Preparation for the Next Life (7 page)

On 11th Avenue, he threw his butt away and went into a sandwich counter where the chairs were upside down and a Mexican was mopping. There was no sign of food. A young woman with ringlet hair and a green and blue uniform shirt and a gold chain and earrings was down under the counter going through the stock of cups and napkins.

Are you closed?

She stood up and finished jotting down what was out of stock on her clipboard before she spoke to Skinner. Her hair was worn pulled back giving her a high egg-like forehead and she had a hefty bosom and a narrow waist under her uniform shirt.

I can give you whatever’s out, she said, but we can’t make you nothing.

Do you know the hotels around here?

There’s a lot of them. Like which one?

Just like a basic motel.

She mentioned the Marriott.

Isn’t that like that super big one?

So, like, smaller than that.

Yeah.

She told him to wait and went to the back. The Mexican, who was broad-shouldered, stood aside for her and watched her going by.

Skinner sat down while she was gone, pulled off his watch cap and itched his head. The wall was mirrored and he could see his short wet dark hair, the tattoo on his neck, and sunken eyes looking back at him, multiplied a million times. He seemed not to recognize himself and looked at other things.

She returned carrying a page torn from a phone book.

This is them. Call them or you could go right over. She pointed to the address which she had circled in ballpoint pen. The penmanship was feminine. He could have imagined it signed Love with a drawing of a heart. So how do I get there?

Down and over, she made right angles with her hands.

Hey, thanks. That was going the extra mile.

No problem.

Yeah, look, I’m just thinking, he said. Why don’t you let me return the favor? He kept talking, trying to turn it into asking her out. Like when you get off or whatever. Just kickin it, he said. No attachments, you know? I’m basically a good person. He was watching her face with his sunken eyes to see how he was doing. I just got here, literally like an hour ago. Two hours ago. We could have a drink or something and you could tell me about yourself.

Thank you, no.

You sure? I just got out of the army yesterday. I literally just got here. All I want to do is buy you a drink to say thank you. Howbout it? I mean, you’re not talkin to a bad person.

I realize that.

So how can you say no? I’m just asking.

And I was just answering. Now you got what you need, go to this place.

Damn—he shook his head—I didn’t mean to sweat you. I’m not that kind of guy. I’m just confused. You know, like, there’s nothing bad there. What about if I could call you some time? Some other time, you know? We grab some drinks… I mean, life is short, you know?

That’s not going to happen. In the mirror, he saw the Mexican watching him.

Aw, come on, he laughed, revealing nicotine-stained teeth.

Thank you, no.

I just walked like ten miles with all this. I just fought for my country. Are you sure?

She did not smile.

Why not? Is there something wrong with me?

That’s something for you to ask yourself. That’s not my issue.

Wow. Ouch. I mean, like, a little harmless date.

That’s not my issue. I don’t go out.

All right.

You have your answer. You need to accept it.

All right. Roger that.

A sign above a bank said it was one a.m. and fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. He had been drinking and the bar was closing. He headed
down Broadway with his eyes squinted shut. The wind was blowing the vapor off the manhole covers.

An all-night McDonald’s was operating beneath a neon theater marquis. He bumped through the door and flipped the duffel bag down. This’ll work. It was warm. The backs of his hands were flaming red. He dragged his duffel up to the counter and gazed up at the menu. A skinny female with ragged hair and narrowboned hips waited for him to order, jiggling her leg. She rolled her eyes up at the ceiling. Supersize? she asked. Yeah, he said and wiped his nose. She looked around him. He got out his bank card. The speakers were playing Cherry Baby. He slung his bags into a booth and went back for his tray, sat down and pigged out with dirty hands, stuck his feet out—he belched—he burned his tongue on the coffee. The fries were cold, he dipped them in the coffee, and ate them a handful at a time.

