide girls. The size of him?

No doubt. No doubt.

In my younger days, I could have shaken it out of him, thief or no thief.

We know the deal.

There’s a whole history, Vicky. I’m not going into it.

Let it lie.

Mm-hm. I’m waiting for the call.

What time is it?

Mrs. Murphy checked her cell phone, which was lying on the table by her coffee cup.

Should be any minute.

Skinner finished his beer and put it in the sink. The bottle fell over when he put it down. He said whoops and, deliberately, set it upright again and watched it to see if it would tip. The woman Vicky had gotten up and was standing with one foot on her chair. I gotta get a bite, she said and she came around the table to the counter and took a half a sub out of the aluminum foil and put it on a paper plate, the shredded lettuce falling out. She cut her eyes sideways at him.