Super Sad True Love Story (3 page)

I had almost failed to notice the young woman in front of him, a small Korean (I’ve dated two previously, both delightfully insane), with her hair up in a provocative bun so that she resembled vaguely a very young Asian Audrey Hepburn. She had full shiny lips and a lovely if incongruous splash of freckles across her nose, and could not have weighed more than eighty pounds, a compactness which made me tremble with bad thoughts. I wondered, for example, if her mother, probably a tiny, immaculate woman humming with immigrant anxiety and bad religion, knew that her little girl was no longer a virgin.

“Oh, it’s Lenny,” the American sculptor said when I came around to shake his hand. He was a High Net Worth Individual, if barely, and I had tried to court him on several occasions. The young Korean woman glanced at me with what I took to be serious lack of interest (her default position seemed to be a scowl), her hands clenched tightly before her. I thought I had blundered onto a new couple and was about to make my apologies, but the American was already starting to introduce us. “The lovely Eunice Kim from Fort Lee, New Jersey, via Elderbird College, Mass.,” he said in the brawling Brooklyn accent he thought was charmingly authentic. “Euny’s an art-history student.”

“Eunice
Park
,” she corrected him. “I don’t really study art history. I’m not even a college student anymore.”

I was pleased by her humility, acquiring a steady, throbbing erection.

“This is Lenny Abraham. He helps old stockbrokers live a little longer.”

“It’s Abramov,” I said, with a subservient bow to the young lady. I noticed the glass of inky Sicilian red in my hand and drank it in one go. All of a sudden I was sweating all over my freshly laundered shirt and ugly loafers. I took out my äppärät, flicked it open in a gesture that was
au courant
maybe a decade ago, held it stupidly in front of me, put it back in my shirt pocket, then reached for a nearby bottle and refilled my glass. It was incumbent upon me to say something impressive about myself. “I do nanotechnology and stuff.”

“Like a scientist?” Eunice Park asked.

“More like a salesman,” the American sculptor rumbled. He was notoriously competitive over women. At the last party, he had championed over a young Milanese animator to get a blow job from Fabrizia’s nineteen-year-old cousin. In Rome this passed for breaking news.

The sculptor made a half-turn toward Eunice, partly obscuring me with one thick shoulder. I took that as my sign to leave, but whenever I began to do so, she would glance my way, casually tossing me a lifeline. Maybe she was scared of the sculptor herself, worried she would end up on her knees in a dimly lit room.

I drank heavily, eyeing the sculptor’s broad attempts to impress the thoroughly unimpressible Eunice Park. “So I says to her, ‘
Contessa
, you can stay in my beach house in Puglia until you get back on your feet.’ I don’t have time for the beach anyway. They want me to take up a commission in Shanghai. Six million yuan for two pieces. That’s what—fifty million dollars? I says to her, ‘Don’t cry,
contessa
, you sly old bird. I’ve been down to nothing myself. Not a
centavo
to my name. Practically grew up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. First thing I remember was a sock to the face. Bam!’”

I felt sad for the sculptor, and not just because I doubted his chances with Eunice Park, but because I realized he would soon be dead. From an ex-lover of his I had learned that his advanced diabetes had almost cost him two toes, and the heavy cocaine use was maxing out his aging circulatory system. In the business we called him an ITP, Impossible to Preserve, the vital signs too far gone for current interventions, the psychological indicators showing an “extreme willingness/desire to perish.” Even more despairing was his financial status. I’m quoting directly from my report to boss man Joshie: “Income yearly $2.24 million, pegged to the yuan; obligations, including alimony and child support, $3.12 million; investible assets (excluding real estate)—northern euro 22,000,000; real estate $5.4 million, pegged to the yuan; total debts outstanding $12.9 million, unpegged.” A mess, in other words.

Why was he doing this to himself? Why not keep off the drugs and the demanding young women, spend a decade in Corfu or Chiang Mai, douse his body with alkalines and smart technology, clamp down on the free radicals, keep the mind focused on the work, beef up the stock portfolio, take the tire off the belly, let us fix that aging bulldog’s mug? What kept the sculptor here, in a city useful only as a reference to the past, preying on the young, gorging on thick-haired pussy and platefuls of carbs, swimming with the prevailing current toward his own nullification? Beyond that ugly body, those rotting teeth, that curdled breath, was a visionary and a creator, whose heavy-handed work I sometimes admired.

