Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

There must be a God.

I don’t know you have a gun.

I know.

Maybe we can take the bullets out.

He got up and unloaded it and put it away.

Maybe we ought to eat something.

I don’t want you to buy the dinner for me again. It’s not fair to you.

I didn’t mean that, Zooey. Would you please share my dinner with me?

Maybe we should do something else.

Oh. Okay. You sure?

Yes. She extended her arms to him. But when they tried to make love, he had difficulty; he kept falling out of her.

It’s okay. It’s okay.

No it isn’t.

Yes it’s okay. I help you.

Finally, he was able. When he was done, they were both hot and sweaty and dirt from the mattress was embedded in their knees. He was relieved that it had worked in the end, but it had taken him a long time. He asked if she was okay, and she said that she was fine. She was going to take a shower. Night had come down on them while they had been working on the bed. The room felt filled with smoke. It was just his eyes, a loneliness. A place on earth without a power grid. A wilderness of rubble. He turned the bedside lamp on as an orange campfire against the wild. The harem-purple walls came up and he was back in Queens where the colors had been chosen by the people from whom he rented.

One thing, you better wear your clothes out there. There could be someone out there.

Someone’s in the basement?

This dude comes down. You never know.

Okay.

Used to treating everything outside the immediate confines of the sleeping area as a public space, she thought nothing of this and acted accordingly, exiting the room fully dressed, taking along his Camp Manhattan towel.

After she had showered, dressed, and brushed her wet hair, he took her to Fratelli’s for pizza. While they ate, he reached across the orange table, trying to reach for something of hers. It felt like a particularly dark night. He settled for her elbow. She was using both hands to hold up the triangular pizza slice, which kept buckling in the middle, like a corpse being carried to a helicopter. He held her elbow, watched her chest move as she performed the functions of life — breathing, eating.

It’s just the pills.

I know. You are a young strong man.

Today everything was weird.

The sweet sharp pain that foreshadows weeping visited him again in the throat and eyes. He put his head down, glanced sideways at his reflection in the vertical mirrored strips that covered the wall of the pizza parlor. His eyes looked like someone had sprayed roach spray in them, an allergic response. He thought of chafed, reddened mucous membranes after the friction of sex.

Did you notice anything when we were…?

Just you are tired.

No, I mean, did you notice anything? Did you hear anything?

Just I hear the sound we making.

Nothing else?

What else?

Like something outside the room.

She looked up at the ceiling, at the ceiling fan, remembering.

I heard some sound. I think like somethings falling on the ground. You think someone is there?

Apparently he did think so. She asked who he thought could have done such a thing. Skinner asked if she remembered how he had been having things disappear — a magazine, some medication, his six-pack of beer? He thought the guy who was stealing from him was spying on them as well. Skinner knew he came down in the basement because he had seen him under the sink.

He’s been in my room to fix the boiler. Right after that, Mrs. Murphy complains about my room to me. Remember how I cleaned it up? That was him. So I know he’s down there, he’s seen everything. When I go out, when I come back, there’s always something moved like he was down there. And none of this ever happened before him. This all started happening after he showed up. The other day, I saw him out here and it’s like there’s something on between us. Like something’s gonna happen.

Why he does this things to you?

I don’t know what his problem is. You ever see this guy? He’s like this pretty big dude, real tall, walks up and down like he’s going boing-boing on springs, like he wants to kill somebody. He’s got a little beard right here.

Yes, she said. I know him.

You do?

One day I come to find you and you aren’t here. He open the door. I think it’s him.

Really? You serious? You know it was him?

She said she thought so.

What’d he say to you?

He try to invite me inside.

What’d you do?

I say no. I go away. But he try to convince me.

He came onto you?

Maybe, yes, I think so. Skinner’s face contorted. But, she told Skinner, it didn’t mean anything to her. It wasn’t the only time a man had tried to talk to her in Flushing. A lot of man try to trick the woman.

Like who?

This one boy, he call me Ma. It’s very funny. I think, You call to your mother?

What was he, a black dude?

He is black. Hey, Ma! he say.

What’d you say?

I have to go.

What was that, on Main Street?

Yes, in Chinatown. Nothing happen. I think he just look at me as I walk away. Say some things, Ma! like he call his mother.

I mean, I can understand that. That’s normal cause of how you look and everything.

She asked him if he felt all right, and he said he just felt tired.

When they got home, they were teetering on the edge of sadness again. He asked her if they could lie down on the bed together and hug each other until she had to go. They held each other for quite a while, keeping the bedside light on for comfort. Do you love me? he asked. She said she wouldn’t be lying in his bed with him if she didn’t love him. His jaw flexed, his eyes squeezed and a pulse of tears ran down his nose, a thin stream that dried sixty seconds later. She held his head, rubbing the back of his neck where his haircut ended.

I love you, he said.

She did not respond and he wondered if the words sounded as empty to her as they had to him. He stroked her back and hip. There was nothing he could say that was equal to the curve of her hip.

No man can touch me except you.

That’s right, he said.

At eleven o’clock, he sat up suddenly and said wait a minute. Went and grabbed his boots, told her not to move. Stay right here, I want to see something. Before he left, he got the gun and then he ran upstairs, leaving her distressed and confused.

He ran around the house and came up the alley on the other side to the grating above their window. She stood on the bed and whispered, What you doing?

I’m looking at our privacy. Can you see me up here?

No. I barely see you.

All right. Just a minute. I’m coming back.

He came back around the house. She heard him locking the house door after he came back in, then thumping down the stairs in his boots and checking everywhere: the bathroom, the kitchen, the closet, all the corners.

What happened?

I heard something.

She asked him please to put the gun away. She was really upset again.

I know I heard something outside. With the bedside light on, it isn’t good. You can see everything from up there.

IT WAS A LONG ride and she had to transfer twice to get to the Bronx. The white people got off and the blacks and Spanish got on and stayed on. The train filled, got dark with dark people, and smelled like coconut skin-sweat and cherry incense. From Westchester Avenue, she took a bus east to Soundview. The bus traveled down an eight-lane avenue overlooked by project housing on a human-dwarfing scale. She rang the bell and got off. Each tower looked like a battleship planted in the ground and sticking up in the sky, rusting, and she counted twenty of them. She asked directions of a Haitian woman wearing church shoes. Go on down pass, she said. The woman had a deeply seamed face. A concrete staircase led down a dusty hill to where there were low, flat-roofed buildings, forklifts in the street. At the bottom, she found the address she was looking for, a factory.