Super Sad True Love Story (32 page)

A small remnant of our staff still haunted the offices, but their conversations were funereal and dense. No mention of pH levels or “SmartBlood” or “beta treatments.” The word “triglyceride” did not echo in the bathroom where we Post-Human Services men took our lengthy organic shits, straining to be free of whatever greenery tormented us. On the way up to Joshie’s, I stopped by Kelly Nardl’s desk. Empty. Gone. I reached instinctively for my äppärät to shoot her a message, but then realized all outside transmissions had ceased. Apropos of nothing, I felt scared for my parents again.

Two National Guardsmen stood outside Joshie’s office. The emergency feed of my äppärät must have alerted them to my importance, because they stepped aside and opened the door for me. There he was. Joshie. Budnik.
Papi chulo
. Under siege in his minimalist office as the young voices outside brayed for
his
SmartBlood. I made out the uncreative and juvenile “Hey, hey / Ho, ho, / Joshie Goldfuck’s gotta go,” and the much more hurtful “Our jobs are gone, / Our dream’s been sold, / But one day, jerk, / You will get old.” Joshie was wearing a gold yuan symbol around his neck, trying to look young, but his posture looked embattled, the skin of his earlobes sagged in a peculiar way, and a Nile delta of purple veins ran down the left side of his nose. When we hugged, the slight tremor of his hands beat against my back. “How’s Eunice?” he said immediately.

“She’s upset,” I said. “She thinks her sister may have been in Tompkins Park, for some reason. She can’t get in touch with her family in Jersey. There’s a checkpoint at the George Washington. They’re not letting anyone pass. And she’s angry with me. I mean, we’re actually not speaking to each other.”

“Good, good,” Joshie mumbled, staring out the window.

“What about you? How are you taking all this?”

“Minor setback,” he said.

“Minor setback? It’s the fall of the Roman Empire out there.”

“Don’t be dramatic, chipmunk,” Joshie said. “I’m going to pay off these young bucks with preferred stock, and when we’re back on our feet I’ll rehire them all.”

As he spoke, his energy returned, his earlobes actually tightened up and moved into position. “Hey, listen, Rhesus!” he said. “I bet this is going to be good for us in the long run. This is a controlled demise for the country, a planned bankruptcy. Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate everything but real estate. Rubenstein’s just a figurehead at this point. The Congress is just for show: ‘Look, we still have a Congress!’ Now more responsible parties are going to step in. All that stuff about Venezuelan and Chinese warships is all bunk. Nobody’s going to invade. But what
will
happen, and I got this from reliable sources, is that the International Monetary Fund will skedaddle from D.C., possibly to Singapore or Beijing, and then they’re going to make an IMF recovery plan for America, divide the country into concessions, and hand them over to the sovereign wealth funds. Norway, China, Saudi Arabia, all that jazz.”

“No more America?” I asked, not really caring about the answer. I just wanted to be safe.

“Fuck that. A
better
America. The Norsemen, the Chinese, they’re going to want returns on their investment. They’re going to want to clear out our trophy cities of all the riffraff with no Credit and make them real lifestyle hubs. And who’s going to profit from that? Staatling-Wapachung, that’s who. Property, security, and then us. Immortality. The Rupture’s created a whole new demand for not dying. I can see StatoilHydro, the Norwegians, getting together with Staatling. Maybe a merger! Yeah, that’s the way to do it. The Norwegians have euros and renminbi to burn.”

“What do you mean, get rid of all the riffraff with no Credit?”

“Relocate them.” He took an excited sip of green tea. “This town’s not for everyone. We have to be competitive. That means doing more with less. Balancing our ledgers.”

“A black man at my bank said it’s all Staatling-Wapachung’s fault,” I said, trying to tap into the liberal hierarchy of “a black man said.”

“What’s our fault?”

“I don’t know. We bombed the ferry. Three hundred dead. My friend Noah. Remember what you told me right before the Rupture. That Vishnu and Grace were going to be okay. But you said you didn’t know who Noah was.”

“What are you saying?” Joshie leaned in, elbows on his desk. “Are you accusing me of something?”

I kept quiet, played the role of the hurt son.

“Look, I’m sorry that your friend is dead,” Joshie went on. “All these deaths were tragic. The ferry, the parks. Obvi. But at the same time, who
were
all these Media people, what did they bring to the table?”

I coughed into my hand, a painful chill across my body, as if an iceberg had stabbed me in the anus.

I had never told Joshie that Noah was Media
.

“Spreading useless rumors. Secure Screening Facilities Upstate. Yeah, right. Rubenstein’s government couldn’t organize a clambake on a mussel shoal. Lenny, you know the score. You’re not dumb. We’re working on something important here. We’ve put so much into this place. You and I. And look at it now. It’s a real game-changer. Whoever’s in charge tomorrow, Norwegians, Chinese, they want what
we
got. This isn’t some stupid äppärät app. This is eternity. This is the
heart
of the creative economy.”

