Preparation for the Next Life (30 page)

I know.

If I knew what Patrick was going to do before he did it, I’d be a mind reader. I didn’t know what he was doing.

I know that.

I hope you do.

It’s just something that happened. Life goes on, the football player said.

Let’s hope it does.

How’s everything with that situation?

That’s what we’re gonna find out. At this point, we’re hearing April. But the system is so bad.

It’ll work out.

Yeah, well, we’ll see.

There was a woman with black hair sitting at the kitchen table next to Mrs. Murphy smoking a cigarette. She was sitting folded on the chair with her knees up and her feet pulled in. Sometimes her eyes took a quick measuring look at you and then went back to looking at the ashtray she was sharing with Mrs. Murphy. Her skin was yellowish and rough and she had high cheekbones. Her name was Vicky.

We’ll see, she echoed.

And turning to Mrs. Murphy:

Who was the guy he had a problem with?

Some guy named Rick.

Rick from Brooklyn?

From the bar right here.

Yeah. That’s Brooklyn Rick. They’re the same.

If you say so.

Real skinny? No ass?

That would be him, she said. You know him?

Vicky nodded and let the smoke out of her lungs and blew it upwards.

Oh yeah, she said. He’s a thief.

Okay. Figures I let him in my house. Look, he went by the book with me.

He did major time in the pen.

We all have something. Come on. If I was gonna go by that, nobody would be left in this house for a party. You know what I’m saying, Vicky? Let’s get real. The guy’s a sixty-year-old man with white hair. And him? Mrs. Murphy dropped her voice and looked across the kitchen at her stepson, who was talking to two short wide girls. The size of him?

No doubt. No doubt.

In my younger days, I could have shaken it out of him, thief or no thief.

We know the deal.

There’s a whole history, Vicky. I’m not going into it.

Let it lie.

Mm-hm. I’m waiting for the call.

What time is it?

Mrs. Murphy checked her cell phone, which was lying on the table by her coffee cup.

Should be any minute.

Skinner finished his beer and put it in the sink. The bottle fell over when he put it down. He said whoops and, deliberately, set it upright again and watched it to see if it would tip. The woman Vicky had gotten up and was standing with one foot on her chair. I gotta get a bite, she said and she came around the table to the counter and took a half a sub out of the aluminum foil and put it on a paper plate, the shredded lettuce falling out. She cut her eyes sideways at him.

Hey. You Greg’s friend?

Who’s that?

He’s the guy they had before you. I thought he was your friend.

No. Don’t know him. I’m not from here.

What are you, in college?

No.

Like LaGuardia? She wants to go there.

Vicky indicated Erin, who was standing with one foot on top of the other foot, her heavy hip leaning against the counter. She was wearing an oversized shirt that came down covering the widest part of her. She had taken the bread off a sandwich and she was picking at the cheese. Her face was angled down. She had an expression of complete equanimity on her face. Since he had arrived, she had ignored him.

No, I’m not in college.

So, what are you, here for work?

No, I’m more like checking it out.

That’s cool. Explore your world. So you don’t know anyone. You’re, like, who is everybody?

I know her and her daughter.

You met Pat, the father?

I don’t know.

You’d know. If you shook his hand, you’d know. When he took your arm off.

What’s he got, like an Irish voice?

Patrick Murphy? Yeah.

I might of heard him through the floor.

Through the floor? That sounds right, she said. That was him.

He glanced again at Erin, trying to get a look at her face, to see if she had any bruises, any black eyes or fat lips.

So where you from?

I’m from Pittsburgh.

That figures. I hear the twang. You don’t sound like you’re from the city.

We’re rednecks where I’m from.

Someone who overheard them mentioned that John Gambia from the neighborhood had come back from basic training sounding like a redneck.

Come on already. Get the sand out of your shoe, Vicky said.

He took another Michelob. When he opened it, the bottle cap fell and bounced on the linoleum. The star on the back of his neck showed when he bent to pick it up.

Indicating John, she said, You know this guy actually plays for the Jets.

Cool. I’m a Steelers fan.

Uh-oh, John said.

It’s all good.

Skinner tried to toast him, but the football player didn’t have a bottle. He held up his big fist and Skinner tapped it with his beer.

Everyone wanted to talk to the professional athlete, who, though not much of a talker, had an easy way about him, and spoke to everyone. Generally he didn’t stay too long speaking to any one person. Skinner made him stay and talk about strength and conditioning. I played ball in high school, Skinner said. John was polite. He acknowledged having had the clinic run on him in training. The two weeks in the preseason were tough, just as you have surely heard. He began to move away. Skinner kept saying, hold it dude, detaining him.

Squat, bench, chins, sprints.

Okay, said John.

Wait, what about power cleans, dips?

Okay, that’s good.

Dips are upper body squats.

Yup.

Burpees, hit-it’s, suicides. Six days a week, two times a day.

That’s a pretty heavy schedule. What are you doing all this for?

Skinner just shook his head.

I don’t know.

How many of those’ve you had, buddy?

Skinner took a while to answer. Someone else—an older woman with her hair in a scrunchy—came over and said hi to John and gave him a hug. Her voice was gone and half of what she said was whispery air.

It’s scary how different I look from one day to the next, isn’t it!

She adjusted her scrunchy to hold her pale blond hair up in a stalk above her head. The football player turned to speak with her. In so doing, he presented Skinner with his back.

I’ve had one.

The football player didn’t turn around.