After he was finished eating, he pushed his tray away and sat there looking at his Ironman. His eyelids closed and he opened them again. He stood up. Taking his gear, he went down the line of homeless people at the tables to the restroom and urinated in the shitsmeared toilet.

The door banged. In a minute, he said.

He pulled off his jacket, hoodie, and polypro, and laid everything on his bags. Beneath his clothes, his skivvie shirt was stinking and sweat-soaked. He peeled the skivvie off, revealing his upper body, and wrung it out in the sink. A metallic smell came off him. He had a farmer’s tan. His torso was grayish white and there were zits on his skin. He started giving himself a canteen shower in the sink. He had vertical tattoos down his forearms. With a handful of paper towels, he washed his armpits. His face and hands were covered in half-healed cuts. Then he undid his jeans and wiped himself down. Lifting his scrotum, he held a hot towel between his legs, his eyes half-shut. Crotch rot. He winced. On his tricep, there were Chinese characters.

Across his back, above his scar, he had a tattoo of a skull and death wings, spanning his shoulders. He had a star on his neck, which predated his enlistment, and a U.S. flag on his shoulder, the original idea being for it to look like he was wearing his uniform even when he took it off. He pulled the skin down taut over his abdomen and flexed his stomach, trying to see his six-pack. He raised his arms and flexed his biceps. You could see the Chinese characters wrapping
around the tricep. He could also see the bright pink scar wrapping around his ribs. Turning, he looked at his back in the mirror. The area of the scar was of a color that did not look like flesh at all. It looked like a melted plastic toy.

He got himself organized, changed his shirt. The new one said Army Strong. In his assault pack, he had a handgun wrapped in a faded green army towel, a Berretta nine-millimeter, and he took it out and checked it. He released the magazine, locked back the slide, checked the chamber with a finger, dropped the slide, squeezed the safety, decocked the pistol, reinserted the magazine, and switched the safety on. He wrapped it in the towel again and stuck it back in his bag.

Someone banged the door and he ignored them.

They banged again.

Chill, he said.

Back at a booth, he untied his desert boots and changed his socks, rubbing his peeling feet one at a time. The music had been turned off. You heard them cleaning in the kitchen. He put his head down on his arms. Someone rapped the table with a billyclub, a man in a navy sweater with nylon elbow patches and sergeant’s stripes, handcuffs attached to his belt and what could have been a Smith and Wesson.

Skinner pushed himself up. Sighed.

Don’t tell me you don’t know about the rules, the guard said. You oughta know all about the rules. These other ones don’t, but you should.

Skinner looked at him and looked away.

There were derelicts everywhere. A guy in a Mets cap with a triangular unshaven face strutted over to a feminine boy in bellbottoms, and said, Yo, homegirl, give me a quarter.

The time on the wall was three-something in the morning. The lights were half-on, as if in energy-saving mode, and the black and amber field of the street was visible through the glass. A vehicle went by, just one, and litter got sucked up and flew after it, spinning.

He took the magazine out again but couldn’t read.

At four, the guards told everyone they had to leave. The whole McDonald’s was getting to their feet and shuffling to the door in a moving column of piss- and b.o.-stink. He picked up his bags and shuffled outside with them. The cold was vicious. He had to take a piss so badly it was stimulating. The wind lifted a sheet of newspaper
from the gutter and blew it against his calf. He had heard someone, possibly the guard, saying that there is another location down the street that stays open. The sky was black and, at the corner, there was a surreal in-the-mountains feeling from the giant silent buildings in the silver-dust light.

No one else came with him. Maybe they went down into the subway station or waited on the street. But he found the other McDonald’s and the door opened when he pulled it, and when it shut behind him, he was warm. He dropped his weight. The Men’s was being cleaned, he used the Ladies and drained his bladder, one of those endless rich-smelling pisses. He bought another coffee, blowing over the plastic lip of the cup, tongue scalded. A Spanish guy with a broken nose, tattooed forearms, and a bop walk was mopping the floor in sections. The stairs leading up to the second floor were chained off and no one else was present.