“Fuck the creative economy,” I said, without thinking. “There’s no food downtown.”

One instant. His hand. My cheek. The parameters of the world moving sixty degrees to the left and then buzzing into stillness. I felt my own hand rising to my face without knowing I had moved it.

He had slapped me.

I suppose the memory of the first paternal slap surfaced somewhere in the back pocket of my soul, Papa Abramov’s hand parting the air before it, the wide boxer stance of his feet as if he were going after a two-hundred-pound bruiser and not a nine-year-old kid, but for some reason all I could think about was that I would turn forty in November. In three months I would be a forty-year-old man who had just been slapped by his friend, his boss, his secondary father.

And then I was upon him. Across the desk, its sharp ridges slicing at my stomach, the scruff of his silky black T-shirt in both of my hands, his face, his humid, scared face thrust into mine, the gentle brownness of his eyes, the expressiveness, that funny Jewish face that could turn sad on a dime, everything we had done together, all those battle plans hatched over trays of safflower-oil-fried vegan samosas.

One hand let go of his T-shirt, a fist was cocked. I either did this or didn’t. I either chose this final path or put my fist down. But what did I have other than Joshie? Could he still pull this together after everything that had happened? Didn’t the Renaissance eventually follow the fall of Rome?

Could I really punch this man?

I had waited too long. Joshie was gently removing my remaining hand from his T-shirt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. Oh my God. I can’t believe I did that. It’s the stress. I’m stressed. My cortisol levels. Jesus. Trying to put on a brave face. But of course I’m scared too.”

I backed off. Moved to the edge of the room like a punished child, felt the alpha rays of Joshie’s fiberglass Buddha stroking my being. “Okay, okay,” Joshie was saying. “Go home for the day. Give my love to Eunice. Tell Joe Schechter outside I can take him back at half-pay, but Darryl is finished. Come back tomorrow. We’re got so much work ahead. I need you too, you know. Don’t look at me like that. Of course I need you.”

I stopped by the A-OK Pizza Shack, and cleared out the few things they had left, three precious pizzas and calzones warm to the touch, all for sixty yuan. As I stepped outside, the light hit me, the Noah light, the light that floods the city and leaves nothing but itself, the urban rapture. I closed my eyes, thinking that when I opened them the last week would simply fall away. Instead, what I saw was that abominable creature. That fucking
otter
, right in the middle of Grand Street, chewing on something in the asphalt. I grabbed a heavy calzone, ready to club my furry antagonist. But no, it wasn’t an otter. It was just someone’s escaped pet rabbit enjoying the new solitude, feasting on his street meal while spasmodically brushing back his ears with one paw, reminding me of Noah enjoying the fullness of his hair. The clouds came, and Noah’s urban light turned to shadow the density of slate. My friend was gone.

A pair of shoe-filled suitcases awaited me by the door, but Eunice herself was in neither the living room nor the bedroom. Was she finally moving out? I searched 700 of the 740 square feet that constituted my nest—nothing. Finally, I was clued in by the running water in the bathroom and, once I strained my hearing beyond the whir of a passing helicopter, the soft wailing of a broken woman.

I opened the door. She was shuddering and hiccupping, two bottles of spent Presidente beer by her feet and the remainder of a half-drained bottle of vodka. Do not give in to pity, I told myself. Hold the anger of the past week, hold it tight in your chest. Rise above the ritual humiliations. You’re the richest man in Chinatown. She has done nothing for you. You can do better. Let the world fall apart, there is more to be gained in solitude now. Untether yourself from this eighty-six-pound albatross. Remember how she wouldn’t comfort you after Noah had died.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to drink anything grain-based,” I told Eunice, nodding at the spent alcohol, the most I have ever seen her drink.

The “fuck you” I had expected didn’t come. Her shaking continued, steady as a dying animal thumping against the cheaply tiled bathroom floor. She was whispering in English and Korean. “
Appa
, why?” she beseeched her father. Or maybe it was merely her non-functioning äppärät. I never realized the similarity between the device that ruled our world and the Korean word for “father.” The T-shirt she was wearing, an ironic “Baghdad Tourist Authority” tee, was my own, and that strange connection—Eunice covered in my own garb—made me want to fold my own arms around her, made me want to feel myself on her. I picked her up—even the small weight of her pinched my prostate, but the rest of me felt blessed—and carried her to our bed, catching a whiff of her alcohol breath along with the strawberry integrity of her just-washed hair. She had washed for me. “I brought pizza,” I said. “And spinach calzones. That’s all that’s out there right now. Nothing organic.”

She was shuddering with such intensity that I grew worried from a medical standpoint. Her body, that
nothing
, shook in little round motions of spent energy. I touched her blazing forehead.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Have some Motrin. Eat a pizza. Drink water. Alcohol makes you dehydrated.”

