Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

All right, he said, but remember it.

She teared-up suddenly and looked away.

I’ll remember, she said.

Then she told him: Put the card away properly or it will get lost.

I will, but tell me you don’t hate me.

He tucked the bank card in her shoe.

I don’t hate anyone.

Do you hate me?

No.

He crawled up into the bed with her.

Wait.

She moved the pizza box.

They lay down together in his bed and one more time before he fell asleep, he asked her if everything was okay. I feel your heart beating like you’re worried. You’re not worried are you?

No.

This isn’t that bad of a situation.

I know.

Goodnight kiss, he said.

She kissed him.

They slept together on his bed.

As dawn began to cast its light into the basement, they became visible. They were lying facing each other, their heads together, knees almost touching, like two apostrophes.

The light strengthened gradually and silently, changing from gray to rose to gold. The soft gold sunlight and the fluttering leafy shadows stretched across the bed and the bodies of the sleepers and the walls, making the bedroom into a forest glade, beautiful and hushed. She must have seen this vision. She dreamed that they were running in the forest.

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THAT morning, a Saturday morning, he woke up, and the first thing he knew was that he was the same as yesterday. He checked himself: The body that lay curled against him was an insufferable weight that inspired no feeling. Except that she was a burden. Except irritability. He did not want to be awake. The faint sound of a neighbor talking on the quiet street enraged him. The mixture of sun and leafy shadows on the walls of his room, which another observer would have found calm and lovely, made him think of rubble, of a broken stressful world that could not be kept away by something as flimsy as a wall and that he was incompetent to handle and from which no one could ever be safe. He was exhausted and had a headache and couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out what he should medicate himself with to get through the morning.

It became clear to him that he was in trouble: he could not let her see his state of mind. If she lost faith in him, if he sensed her condemnation, if they fought — his self-preservation instinct told him to avoid any of these outcomes at all cost.

He lay there thinking strategically for an hour as if he were in a lying-up position and the enemy was close by. His awareness of what could happen if things went wrong with her made it possible for him to exercise the necessary discipline.

He averted his face from her before he moved. She opened her eyes and asked if he was getting up.

He placed his large hand over her eyes so she wouldn’t see him.

Keep sleeping.

Okay.

I just want to PT.

You’re not tired? You are great.

I told you, I’m changing for the better.

He pressed his hand to her face again and told her to rest.

Close your eyes.

Thank you, she said.

He was tying his boots, and then he picked up his wallet and keys, all the elements of last night’s little scene, which he now felt had been coerced from him under false pretences, because in the light of day, he didn’t think he owed anything to anyone who hadn’t shared his war.

I’ll be back in a couple hours.

She leaned up on her elbow in the bed.

I wait here for you, Skinner, she told him.

Once he was outside on the street, the image of her alone in that basement looking back at him would strike him with its loneliness. But for the moment, he was struggling with his irritation. He almost told her, Hey, the gun’s in the corner. If anybody comes in, shoot them.

It would have destroyed everything for them if he had said this, he knew, and yet he barely stopped himself. To break contact with her eyes, instead, he busied himself setting the lock on the bedroom door so that she would be somewhat safe while he was gone.

In the heavy heat, he went to the park on Elder Avenue. On the way down Bowne, there were Central American women shouldering sacks of laundry as big as they were, lugging them down the line of storefronts, each one a square hole, the door wedged open for air, a pegboard on the wall with hooks for 99-cent products, a fogged-up drink case with Olde English forty-ounces standing in the water at the bottom, a fan blowing, the lights off to save energy. The bodegas handled lotto, accepted WIC. In the laundromat, you saw the vinyl peeling off the walls, the washing machines going round and round, and a Chinese woman in pajamas with a plastic broom shoving chairs around. Next door, a white-haired man sat alone in a dark space that was a bar, the back door open to let the air through. You saw him in silhouette against the rectangular view of the back alley where garbage was. He wasn’t moving, as if facing the liquor had taken the power of movement right out of him.

A cluster of women with long brown feet stood arguing on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store, which was fronted by a row of cylindrical cement-filled stanchions so you couldn’t steal the carts. They were arguing over a bag of rice and their food stamp benefit, in Urdu. Skinner slipped around them, sliding between them and the stanchions, and went up a ramp that led into the buildings. There were wire mesh fences and vines coming over the concrete walls with more rusted fencing on top and dumpsters below. The courts in the center were surrounded by brown brick buildings, full of corners and alleys, shoebox-shaped cameras aimed at the paths.

A group of males was playing an unspeaking game of half-court basketball, the only sound that of the ball and their running feet pounding off the bricks and asphalt. Other guys were drifting around inside the fenced enclosure of the handball courts, and they were talking and smoking. Somebody had a bottle in a paper bag. The smell of pot hung over the courts.

I’m high as fuck, somebody said.

Stay high, said someone else.

It was in the upper nineties already and getting hotter. Skinner pulled his elbow behind his head, stretching the Chinese writing on his tricep. He reached up and grasped the exercise bar and let himself hang, feeling his entire body weight all the way down to his boots, took a quick breath and started doing chin-ups.

The backboard banged and rattled from a shot hitting it. Skinner, still hanging, his arms used-up, looked up at the bar, gulped air and chinned himself again.

Between sets, Skinner paced around under the bars, wiping his face with his black shirt. His forearms looked bigger than his calves. The basketball players were taking a break. You want in? they asked when they wanted to be replaced. Skinner saw them going into the handball court where a man in tinted yellow glasses was selling them drinks out of a picnic cooler on a four-wheel dolly. Then they sat against the wall and watched the game go on that they had left, the graffiti above their heads saying In Memory of P. Gupta Celt One St.

Skinner limped down the sideline, his hands swollen and curled from the bar, his short dark hair flattened to his skull as if he had dipped his head in a river, and went into the handball court. As soon as he stepped through the hole in the rusted fence, the guy in yellow shades got up and challenged him. You chillin? The man was over forty, the same height as Skinner, wearing big madras shorts and Closeout City sneakers. He had tattoos around his eyes, visible through his glasses. What you need? He popped up the lid of his cooler, showing the Gatorade bottles floating in the melted ice. I got blue and red.

Skinner saw his last Red Bull and said he’d take it.

You got it, guy.

Skinner cracked it and drank it, an upside-down flame of sweat on his chest.