Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

Cool you off, the vendor said. Hot day and shit. He put Skinner’s money in the pocket of his knee-length shorts. Skinner belched and walked away.

The vendor and the youths, some of them on bicycles, went back to talking. Some had come from other neighborhoods and this became the subject of their discussion.

You couldn’t do what I’m doing now. Not where I was from, the vendor said. East New York. Pinkerton Avenue. Niggas would run up on you and rob you for what little you got. He grabbed at the leg of his plaid shorts to show the way they ripped your pockets for the money. We were the lowest of the low, the ghettoist of the ghetto.

A black man wearing thick round prescription glasses and a sleeveless undershirt said, We had to stay on point with that shit. The bottle in brown paper rested on the asphalt at his feet in church shoes. His trousers were unfastened at the top and his hipbone kept them up. He’s my cousin. Me and him been out here twelve years.

This is Disneyland, the vendor said.

Disneyland. My man. Let me get some on that.

The black man leaned like an alien, reaching out with a long bent arm. The vendor clasped his hand and threw the hand away without looking at him.

My life was nothing but violence, the vendor said. Shot wounds, stab wounds. He gestured at his arms, torso. Of course he had served time, though he didn’t want to talk about it. The tattoos said it all. He removed his tinted glasses and had the young guys look at his face. It said Fuck Ya on his eyelids. That’s how I felt. BK on his face for Brooklyn. Another Brooklyn in script on his neck. A star between his eyes. Black tear drops on his cheek. Now, I’m just out here staying humble. I found religion. I’m just keeping humble every day, trying to make a dollar.

His alleged cousin took a drink and said, You don’t see that every day. Staying humble. Let me get some on that. His hand floated out like a manta ray on the end of his vein-wrapped arm until someone shook it. But look, look, he said. Lemme tellya. Money and family don’t mix. He held up a pack of Dunhills so everyone could see. You see the kind a cigarettes I’m smoking, so you know I don’t tell nothing but the truth.

Skinner was doing pushups with his boots up on a ledge. When he was done, he had trouble standing up. He sat down and did nothing for quite a while, just sat at the bottom of a slide, his chin dripping, looking down at the sweat drips falling between his fingers.

When he looked up, he saw a pit bull, a beautiful powerful animal with tight glossy skin over striated muscles, towing its owner across the court. The owner walked leaning back, holding the thick leather leash wrapped around his fist. The animal turned its obscene head towards Skinner, who watched it curiously as it panted at him with its jaws open and pink things hanging out.

Time had gotten away from him in the heat. Skinner checked his phone, which had condensation under the screen, and frowned, confused. He hobbled down the ramp, squinting at the relentless cars going by, the low rooftops. The sun lit up everything and the concrete hurt your eyes.

You there? he said into the phone. Her voicemail had picked up. Hit me back, he told the recording.

He started walking up Sanford Avenue, passing graffiti that mentioned the streets he was passing and the people who lived there. Dek 142 St Love Trouble CSNR. In some of the yards, there were plastic toys and swings and rubbish, road cones, construction equipment parked, because the people ran their own landscaping company and this was where they lived. He thought he would hear from her within ten blocks. He heard hammers and a Skillsaw. A car went by playing R&B, coming from Nassau County. You could feel Saturday night starting in the afternoon.

Down a back street, he saw males crawling in and out of a dead house, doing a gut-out, throwing rotted wood in a van.

When she hadn’t called him back by the time he reached his street, he thought, She must be in the shower. The house looked the same as always, the three layers of roofs rolled out like dirty tongues separating each floor. From here, he saw the shed in back, the attic window stuffed with yellow-gray insulation. He went around the yard’s faded Jesus and let himself in. Jogging down the stairs, he called out her name, Zou Lei.

Something made him stop and listen. No one answered. Zooey, he said again. But he could hear he was alone.

He went down the stairs and snapped the light on in the bathroom and looked inside and found it empty. Striding to the kitchen, he stuck his head around the corner and looked up-down-left-right. There was no one there, just the cabinets and sink and the refrigerator. The bedroom door was locked. Zooey? he said. He used his key and opened it. His room was empty — she was not there. He stood there staring at the bed, the last place he had seen her.

What the fuck? he thought. The room looked wrong to him. The bed was at an angle to the wall and the poncholiner was lying on the floor.

He went back up on the street and looked both ways, seeing nothing but the rows of houses and cars going off for miles. There could be a million reasons she was not here, he thought. It’ll be the thing you never thought of. He went back downstairs and dialed her on his phone, waiting leaning on the wall, his forehead pressed into his sweating bicep, waiting for it to ring.

The satellite connected and, a second later, he heard a cell phone ringing. It was in the basement with him. He followed the sound into his bedroom and looked around for it. It was coming from somewhere around his bedside table. He kneeled and looked under the table and saw her belly bag. The ringing was coming out of it. He snatched the bag and tore the zipper open and found her cell phone, his name flashing on her screen.

The bag contained all her things — her wallet, money, house key. He took them out and searched through them, something he had never done before, but they were hers. His hands were fluttery, but that was just his body acting up. He put them away again in the bag and tried to zip it shut. He could hear his fingers fumbling, the fine motor control gone. He could not shut the zipper. When he left the bag on the table, none of the things in it fit the way they should. They bulged out like bad conclusions.

She’s fine, he said. Control yourself. Ten seconds from now, she’s going to walk in that door.

He went back and started searching through the basement again, this time more thoroughly, prepared to pull everything apart, to rip apart the bedding and dump the drawers out.

He went back over the carpeting on the stairs, checking for anything that might have been dropped. He zipped his hand over the million machine-made stitches. There was nothing he could see. There were no notes or messages. Nothing cut his fingers, no broken glass. He went back into the bathroom and opened the frosted glass shower door and looked inside the shower compartment, even though he could tell there was no shadow of a folded body through the frosted glass. The toilet had not been used. He opened all the cupboards in the kitchen and checked inside the refrigerator pointlessly. He looked between the refrigerator and the wall, in that gap where dust balls gathered due to the electricity. In the bedroom, he pulled the closet door open and looked at the copper lines and the boiler dripping rust.

He turned around and looked at the bed again and the sight of it affected him in a way that no other part of the basement did. It looked like someone had kicked the bed. He pictured someone having a violent tantrum — not her, but someone else. But no one else had been here with her. His mind was prone to freakish thoughts, but he felt sick and weak.

Going closer, he clearly saw that the bed frame had been shifted at an angle to the wall.