As I buried the sculptor, marching behind the pallbearers, comforting his beautiful ex-wife and cherubic twin sons, my eyes watched Eunice Park, young, stoic, and flat, nodding along to the sculptor’s self-serving remarks. I wanted to reach over and touch her empty chest, feel the tough little nipples that I imagined proclaimed her love. I noticed that her sharp nose and little arms were lightly coated with moisture and that she was matching me in the drinking department, plucking off wineglasses from passing trays, her tightly wound mouth turning purple. She wore fancy jeans, a gray cashmere sweater, and a string of pearls which lent her at least ten years of age. The only youthful part of her was a sleek white pendant—a pebble almost—which looked like some kind of miniaturized new äppärät. In certain wealthy precincts of trans-Atlantic society, the differences between young and old were steadily eroding, and in other precincts the young were mostly going naked, but what was Eunice Park’s story? Was she trying to be older or richer or whiter? Why do attractive people have to be anything but themselves?

When I next looked up, the sculptor had placed his heavy paw on her negligible shoulder and was squeezing hard. “Chinese women are so delicate,” he said.

“I’m not that delicate.”

“Yes, you are!”

“I’m not Chinese.”

“Anyway, Bobby D. and Dick Gere were fighting at a party. Dick came to me and said, ‘Why does Bobby hate me so much?’ Wait. What was I saying? Do you need another drink? Oh! You made the right choice coming to Rome, kitten. New York is finished these days. America is history. And with those fuckers in charge now, I’m never going back. Fucking Rubenstein. Fucking Bipartisan Party. It’s
1984
, baby. Not that you would get the reference. Maybe our bookish friend Lenny here could enlighten us. You’re so lucky to be here with me, Euny. Do you want to kiss me?”

“No,” Eunice Park said. “No, thank you.”

No, thank you
. A nice Korean girl, graduate of Elderbird College, Mass. How I longed to kiss those full lips myself and cradle the slightness of the rest of her.

“Why not?” the sculptor shouted. And then, because he had long lost the ability to gauge short-term consequences, he shook her by the shoulder, a drunken shake, but one that her tiny body looked ill-equipped to handle. Eunice looked up, and in her eyes I saw the familiar anger of an adult suddenly dragged back into childhood. She pressed one hand to her stomach, as if she had been punched, and looked down. Red wine had spilled on her expensive sweater. She turned to me, and I saw embarrassment, not for the sculptor, but for herself.

“Let’s take it easy,” I said, putting my hand on the sculptor’s taut, moist neck. “Let’s maybe sit down on the couch and have some water.” Eunice was rubbing her shoulder and backing away from us. She looked as if she was expertly holding back the tears.

“Fuck off, Lenny,” the sculptor said, giving me a little shove. His hands were undeniably strong. “Go peddle your fountain of youth.”

“Find a couch and chillax,” I instructed the sculptor. I moved over to Eunice and put my arm within the vicinity of her, but not directly upon her. “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “He gets drunk.”

“Yeah, I
gets
drunk!” the sculptor shouted. “And I may even be a little bit tipsy right now. But in the morning I’ll be making art. And what are you going to be doing,
Leonard
? Pushing green tea and cloned livers to geezer Bipartisans? Typing in a diary? Let me guess. ‘My uncle abused me. I was addicted to heroin for three seconds.’ Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won’t matter. Mediocrities like you
deserve
immortality. Don’t trust this guy, Eunice. He’s not like us. He’s a real American. A real sharpie. He’s the reason we’re in Venezuela right now. He’s why people are afraid to say ‘boo’ in the States. He’s no better than Rubenstein. Look at those dark, lying Ashkenazi eyes. Kissinger the Second.”

A crowd had started to gather around us. Watching the famous sculptor “act out” was a great source of entertainment for the Romans, and the words “Venezuela” and “Rubenstein,” spoken with slow, accusatory relish, could arouse even a coma-bound European. I could hear Fabrizia’s voice announcing itself from the living room. As gently as possible, I prodded the Korean toward the kitchen, which led to the servants’ quarters, which enjoyed a separate entrance to the apartment.

