Super Sad True Love Story (27 page)

The way they have it set up is pretty amazing. It’s a tiny little park, but like every little bit of it is used for a purpose. Where there used to be a dog run all these ADORABLE and SURPRISINGLY CLEAN-LOOKING kids play soccer with an old basketball. I guess I should get them a real soccer ball at Paragon. There’s recycling of all foods from garbage cans which is kind of gross, but basically people like Lenny throw out so much stuff that David said you can get like ten meals out of the typical dinner wasted by a Credit guy from the East Village. They’re so organized here, it kind of reminds me of my family growing up. Everyone’s assigned a role, no matter how young or old, and everyone has to do their part, even the snobby Credit and Media guys who lost their jobs and now live in the park. And if you don’t do what you’re told, tough luck, you’re out.

It kind of made me miss helping out at that shelter for trafficked Albanian women in Rome. Lenny says he’s proud of me for doing that, but then he always calls them ALGERIANS or AFRICANS instead of Albanians, like that sounds cooler. But David immediately knew what I was talking about. It’s interesting how people who have been through a lot, they have this kind of childlike look on their face.

Anyway, David said I didn’t need to take any more Assertiveness classes like I was planning to at Columbia, but I should just get busy and help out at the park. I said yes, but I kind of don’t want to run into my sister up there, I don’t know why. It’s like being a saint is HER territory and I just want her to think of me as the protector of our family.

There’s so much to do, it makes me dizzy. They got rid of most of the rodents, but Healthcare is the biggest problem, so in different corners of the park there’s tents with signs saying “DIPHTHERIA” (TO-tally contagious), “TYPHOID” (red spots on the chest, eww), “PELLAGRA” (note to self: have to get vitamin B3 from Lenny), “ASTHMA” (get Lenny’s old inhalers, some of them still have juice), “DEHYDRATION” (more bottled water ASAP), “CLOTHES WASHING AND SANITATION” (that’s where I’m going to help out next week), “MALNUTRITION.” Malnutrition is mostly pigeon peas and rice, because they’re cheap and so many people here are Caribbean, but they’re looking for donations of anything. They even have a GlobalTeens account under “aziz army” if you want to donate some ¥.

Maybe I should get my dad to come out and help them a little, cause he’s an M.D.? When I was in high school I tried to help out at his office but he just said I was worthless even though I tried so hard and put all his charts on a computer because nobody can read his handwriting and I even cleaned the bathroom in the office top to bottom because my mother gets so distracted she misses corners.

You know, Lenny’s so kind to me that sometimes I forget to keep my guard up and talk to him like a friend, but you’re still my one and only bestest truest friend, Pony. And yet I’m so in love with him. Ugh. I said it. Sometimes I can spend half an hour in the morning just watching him sleeping, and I’ll put my arm around him and draw him close to me and he looks so peaceful and darling, his little hairy chest going up and down
like a puppy’s. Oy vey. I hope you don’t think I take you for granted, Precious P. I think about you all the time and you’re still a MAJOR part of my life. Oh, and I saw the pics of that Mexican ho Gopher’s been fucking and she has a totally broke-ass face! Pone, you are so super-pretty by comparison! Don’t let that dicklick invalidate who you are. He’s just trying to get to you because he knows you’re out of his league. Okay, got to go and clean the bathtub because my super-smart boyfriend doesn’t know how to. Talk to you later, sticky bun.

GRILLBITCH
TO
EUNI-TARD:

Panda, I’m off to Juicy for a vag rejuv, but what the hell is “acerbic wit”? I tried to look it up on Teens but all I got was “aerobic whip.” Is that the same? Remember what Prof Margaux told us, beware of guys who try to sound too smart.

P.S. I looked up your Amy Greenberg and she COULD use to lose another twenty pounds, although she gets points for being old.

P.S.S. Are you going to stream American Spender tonight? Remember that girl with the herpes sty in her eye in bio Kelli Nozares? She is totally going to be on it and she’s got all kinds of Credit I hear because ALL THREE of her brothers are Debt Bombers. If she wins I am seriously going to strangle somebody.

P.S.S.S. If things get dangerous there, maybe you SHOULD move out to CA. I see poor people hanging out in tents on the medians but it’s not so bad still. Except my dad’s business is doing really bad even though toilet plungers are supposed to be depression-proof, but I walked into my mom’s bathroom and I caught her sitting on the floor crying with all her like twenty-year-old Golf Digests just lying all around. Oh God. Maybe I should move out of the house, huh? But then this is probably when they need me the most, and it’s not like my brother’s going to do anything. It’s always on the girls to keep the family going. We’re like the sacraficial lamps.

I’ll thresh you later, Panda-ga-tor.

AZIZARMY-INFO
TO
EUNI-TARD:

Hi, Eunice. David here. Listen, it’s the Fourth of July in two days and Cameron at Morale, Welfare & Recreation says we need 120 units of Hebrew
National hot dog and also 120 hot dog buns, 90 cans of root beer (any brand), 50 units of AfterBite Original for the mosquitoes, and 20 units of Clinique Skin Supplies for Men M Protect, SPF 21. Can you bring all that over pronto?

Thought about our conversation re: parents and siblings. This is what I realized when I was an undergrad at UT and after I was in the Guard downrange in the Venezuelan swamplands eating grilled capybara with my troops and taking Bolívar flak 24/7: No matter what social arrangement we’re in, we’re always an army. You’re an army and your father’s an army, and you love each other, but you have to go to war in order to be something like a father and daughter.