You think you could let me crash up there?

Come on, the guy said. He unhooked the chain, took him up. Lay your shit on down there. You don’t gotta go nowheres till nine. You got all the way until then.

Fuckin A. Thanks, bro. The ex-con slid off and Skinner piled his gear on the floor and stretched out on a bench.

4

W
HEN SHE FIRST ARRIVED
, she had tried to stay awake all night in the Port Authority, trying to avoid being seen by the police. She sat on the floor with her forehead on her arms across her knees next to the humming vending machine. They patrolled through, she heard their radios, and she got up and moved. In the restroom, there was toilet paper unspooled across the floor and a black woman was bouncing off the walls, rubbing liquid soap on her arms and legs like lotion. Zou Lei went down through the tunnel and waited in the empty station for the subway. It came and she got on and sat at the end of the car holding her plastic bag with her clothes in it.

At two in the morning, everyone was black or Mexican and they were men, sitting with their knees spread out, sleeping with their mouths open. The door between the cars opened, letting in the roaring at full volume and a column of men came easing in, swinging along the bars, their jeans low and bunched around their ankles, rags on their heads, towels hanging from their pockets.

She crossed her arms and stared straight ahead, seeing the lights flick by.

Her back kept slumping forward and she would prop her chin up with her hand. When she woke up, her bag had fallen off her lap and her clothes were showing. She picked it up and stuffed her clothes back in, the train blasting through the tunnel.

She saw the dawn begin on the elevated tracks, water towers wheeling by against a dark blue sky. Her face was creased from trying to use her clothes as a pillow. Construction workers started getting on, their boots and jeans covered in dust. She sat up straight and crossed her legs and then her head sank forward again as they rocked along. People got on talking. She stood up and read the map, keeping her balance, leaning over someone else. She traced her finger along the colored line beneath the plastic.

This one the Chinatown?

A Salvadoran woman in a white ball cap and gold earrings, whose sneakers barely reached the floor, took her headphones out and said, Qué? Sí.

Zou Lei sat back down. She took a comb out of her bag and combed her hair, tying it back in a ponytail. A man in overalls watched her from across the car, then closed his eyes again.

She took the subway to a station with overflowing trash cans. You could hear the splattering, when the train had gone, of a soda getting poured out on the concrete. She saw someone in multiple coats but no shoes digging through the garbage, taking out the bottles.

The street was lined with dumpsters. She passed a city building for pain abatement that had benches splintering out front. A block later, she saw the Manhattan Bridge arched up over the tenements into a boiling dry-ice cloud ceiling. Framed under the arch, there were fire escapes and clotheslines, brush calligraphy coiling down the ironwork, graffiti booming off the rooftops.

She went into a coffee place and stood to the side, holding her plastic bag, and watched them fixing a coffee, putting condensed milk in it. Do you have the paper? Not here, they said. The subway crashed by on the bridge above their heads. It was a very small store. Someone pushed by her, holding out a dollar. Where’s the best place to get a job? she asked. They lidded it and handed it over the counter. Outside, they said. Outside is the best place.

A chain banged against corrugated steel on the cold street. The locks were coming off, the steel shutters going up, the stands opening. She went door to door down the line of kitchens with candied ducks on steel hooks in the grease-smeared windows and the shrines behind the counters, and asked if they were hiring.

Sometimes the boss was the man standing right next to the person she was talking to and he wouldn’t say anything unless she asked him directly, are you the boss?

They were not hiring, but try the paper.

On East Broadway, there was a condemned building where you could stay for ten dollars if you called the number. When she pushed the buttons on the intercom, she heard nothing. She looked past the notice that had been partly scraped off the glass and waited for anything to happen. She bounced on her toes, her face ruddy, hitting her arms and thighs through the denim. A bus pulled away behind
her and revealed a sign for New York to Virginia across the street. She stared at it and thought about it.