Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

AFTER 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 ndStreet. 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.

ON 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.