Super Sad True Love Story (42 page)

Eunice’s gaze had weakened, and the light had gone out of her
eyes, those twin black orbs usually charged with an irrepressible mandate of anger and desire.

“Are you following all this?” I said. “Maybe we should stop.”

“I’m listening,” she half-whispered.

“But are you
understanding
?” I said.

“I’ve never really learned how to read texts,” she said. “Just to scan them for info.”

I let out a small, stupid laugh.

She started to cry.

“Oh, baby,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. Oh, baby.”

“Lenny,” she said.

“Even I’m having trouble following this. It’s not just you. Reading is difficult. People just aren’t meant to read anymore. We’re in a post-literate age. You know, a
visual
age. How many years after the fall of Rome did it take for a Dante to appear? Many, many years.”

I blubbered on like this for a few minutes. She went to the living room. Alone, I threw
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
across the room. I wanted to tear it to pieces. I touched my chin, still wet with her. I wanted to run out of the apartment, into the impoverished Manhattan night. I missed my parents. In times of trouble, the weak seek the strong.

In the living room, Eunice had opened up her äppärät and was concentrating on the last shopping page stored in its memory before communications collapsed. I could see she had instinctively opened a LandOLakes Credit Payment stream, but every time she tried to input her account info, she ended up throwing her head back as if stung. “I can’t buy anything,” she said.

“Eunice,” I said. “You don’t have to buy anything. Go to bed. We don’t have to read anymore. We don’t have to ever read again. I promise. How can we read when people need our help? It’s a luxury. A stupid luxury.”

When the morning light was at full blast, Eunice finally curled up next to me, covered in sweat, defeated. We ignored the morning and we ignored the day. We ignored the following day as well. But when I woke up on the third day, the heat raking its way through the
opened window, she was gone. I ran into the living room; no Eunice. I ran to the lobby. I asked the loitering old people about her whereabouts. I could feel my heart stopping and the blood draining from my feet and hands.

When she finally showed up, twenty hours later (“I went for a walk. I needed to get out of here. It’s not
that
dangerous, Lenny. I’m sorry if you were worried”), I found myself on my knees in my usual position, begging her to forgive me for some ill-defined sin, praying for her real smile and her companionship, pleading for her never to leave me again.

Aican, aican, aican.

OH MY GOD, I’M SUCH A BAD GIRLFRIEND

SEPTEMBER 10

WAPACHUNG CONTINGENCY EMERGENCY MESSAGE:

Sender: Joshie Goldmann, Post-Human Services, Administrative

Recipient: Eunice Park

Hello there, my darling Ms. Eunice. How’s tricks? Okay, I’ve got to admit, I can’t stop thinking about our little time together last week. I am so totally HOOKED on you. Those twenty-four hours we spent drawing with Monsieur Cohen (ho ho ho, color theory, here we come!), rifling through what’s left of Barneys, oysters at the Staatling canteen, a little, um, fun in bed, and then doing those stretches together, holy moly, that was like the perfect date. You were so cute when you walked into my apartment. I can’t believe how your hands were shaking. I’m still picking up the glass shards off the floor (how did you manage to break TWO glasses?), but that’s okay, because it just shows how real you are. Thank you, Eunice, for making me feel FINE and limber and ready to hit the ground running. And thanks for picking out all those clothes. You’re right, there was something a little hippie-ish about the way I used to dress, and my mustache HAD to go. Over and done with. My only prob is that I miss you sooo much already. Can we do this again soon? Can we do this again like permanently? I can’t seriously see my life go on without the little patter of your feet by my bedside. And I’ve got a lot of living to do, ha ha.

Well, it IS a big relief to know that your parents and sis are alive and doing as well as anyone else under the circumstances. I’ve passed on the relocation request to Headquarters, but the problem is that, even if they do get your family out of Ft. Lee, where are we going to put them? We’re
working out future arrangements with the IMF and I think the idea is to rebuild New York as a kind of “Lifestyle Hub” where wealthy people can do their thang, spend their money, live forever, blah blah blabbity BLAH. So every inch of space is going to be accounted for, and the prices are going to be absolutely PREMIUM. And the rest of the country’s going to be carved up between a bunch of foreign sovereign wealth funds, with Wapachung Contingency taking over what’s left of the National Guards and the army and doing security support (yay for us!). I’m not sure if the Chinese are going to be “in charge” of New Jersey, or if that’s going to go to Norway or to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, but in either case I’m sure things are going to be a lot better and safer than they are now. Tho maybe your sis can learn to wear a burka. Totally kidding. It’s not going to be like that. They just want returns on investment.

Sigh. I miss you. I miss the very SCENT of you. I miss your sweet smiling face and your tight embrace. God, listen to me. Anyway, I might send Lenny on a weekend trip to visit his parents on Long Island (don’t tell him yet, but according to Wap Contingency they survived), which means more quality time for us!!! Mwah! as you like to say. Mwah, my dear, dear Eunice, my brave young love. Isn’t it exciting to be ALIVE these days?

