Super Sad True Love Story (35 page)

It’s weird but I almost thought that maybe this could be my family, without mom or Sally. Maybe I should have been born a guy, huh? I know you don’t like David and the whole Aziz’s Army, but after they finished, my dad told me he thought David was really smart and that it was a shame what this country was doing to men like him, sending him to Venezuela and then not giving him his bonus or Healthcare.

I have to say I think in some ways my dad has more in common with David than with Lenny. It’s like because our dads grew up in Korea after the war they know what it’s like to not have anything and how to survive off their smarts. Anyway, I was really worried Dad would bring up Lenny, and at one point I thought he was about to, because we were all alone and he really changes when we’re alone, the mask just drops off and it’s all about how I’ve failed him and mom, but all he said was “How are you, Eunice?”

And I almost freaking started to cry, because he never asked me that in my life. I was just like, “Uh-huh, fine, uh-huh,” and then it was like I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I was happy or just scared because it seemed so final for him to ask me that, like he’d never see me again. I wondered what he would do if I just threw my arms around him. I get so scared whenever I have to leave my parent’s house to go away for a while, because he always attacks me at the last minute, he always says something terrible in the car on the way to the airport, but I also wonder if secretly he just wants to have some kind of contact with
me before I fly off and abandon him for someone like Lenny. That’s how it felt when we were walking out of the park and I just blurted out, “Bye, Daddy, I love you,” and I ran down to our apartment and thank god Lenny wasn’t there because I bawled for three hours until he came home for dinner and I really didn’t want to spend any time with him that night.

Anyway, I don’t want to think about this too much, because it depresses me. What’s new with you, my little churro frito? Did your father get his plunger biz back? How was the vag rejuv? Fuck-tard Gopher? I miss you more and more each day we’re apart. Oh, my mom STILL won’t respond to my messages. It’s like punishment for dating Lenny. Maybe I should bring my new seventy-year-old friend Joshie GOLDMAN to church! Ha ha.

GRILLBITCH
TO
EUNI-TARD:

Dear Precious Panda,

I really can’t talk right now. We can’t find my dad. He had gone to the factory and that’s the last GlobalTrace of him I had on my äppärät. We thought he had snuck into the building even though it’s surrounded by National Guards and there are LNWIs inside doing whatever they want. Mommy and I tried to get through the checkpoint but they wouldn’t let us and when my mom started hollering at one of the soldiers he punched her. We’re home and I’m changing the compresses on her now, because her eye is swollen and she won’t go to the hospital. We don’t know what’s happening anymore. Some Media guy Pervaiz Silverblatt of the Levy Report is streaming that there’s a fire at the factory, but I’ve never heard of him. 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.

EUNI-TARD:
Sally, did you hear what’s happening in California? To the Kangs?

SALLYSTAR:
Ask your boyfriend.

EUNI-TARD:
What?

SALLYSTAR:
Ask him about Wapachung Contingency.

EUNI-TARD:
I don’t get it.

SALLYSTAR:
Don’t worry about it.

EUNI-TARD:
Fuck you, Sally. Why do you have to be like that? What has Lenny ever done to you or to mom? And FYI Lenny doesn’t work for Wapachung Whatever, he works for Post Human Services. I met his boss and he’s really nice. It’s just a company that helps people look younger and live longer.

SALLYSTAR:
Sounds pretty egotistical.

EUNI-TARD:
Right, because only you and dad can be saints ministering unto Jerusalem.

SALLYSTAR:
Huh?

EUNI-TARD:
Look it up, it’s in your bible. You probably have it highlighted in twenty different colors. Guess what? I’ve been helping too, Sally. I’ve been at the park the last few weeks. And I’ve become friends with David who thinks you’re just a spoiled little Barnard girl.

SALLYSTAR:
How much longer are you going to go on just being a little ball of anger, Eunice? One day your looks are going to fade and all these stupid old white men won’t be chasing after you and then what?

EUNI-TARD:
Nice, Sally. Well, at least your being honest for the first time in your life.

SALLYSTAR:
I’m sorry, Eunice.

SALLYSTAR:
Eunice? I’m sorry.

EUNI-TARD:
I have to go see David in the park. I’m getting them Men’s Biomultiples because they need to be strong in case there’s an attack.

SALLYSTAR:
Okay. I love you.

EUNI-TARD:
Sure.

SALLYSTAR:
Eunice!

EUNI-TARD:
I know you do.

AZIZARMY-INFO
TO
EUNI-TARD:

Hi, Eunice. Good meeting your dad and talking to him. He reminds me of you, in the sense that you’re both hardcore. I’m glad you said being together at Tompkins Square Nation has brought you closer. Seeing your
dad made me miss mine. When we were growing up they were even tougher on us than they had to be and that means their kids became stronger than they had to be. OBSERVATION: You bitch and whine a lot, Eunice, that’s your SOP, but you’re still a very strong woman, scary strong sometimes. Use that strength for good. Move on.

It is COLD with the rain tonight. Everyone’s asleep and the only sound is Marisol’s little girl Anna singing old R&B by the water fountain. I’m worried about Force Protection. My MPs say there’s no ARA activity around the park perimeter, which doesn’t feel right for a Friday. I’m going to send a unit downrange to the Laundromat on St. Mark’s. Maybe the Bipartisans see the writing on the wall. Maybe we really are going to get our Venezuela bonuses this time.