“I know that,” she whispered in between shudders, and I hoped that maybe it was a sign of her displeasure returning. But she continued to quiver, her face a pale freckled mask twisted to the left as if by seizure. A child, just a child. “Len,” she spoke. Water pooled inside the dimple of her chin. “Lenny. I’m …” She was sorry. Just like Joshie. A decision was drawing upon me. A final one. My lips pursed to form the first words of a fateful sentence. I held them pursed for now. I suppose I could have started telling her about all the different ways in which she needed to change in order for us to be happy together, but it would be pointless. I had either to accept the girl cradled in my arms, or to spend the rest of my time searching for something else.

Her trembling increased, and she turned around in my grasp, letting me feel the heavy beating of her spine against my chest. I could see her bones draped within my T-shirt, and in her convulsions I made out the dynamic aspects of her skeleton. She wailed from a place so deep that I could only connect it with somewhere across the seas, and from a time when our nations were barely formed. For the first time since we’d met, I realized that Eunice Park, unlike others of her generation, was not completely ahistorical. I cradled the softness of her behind, her one concession to being a woman. It steadied her, my open-palmed touch. I moved down and popped off her TotalSurrenders. The taste was the same as always—not sweet like honey, as urban musicians may claim, but musky and thick and vaguely urinary. I put my mouth around her, and just lay there motionless, waiting for the tremors to subside, for sleep to come to both of us, forgetting the pizza-hunger gnawing at my center. I was thinking about the word “truth.” Whatever else could be said of Eunice Park, she was perfectly true.

DATING TIPS

FROM THE GLOBALTEENS ACCOUNT OF EUNICE PARK

AUGUST 4

EUNI-TARD
TO
AZIZARMY-INFO:

David, are you there? Oh my god! I saw the last Media streams. You were bleeding. Your face. And your arm. My poor David. I almost passed out. I tried to get to Tompkins Square, I swear I did, but I just couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me through. Are you okay? WAS MY SISTER IN THE PARK WITH YOU??? I know she goes on the weekends sometimes. Please get back to me as soon as you can. I still believe in you. I still think of what you taught me about my life and about my father, your Object Lessons and your Observations. You were right about everything. I’m not going to give in to High Net Worth thinking. I’m going to do things to make you proud. I’m a fighter and I’m never going to stop fighting. David, talk to me!

Love, Eunice

GLOBALTEENS AUTOMATIC ERROR MESSAGE 01121111:

We are SO TOTTALY sorry for the inconvenience. We are experiencing connectivity issues in the following location: NEW YORK, NY, U.S.A. Please be patient and the problem should resolve itself like whenever.

Free GlobalTeens Dating Tip: Guys love it when you laugh at their jokes. But nothings less sexy than when you try to outdo them by being a laff-hog yourself! When he makes a joke, smile so that he can see your teeth and how much you “want” him, then say, “You’re so funny!” You’ll be sucking crotch in no time, betch.

EUNI-TARD
TO
GRILLBITCH:

Pony, are you there? What’s going on? I’ve been trying to verbal you for a week, my äppärät can’t connect on TALK or STREAM, all I get is some error message which is freaking me out. Write me back. I miss you. I’m worried about you. I miss you SO much. What’s happening over there? Was there shooting in Hermosa too? What happened to your dad’s factory? Write to me NOW! I’m worried, Jenny Kang. Talk to me, sweet Precious Pony. All I’m doing now is crying. I don’t know what’s happening with my family. I don’t know what happened to my friend David. I think Lenny doesn’t want me anymore. I think we’ve totally broken up, only he can’t send me packing because of the situation. Please write or TALK me back. I don’t want to be alone and I’m scared. You’re my best friend.

GLOBALTEENS AUTOMATIC ERROR MESSAGE 01121111:

We are SO TOTTALY sorry for the inconvenience. We are experiencing connectivity issues in the following location: HERMOSA BEACH, CA, U.S.A. Please be patient and the problem should resolve itself like whenever.

Free GlobalTeens Dating Tip: Don’t ever fold your arms in front of your date. That says that you don’t fully agree with what he’s saying or maybe you’re not into his data. Instead put your hands out in front of you, palms open, like you want to be cupping his balls! Get a degree in Body Language, girlfriend, and you’ll be giving head to the class.

EUNI-TARD
TO
CHUNG.WON.PARK:

Mom! Hello there. Mom, I’m worried. I tried to verbal you and Sally, but I can’t connect. I just wanted you to know that I’m fine. They weren’t ever shooting our building which is Jewish. I need you right now, Mom. I know you’re still mad at me because of Lenny, but I need to know that you’re all right. Just tell me you and Dad and Sally are all right.

GLOBALTEENS AUTOMATIC ERROR MESSAGE 01121111:

We are SO TOTTALY sorry for the inconvenience. We are experiencing connectivity issues in the following location: FORT LEE, NJ, U.S.A. Please be patient and the problem should resolve itself like soon.