Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

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.

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.