Preparation For The Next Life

Earlier that morning, after Skinner had left, Zou Lei heard someone trying to get into Skinner’s room. A man outside the door told her to open it, but she refused, claiming that Skinner was sleeping. The man—revealed to be Jimmy—unlocked the door with Mrs. Murphy’s keys and entered Skinner’s room. He approached Zou Lei and forced her down onto Skinner’s bed. Zou Lei fought against him and escaped his hold. Terrified, Zou Lei ran from the Murphys’ household without her shoes or any of her belongings. She ran for as long as she could, believing that Skinner would find her and help her.

Zou Lei wanders the streets of New York City throughout the night. She walks for miles, constantly avoiding law enforcement, believing that they may be trying to arrest and deport her. After hours of walking, Zou Lei is exhausted, and she finds herself in an Islamic market. The store clerk offers her water and coffee, which she is extremely grateful for. She falls asleep on the curb outside of the market briefly, but she wakes up finding a police officer heading in her direction, so she continues her aimless walking.

Skinner walks to a liquor store and purchases a bottle of rum. He walks around while drinking the liquor, downing over half of the bottle in under five minutes before he blacks out. He finds himself walking back to the Murphy household. Once he arrives, he finds all his belongings in the trash can except his laptop and cell phone, which he assumes Jimmy decided to keep for their monetary value. Skinner finds his gun wrapped up in his poncho liner in the trash can, and he loads it and turns off the safety.

Skinner knocks on the door of the Murphy household, and Jimmy answers. Skinner demands that Jimmy give him his laptop back, and when Jimmy tries to close the door on him, Skinner points his gun at Jimmy. Jimmy runs away from Skinner, who fires his gun at him but misses. Jimmy runs upstairs to his bedroom and Skinner chases him, shooting his gun again. Skinner corners Jimmy in his room and forces him face down on the bed. Skinner accuses Jimmy of killing Zou Lei, which Jimmy vehemently denies, begging Skinner not to shoot him. Skinner kills Jimmy and leaves the house as Erin calls the police from outside. When the police arrive, a bystander points in the direction that Skinner runs.

The police enter the Murphy household to find Jimmy dead. The police question Mrs. Murphy, who was in her bedroom. She says that she did not see Skinner but knows it was he who killed Jimmy. The stress and grief of Jimmy’s death cause Mrs. Murphy to die, possibly of a heart attack, leaving a hysterical Erin alone; she is enraged that her father, Patrick, couldn’t even be home for the death of his wife or stepson.

Meanwhile, Skinner runs from the police. Trying to think of ways to escape the repercussions of his actions, he considers reenlisting in the army. As he runs, he begins to suffer hallucinations of the war; he sees dead people, gore, and violence. Skinner collapses in a tunnel, realizing that he has lost everything; he believes Zou Lie is dead and he no longer has a reason to live. Skinner dies by suicide in the tunnel.

Zou Lei continues to walk, having walked over 30 miles the night prior. She finds herself walking to the Murphys’ house, where she finds police tape and all of her and Skinner’s belongings on the curb next to the trash can. Zou Lei knocks on the Murphys’ door, and Erin answers it. Zou Lei asks about Skinner, and Erin asks her for her name and phone number so the police can question her. Erin tells Zou Lei she doesn’t know what happened to Skinner.

Zou Lei gets off a Greyhound bus in Phoenix, Arizona. At the Murphys’ she’d found her shoes with Skinner’s debit card hidden inside one of them. She’d remembered his PIN and begun slowly removing all the savings from his account. She took herself to the emergency room with her fake ID to have her feet treated by a doctor. After her feet had healed and she’d taken all the money from Skinner’s savings account, she bought a ticket to Phoenix.

In Phoenix, she worked at a Chinese restaurant where her boss was a racist white man who constantly threatened her job. She found herself always looking at men and wondering if they’d ever been to war or killed a person. At one of her jobs, where she cleaned horse stalls, she met a man from North Dakota who liked her and offered her a job; he hinted that he thinks the government should have no place in business and that Zou Lei would be safe from deportation working for him.

One Saturday evening, Zou Lei thinks about Skinner and all that he has done for her. She prays to him, talking to him about what she’s been doing and asking if she seems happy. Later, Zou Lei enters a gym to exercise and puts a large amount of weight on the bar of the squat rack. She thinks about Skinner’s advice to live in the moment and prepares to lift the rack as a bird watches over her.