OBSERVATION: You’re very lucky overall, Eunice, you know that? It would be helpful if you were here with me right now so that we could talk in the quiet of the tent (I tried to verbal you, but you’re probably asleep) and it would be just like in college all over again, only no one at Austin was as pretty as you. FYI, Chauncey at Malnutrition says we need 20 cans of mosquito repellent and if we get a 100 more avocado and crabmeat units from H-mart that would really up our nutritional profile.

Hope you’re staying dry and that your mind and body are in a good place. Don’t give in to High Net Worth thinking this week. Perform useful tasks that your dad would be proud of. But also: Relax a little. Whatever happens, I got your back.

David

THE RUPTURE

JULY 29

Dear Diary,

Grace and Vishnu had their pregnancy-announcing party on Staten Island. On the way to the ferry terminal, Euny and I saw a demonstration, an old-school protest march down Delancey Street and toward the broken superstructure of the Williamsburg Bridge. It was sanctioned by the Restoration Authority, or so it seemed, the marchers freely chanting and waving misspelled signs demanding better housing: “Peeple power!” “Houssing is a human right.” “Don’t throw us off the peir.” “Burn all Credit Pole!” “I am no a grasshopper,
huevón
!” “Don call me ant!” They were chanting in Spanish and Chinese, their accents jamming the ear, so many strong languages vying to push their way into our lackadaisical native one. There were small Fujianese men, big-backed Latina mothers, and, sticking out of the fray, gangly white Media people trying to stream about their own problems with condo down payments and imperious co-op boards. “We are being overruled by real estate!” the more erudite marchers shouted. “No more threats of deportation! Boo! Space for LGBT youth is not for sale! In unity there is power! Take back our city! No justice! No peace!” Their cacophony calmed me. If there could still be marches like this, if people could still concern themselves with things like
better
housing for transgendered youth, then maybe we weren’t finished as a nation just yet. I considered teening Nettie Fine the good news, but was preoccupied by the travails
of just getting to Staten Island. The National Guard troops at the ferry terminal checkpoints weren’t Wapachung Contingency according to my äppärät, so we submitted to the usual half-hour “Deny and Imply” humiliations like everyone else.

Grace and Vishnu lived on one floor of a Shingle Style manse in the hipster St. George neighborhood, the house’s Doric columns declaring an overbearing historicity, the turret providing comic relief, stained-glass windows a pretty kind of kitsch, the rest of it sea-weathered and confident, a late-nineteenth-century indigenous form built on an island at a tiny remove from what was then becoming the most important city in the most important country in the world.

They weren’t rich, my Vishnu and Grace—they had bought the house for almost nothing two years ago, when the last crisis was hitting its peak—and the place was already a mess, even without the impending baby, a flurry of broken Shaker furniture that Vishnu would never find the time to fix, and truly smelly books from another lifetime he would never read. Vishnu was out on the back porch grilling tofu and turning over vegetables. The porch deck elevated their apartment beyond the mundane, a full view of downtown Manhattan rising through the midsummer heat, the skyline looking tired, worn, in need of a bath. Vishnu and I did the Nee-gro slap and hug. I hovered around my friend, chatting him up with great care like I would a woman at a bar when I was young and single, while Eunice stood timidly in the distance, a glass of Pinot something-or-other tight in her fist.

I wasn’t sure what that meant. Vishnu gazed distractedly into the middle distance, while a root vegetable fell between the slats of the grill and issued a mild report.

The deck began to fill up. There was Noah, looking flushed and summer-weary but ready to emcee the announcement of Vishnu and Grace’s little girl soon to come, fully indebted, into our strange new
world, and Noah’s girlfriend, Amy Greenberg, the comic relief, streaming hard on her “Muffintop Hour,” filled with bursts of spasmodic laughter and not-so-subtle anger at the fact that Noah wasn’t planning to get her pregnant, that all she had was her hard-driven
career
.

My friends. My dear ones. We chatted in the typically funny-sad way of people in their very late thirties about the things that used to make us young as Amy passed around a real joint, seedless and moist, the kind that only Media people get. I tried to get Eunice involved, but she mostly stayed by the edge of the deck with her äppärät, her stunning cocktail dress like something out of an old movie, the haughty princess no one can understand but one man.

Noah came over to Eunice and started charming her retro (“How ya doin’, little lady?”), and I could see her mouth turning to form little syllables of understanding and encouragement, a terminal blush spreading like a rash across the gloss of her neck, but she spoke too quietly for me to hear her over the spitting din of vegetables being grilled black, the communal laughter of old friends.

More people showed up: Grace’s Jewish and Indian co-workers, Retail women-lawyers who effortlessly switched from friendly to stern, quiet to volatile; Vishnu’s summer-pretty exes, who still kept in touch because he was so swell a guy; and a bunch of people who went to NYU with us, mostly slick Credit dudes, one with a fashionable Mohawk and pearl earring who was trying to match Noah in pitch and importance.

I had a quick succession of vodka shots with Noah, who, turning off his äppärät, confided in me that Grace’s pregnancy was “totally making [him] nervous,” that he didn’t know what to do with himself next, and that his alcoholism, while charming to most, was starting to worry Amy Greenberg. “Do what feels right,” I glibly told him, advice from an era when the first Boeing Dreamliner, still flying under the American flag, lifted off the soil and broke the leaden Seattle skies.