I’ve had one, Skinner said more loudly. A nineteen-year-old iron-worker with a silver earring and a reflective orange stocking cap began looking at him steadily.

The general conversation turned back to John Gambia and what he was doing in Iraq. It was agreed that he was doing very well.

At this point, the cell phone by Mrs. Murphy’s coffee cup rang. It played the chorus from the song: I can’t go on, because I love you too much, baby. It was an important call. Everyone went quiet. It’s him, she said. He wants to talk to you. And she handed the phone to Vicky who took it into the hallway to talk. The conversation in the kitchen resumed while she was gone. Skinner’s eyes were getting heavy. He put his empty on the counter and rubbed his face. He listened to them talking about people he didn’t know. Then she came back a few minutes later and gave the phone to Mrs. Murphy. He wants to talk to you now. She turned herself away from the others as much as her size would allow, but anyone who was listening was going to hear her side of the conversation anyway. She said:

What’s wrong?… What is it?… Is it the same guard?… Can you do it on a different shift?… Listen to you… I hear you getting fresh with me… Just take it easy… Okay. Just take it easy. We’re going to see you soon. Just take it easy, will you?… All right. Goodbye.

The call ended. She set the phone down on the table. She reached for her Slims.

How’s he doing? John asked.

He’s upset over the phone schedule. That’s all the time he had.

He’s okay though.

He’s okay.

Erin asked, Is he still having a problem with the same guard?

Mrs. Murphy eyeballed her daughter.

Vicky, who was folded like a black cat on a kitchen chair, said, Yeah, and tapped her cigarette in the ashtray.

From across the room, Skinner said:

Who’re you talkin about?

The question caused a silence in the apartment. People stared at him, then they looked at Mrs. Murphy to see what she would say. From the back of the kitchen, Erin muttered something in a rising singsong voice that you didn’t have to hear to understand. The iron-worker with the silver earring exchanged a look with one of his male friends.

My son, Mrs. Murphy answered.

What, is he overseas? Skinner asked. Is he the Army Ranger?

You’re getting him confused.

You could say that, someone else said. Not exactly. Haha. Jimmy, no. Not the army. That would be someone else. Can you imagine Jimmy taking orders? No, let’s drop it.

But Skinner felt like he was missing something. I’m sayin, is he a brother soldier?

He’s not in the army. Put it that way.

He fucked up.

The cops fucked up, if you asked me, Vicky said and nodded at her cigarette.

He’s the place you go when you fuck up, John said and laughed. Leave it at that.

Thank you, Mrs. Murphy said. And would you quit the f-word in my kitchen. There was general laughter. And since we’re putting it in the street, yes, he’s upstate. We get him back in April.

Then you gotta have another one of these, have everybody over.

We’ll do something. Do me a favor: next time, get Guinness and you can come. More general laughter. She lit a cigarette and smoked it, talking in a lowered voice to a friend. The episode was forgotten, it seemed. Erin examined the remaining food and asked her mother if she had eaten. No one asked if Skinner wanted something to eat. He had consumed three beers. Mrs. Murphy told her daughter to bring her something. Not the whole thing. Cut it for me.

Skinner’s eyes were nearly shut from dopiness.

You wanna see my workout? he asked the ballplayer. You can tell me if it’s good.

He was told: That’s okay, hoss. Another time.

25

H
E TOOK A DRINK
from a flask of Bacardi Scorched Cherry and watched an execution on his laptop. A man’s body tensed while his killer sawed at his neck. Two men kneeled on him. The audio was bad, and Skinner turned the volume up. That sound was him protesting. The clock was running. The film advanced. The man had become inanimate in the last thirty seconds. Now they lifted up the head, separating it from the corpse.

Skinner took another drink from his bottle. The audio was bad because there was sand in his laptop. His hearing was sixty percent in his strong-side ear, the side he held his weapon on. Battlefield dirt got in your body through the lungs and through wounds.

He watched IEDs detonating, the explosion blotting out the vehicle, the men, the road, then the brown cloud rolling down and spreading out, and you could see the vehicle at an angle. He watched guys who got hit by a sniper, getting punched down. He watched a wounded fighter lying in the dirt. The ground was smeared with a wide red swath of blood. The fighter lifted his AK-47 and the good guys shot him. The sparks went through his body at angles: through his shoulder, chest. Now he lay unmoving. He watched his guys shooting from a rooftop, ten minutes of jumping footage showing three or four guys, the M60 shaking in bursts, the guys talking, pointing over there, the M60 being turned, the casings falling out like dry feces, set to death metal.

He listened to cock rock, thrash metal, big rock ballads, country and western—the numbers they used to play in battle. He turned the decibels all the way up, and it still felt as if he couldn’t hear it. And it wasn’t because he was deaf, it was because nothing sounded like anything after battle.

In his mind, he knew that she was special. He could picture her lying on his bed with the poncholiner winding between her legs and across her bare hip like a green snake and her phoenix eyes on him, a combat fantasy. She was what he had ached for when he had been
over there. When he had believed he was going to die, the idea of never having a woman to love him had summed up all his pain. Now, as he sat there with the flask empty on the linoleum at his feet, he checked himself and found his ache was missing. The world was dull or annoying to him, and she was just like any other female, he felt: she had certain functions. And he had seen those functions turned inside out by high explosives, he knew what was inside people, and there was nothing there. It was gross. It was boring. It was sickening and that was all.

The loss of this feeling horrified him. It was yet another thing that didn’t work on him.