OBJECT LESSON: My dad died about eighty klicks north of Karachi. He was a gunner and those are always the toughest assholes. But in the very last message I got right before they ambushed his ass he basically said, David, you are a dreamer and a disgrace and you’ll never get your shit together, and I’ll always fight everything you believe in, but I’ll also never love anyone more than you, so if anything happens to me just keep going the way you are.

I think that’s where we went wrong as a country. We were afraid to really fight each other, and so we devolved into this Bipartisan thing and this ARA thing. When we lost touch with how much we really hate each other, we also lost the responsibility for our common future. I think when the dust settles and the Bipartisans are history that’s how we’re going to live, as small units who don’t agree. I don’t know what we’ll call it, political parties, military councils, city-states, but that’s how it’s going to be and we’re not going to screw it up this time. It’ll be like 1776 all over again. Act Two for America. Okay, Eunice, I’m off for the night. Don’t forget the supplies for the Fourth.

Yours,

David

THE SINNERS’ CRUSADE

JULY 7

Dear Diary,

I hate the Fourth of July. The early middle age of summer. Everything is alive and kicking for now, but the eventual decline into fall has already set itself in motion. Some of the lesser shrubs and bushes, seared by the heat, are starting to resemble a bad peroxide job. The heat reaches a blazing peak, but summer is lying to itself, burning out like some alcoholic genius. And you start to wonder—what have I done with June? The poorest of the lot—the Vladeck House project dwellers who live beneath my co-op—seem to take summer in stride; they groan and sweat, drink the wrong kind of lager, make love, the squat children completing mad circles around them by foot or mountain bike. But for the more competitive of New Yorkers, even for me, the summer is there to be slurped up. We know summer is the height of being alive. We don’t believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we’re only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better than the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo’s Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What if you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana?

Frankly, these days, knowing that immortality is further away
from me than ever (the 239,000 is gone; only ¥1,615,000 to my name at last count), I prefer the wintertime, when all is dead around me, and nothing buds, and the truth of eternity, so cold and dark, is revealed to the unfortunate acolytes of reality. And most of all I hate this particular summer, which has already left a hundred corpses in the park.

“An unstable, barely governable country presenting grave risk to the international system of corporate governance and exchange mechanisms” is what Central Banker Li called us when his ass had landed safely in Beijing. We had been humiliated in front of the world. The Fourth of July fireworks were canceled. The parade to crown the “American Spender” winner put on hold because a section of Broadway near City Hall had buckled in the heat. The remaining streets were empty, the citizenry prudently staying home, the F running at one train per hour (not that different from its normal schedule, I must say). The only changes noticeable are the new ARA signs drooping off some of the Credit Poles featuring a tiger pawing at a miniature globe and the words “America is back! Grrrr … Don’t write us of [sic]. Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now! Together We’ll Surprise the World!”

Tuesday morning, after the long weekend, Post-Human Services sent a Hyundai Town Car to pick me up for work. It took forever to get up to the Upper East Side. Almost every block going up First Avenue was a barbed-wire-strewn checkpoint. Bleary-eyed, overworked Guardsmen with those thick Alabamississippi accents would pull us over, search the vehicle from engine to trunk, play with my data, humiliate the Dominican driver by making him sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” (I myself don’t know the words; who does?) and then making him parade in front of a Credit Pole. “Soon the time’ll come, grasshopper,” one of the soldiers brayed at the driver, “for us to send your
chulo
ass home.”

At the office, Kelly Nardl was crying over the riots, while the young folk in the Eternity Lounge were deep into their äppäräti, teeth grinding, sneaker-clad feet crossed, unsure of how to interpret all the new information pouring over them like warm summer pop,
everyone awaiting Joshie’s cue. The Guard had cleared a part of the park and let in Media. I was watching Noah’s stream as he ambled up and down Cedar Hill, past the remnants of tarps and somber, amoeba-shaped pools of real-time blood on the tired grass, which made Kelly whimper all over her tempeh-covered desk. She was a touchstone of honest emotion, our Kelly. I took my turn petting her head and inhaling her. One day, if our race is to survive, we will have to figure out how to download her goodness and install it in our children. In the meantime, my mood indicators on The Boards went from “meek but cooperative” to “playful/cuddly/likes to learn new things.”

Joshie had called a full organizational meeting, Cowboys and Indians. We walked to the Indians’ auditorium on York Avenue, significantly larger than our synagogue’s main sanctuary, Joshie leading us past the checkpoints with one hand raised up in the air, like a schoolteacher on a field trip. “Pointless loss of life,” he said once installed at the dais, sipping eloquently from his thermos of unsweetened green tea, as we regarded him multiculturally from our plush reclining seats. “Loss of prestige for the country. Loss of tourist yuan. Loss of face for our leadership, as if they had any face to lose. And for what? Nothing has been achieved in Central Park. When will the Bipartisans realize that killing Low Net Worth Individuals will not reverse this country’s trade deficit or cure our balance-of-payment problems?”

“Truth to power,” Howard Shu brown-nosed behind him, but the rest of us remained quiet, perhaps too shocked by the latest turn of history to find succor even in Joshie’s words. Nonetheless, I smiled timidly and waved, hoping he would notice me.