WAPACHUNG CONTINGENCY EMERGENCY MESSAGE:

Sender: Eunice Park

Recipient: Joshie Goldmann, Post-Human Services, Administrative

Joshua,

I got your message. Thanks. Yes, Monsieur Cohen is very interesting. Is he gay, or just French? I’m sorry if I seem to be holding us back in class, I’m such a perfectionist and I really don’t think I’m very good. And if I’m as good as you and M. Cohen say then it’s just a fluke and I’ll come shattering back down to earth pretty soon, you can bet your bottom yuan. My father always said my hands were too weak to be an artist anyway.

I know we spent some good times together and I will remember those hours, but I also feel like a very bad girlfriend to Lenny. And that’s what I
am, I’m Lenny’s girlfriend and I love him, and I’m really not able to explore anything more than friendship with you right now.

Thanks for finding out about my parents and sister. I miss my family very much and I wish there was some way to get them to Manhattan or even back to Korea. That’s what I’m concentrating on right now. I’ve been reading some of the old messages from my friend Jenny Kang, the one who disappeared and who you can’t seem to be able to find in Hermosa Beach, and one of the last things she wrote me was “I’m sorry I’m a bad friend and can’t help you with your problems right now. You have to be strong and do whatever you have to do for your family.” See, you don’t have a family. And you never really wanted one from what I can gather. But throughout this whole Rupture thing I guess that’s what I found out about myself, that my family matters the most to me and it always will.

Yours,

Eunice

WAPACHUNG CONTINGENCY EMERGENCY MESSAGE:

Sender: Joshie Goldmann, Post-Human Services, Administrative

Recipient: Eunice Park

I have to say I was a little hurt by your last message. If you didn’t want to pursue a relationship, then why did you go home with me? I think you don’t fully comprehend how I feel about you, Eunice. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it, and I think I’ve sort of come to some conclusions. You’re very beautiful, but that doesn’t really matter to me in the long run. Everything about you is so perfect, so squared away (from the way you dress to the minimum amount of words you use to express yourself), but that doesn’t matter either. What matters to me is that I KNOW you are capable of love, that you cannot hide forever from the truth of being a full emotional human being with a need to connect, with a need to be with someone who can understand you and where you come from, respect you, and take care of you. And that’s what I want to do, Eunice, to take care of you, forever and ever. I want to help you become a full-fledged artist, even if that means you have to spend time away from me, studying Art & Finance at HSBC-Goldsmiths in London. I want to get you a job in Retail, if that’s what you want, once New York becomes a full Lifestyle
Hub and we start to get back on our feet. And yes, I want to help your family to resettle in the city, but please just give me some time to see what I can do. The situation is still very fluid.

You say Lenny is your boyfriend. I’ve known Lenny since he was a young adult like you. He’s not a bad person, but he’s also very conflicted, impotent, and depressive. Those are not the qualities you want to look for in a serious partner, not today, not with the world in the shape it’s in. I want you to consider all these things, Eunice, and to know that, whatever you decide, I will always love you.

Joshie (never Joshua) G.

P.S. Just a heads-up, but there is going to be some activity in your area in a month or so, what the ARA used to call “Harm Reduction,” in the Vladeck Houses. Nothing I have any control over, believe me, but there might be violence. I want you and Lenny to be safe. I’m thinking maybe that’s when I’ll send him to Long Island to see his folks and you and I can have a slumber party.

DEAF CHILD AREA

OCTOBER 12

Dear Diary,

Please forgive another month-long absence, but today I have to write in you with the greatest of news. My parents are alive. I found out five days ago, at 5:54 p.m. EST, the precise time Telenor, the Norwegian telecommunications giant, restored our communications and our äppäräti started whirring with data, prices, Images, and calumny; 5:54 p.m. EST, a time no one of my generation will ever forget. My parents’ voices filled my ears immediately, the baritone insanity of my father’s happy booms, the titter and laughter of my mother as they shouted: “
Malen’kii, malen’kii! Zhiv, zdorov? Zhiv, zdorov!
” (“Little one, little one! Alive and well? Alive and well!”). I hollered in such a way (
“Urá!”
) that Eunice became scared. She moved to the bathroom, where I could hear her verballing into her äppärät in a monotone English mixed together with an endless procession of passionate Korean honks directed at her mother: “
Neh, neh, umma, neh
.” And so the two of us celebrated with our parents, reconnected to them so strongly that when Eunice came into the bedroom and we faced each other, there was almost nothing to say in our common tongue. We found ourselves laughing at our stunned, merry silence, me wiping my tears, her with her hands pressed to the hardness of her chest.