In the half-light of a bare bulb, I saw the Ukrainian nanny petting the sweet, dark head of Fabrizia’s boy, as she maneuvered an inhaler into his mouth. The child registered our intrusion with little surprise, the nanny began to say “
Che cosa?
,” but we trooped right past her and the small tidy stash of clothes and cheap mementos (a cooking apron depicting Michelangelo’s David astride the Coliseum) that made up her immediate possessions. As Eunice and I clambered down the noisy marble stairs, we heard Fabrizia and others give chase, summoning the wire-mesh enclosure of the elevator to their high floor, eager to catch up with us and hear what had happened, how the sculptor’s considerable drunken anger had been stirred. “Lenny, come back,” Fabrizia was shouting. “
Dobbiamo scopare ancora una volta
. We have to fuck still. One last time.”

Fabrizia. The softest woman I had ever touched. But maybe I no longer
needed
softness. Fabrizia. Her body conquered by small armies of hair, her curves fixed by carbohydrates, nothing but the Old World and its dying nonelectronic corporeality. And in front of me, Eunice Park. A nano-sized woman who had likely never known the tickle of her own pubic hair, who lacked both breast and scent, who existed as easily on an äppärät screen as on the street before me.

Outside, the southern moon, pregnant and satisfied, roosted atop the outreached palm trees of Piazza Vittorio. The usual immigrant gaggle were sleeping off a long day of manual labor or tucking in their mistresses’ children. The only pedestrians were stylish Italians staggering back from dinner, the only sounds the hum of their bitter conversations and the hissing electric rattle of the old tramcar that surveyed the piazza’s northeastern side.

Eunice Park and I marched ahead. She marched, I hopped, unable to cover up the joy of having escaped the party with her by my side. I wanted Eunice to thank me for saving her from the sculptor and his stench of death. I wanted her to get to know me and then to repudiate all the terrible things he had said about my person, my supposed greed, my boundless ambition, my lack of talent, my fictive membership in the Bipartisan Party, and my designs on Caracas. I wanted to tell her that I myself was in danger, that the American Restoration Authority otter had singled me out for sedition, and all because I had slept with one middle-aged Italian woman.

I eyed Eunice’s ruined sweater and the obscenely fresh body that lived and sweated and, I hoped, yearned beneath it. “I know of a good dry cleaner that can fix red-wine stains,” I said. “There’s this Nigerian up the block.” I stressed “Nigerian” to underline my open-mindedness. Lenny Abramov, friend to all.

“I volunteer at a refugee shelter near the train station,” Eunice said, apropos of something.

“You do? That’s so
fantastic
!”

“You’re such a nerd.” She laughed cruelly at me.

“What?” I said. “I’m sorry.” I laughed too, just in case it was a joke, but right away I felt hurt.

“LPT,” she said. “TIMATOV. ROFLAARP. PRGV. Totally PRGV.”

The youth and their abbreviations. I pretended like I knew what she was talking about. “Right,” I said. “IMF. PLO. ESL.”

She looked at me like I was insane. “JBF,” she said.

“Who’s that?” I pictured a tall Protestant man.

“It means I’m ‘just butt-fucking’ with you. Just kidding, you know.”

“Duh,” I said. “I knew that. Seriously. What makes me a nerd in your estimation?”

“‘In your estimation,’” she mimicked. “Who says things like that? And who wears those shoes? You look like a bookkeeper.”

“I’m sensing a bit of anger here,” I said. What had happened to that sweet, hurt Korean girl of three minutes ago? For some reason I puffed out my chest and stood up on my toes, even though I had a good half a foot on her.

She touched the cuff of my shirt, and then looked at it more carefully. “This isn’t buttoned right,” she said. And before I could say anything, she rebuttoned my cuff and pulled on the shirtsleeve to make it less bunched up around the shoulder and upper arm. “There,” she said. “You look a little better now.”

I didn’t know what to say or do. When dealing with people my own age, I know precisely who I am. Not physically attractive, but at least well educated, decently paid, working at the frontiers of science and technology (even though I have the same finesse with my äppärät as my aged immigrant parents). On Planet Eunice Park, these attributes clearly did not matter. I was some kind of ancient dork. “Thanks,” I said. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She smiled at me, and I noticed that she had the kind of dimples that not merely puncture the face but easily fill it with warmth and personality (and, in the case of Eunice, take away some of her anger). “I’m hungry,” she said.

I must have looked like the befuddled Rubenstein at his press conference after our troops got routed at Ciudad Bolívar. “What?” I said. “Hungry? Isn’t it a little too late?”