Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel (15 page)

“Losing hits, losing hits,” Noah whispered. “No foreign words. Cut to chase.”

“… And she just. She
really
listened to me. She paid attention to me. She never even looked at her äppärät while I was speaking to her. I mean we were mostly eating.
Bucatini all’ …”

“Losing hits, losing hits.”

“Pasta. But when we weren’t eating, we were saying
everything
about ourselves, who we were, where we come from. She’s an angry girl. You’d be too if you were her. All the shit she’s had to put up with. But she wants to get to know me better, and she wants to help me, and I want to care for her. I think she weighs, like, seventy pounds. She should eat more. I’ll make her eggplant. She showed me how to brush my teeth.”

“Streaming these emotions live,” Noah repeated. “You’re the first to hear them,
patos
. Straight from the Abramov’s mouth. He’s verballing. He’s emoting. But I’m getting a message from a hoser in Windsor, Ontario. He wants to know, did you fuck her, Lenny? Did you stick your thingie inside her tight snatch? Fifteen thousand souls
absolutely need to know right now or they’ll get their news elsewhere.”

“We’re such an unlikely couple, so unlikely,” I was crying, “because she’s beautiful, and I’m the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what! What if someday she lets me kiss each one of her freckles again? She has like a million. But every one of them means something to me. Isn’t this how people used to fall in love? I know we’re living in Rubenstein’s America, like you keep saying. But doesn’t that just make us even more responsible for each other’s fates? I mean, what if Eunice and I just said ‘no’ to all this. To this bar. To this FACing. The two of us. What if we just went home and read books to each other?”

“Oh God,” Noah groaned. “You just halved my viewer load. You’re killing me here, Abramov.… Okay, folks, we’re streaming live here in Rubenstein’s America, zero hour for our economy, zero hour for our military might, zero hour for everything that used to make us proud to be ourselves, and Lenny Abramov won’t tell us if he fucked this tiny Asian chick.”

In the bathroom next to a graffito encouraging the pisser to “Vote Bisexual, Not Bipartisan,” and the quizzical “Harm Reduction Reduced My Dick,” I let go of several ounces of Belgian ale and the five glasses of alkalized water I’d had before leaving my house.

Vishnu sidled up to me. “Turn off your äppärät,” he said.

“Huh?”

He reached over and yanked my pendant into the off position. His eyes locked with mine, and even through the mist of my own drunkenness I noticed that my friend was basically sober. “I think Noah may be ARA,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I think he’s working for the Bipartisans.”

“Are you crazy?” I said. “What about ‘It’s Rubenstein time in America’? What about the zero hour?”

“I’m just telling you, watch what you say around him. Especially when he’s streaming his show.”

My urination stopped of its own accord, and my prostate felt
very sore.
Care for your friends, care for your friends
, the mantra repeated itself.

“I don’t understand,” I muttered. “He’s still our friend, right?”

“People are being forced into all kinds of things now,” Vishnu said. He lowered his voice even further. “Who knows what they got him for. His Credit ranking’s been going to shit ever since he started doing Amy Greenberg. Half of Staten Island is collaborating. Everyone’s looking for backing, for protection. You watch, if the Chinese take over, Noah will be sucking up to them. You should have stayed in Rome, Lenny. Fuck that immortality bullshit. Ain’t going to happen for you anyway. Look at us. We’re not HNWIs.”

“We’re not Low Net Worth either!” I protested.

“That don’t matter. We’re poster children for Harm Reduction. This city has no use for us. They privatized the MTA last month. They’re going to knock down the projects. Even your fancy Jew projects. We’ll be living in Erie, Pennsylvania, by the time this decade’s over.”

He must have noticed the lethal unhappiness disfiguring my expression. He zipped up and patted my back. “That was some good emoting about Eunice in there,” he said. “That’ll get your
PERSONALITY
ranking higher. And who knows about Noah? Maybe I’m wrong. Been wrong before. Been wrong lots, my friend.”

Before my melancholy could get the best of me, Vishnu’s girlfriend, Grace Kim, showed up to drag him homeward, to their pleasant, air-conditioned Staten Island abode, making me pine in a heartbreaking way for Eunice. I stared at Grace with a need bordering on grief. There she was: intelligently, creatively, timidly dressed (no Onionskin jeans to show off
her
slender goods), full of programmed intentions and steady, interesting plans, hardwired for marriage to her lucky beau, ready to bear those beautiful Eurasian kids that seem to be the last children left in the city.

Along with Noah, I was invited to Vishnu and Grace’s house for a nightcap, but I claimed jet lag and bade everyone farewell. They were sweet enough to walk me to the ferry station, although not sweet enough to brave the National Guard checkpoint with me. I
was duly searched and poked by tired, bored soldiers. I denied and implied everything. I said, in answer to some metaphysical question, “I just want to go home.” It wasn’t the right answer, but a black man with a little golden cross amid his paltry chest hairs took pity on me and let me board the vessel.

The rankings of other passengers swept across the bow, the ugly, ruined men emoting their desire and despair over the rail and into the dark, relentless waves. A pink mist hovered over the mostly residential area once known as the Financial District, casting everything in the past tense. A father kept kissing his tiny son’s head over and over with a sad insistence, making those of us with bad parents or no parents feel even more lonely and alone.

We watched the silhouettes of oil tankers, guessing at the warmth of their holds. The city approached. The three bridges connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan, one long necklace of light, gradually differentiated themselves. The Empire State extinguished its crown and tucked itself away behind a lesser building. On the Brooklyn side, the gold-tipped Williamsburg Savings Bank, cornered by the half-built, abandoned glass giants around it, quietly gave us the finger. Only the bankrupt “Freedom” Tower, empty and stern in profile, like an angry man risen and ready to punch, celebrated itself throughout the night.

Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city?

I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is.

And if it’s not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again.

FIRE UP THAT EGGPLANT

JUNE 13

LEONARDO DABRAMOVINCI
TO
EUNI-TARD ABROAD:

Oh, hi there. It’s Lenny Abramov. Again. I’m sorry to be bothering you. I teened you a little while back and I didn’t hear from you. So I guess you’re busy and there must be all these annoying guys bothering you all the time and I don’t want to be another dork who sends you glad tidings every minute. Anyway, I just wanted to warn you that I was on my friend’s stream called The Noah Weinberg Show! and I was really really WASTED and I said all those things about your freckles and how we had bucatini all’amatriciana together at da Tonino and about how I pictured us reading books to each other one day.

Eunice, I am so sorry to drag your name through the mud like this. I just got carried away and was feeling pretty sad because I miss you and wish we could keep in touch more. I keep thinking about that night we spent in Rome, about every minute of it, and I guess it’s become like this foundation myth for me. So I’m trying to stop it and think about other things like my job/financial situation, which is very complicated right now, and my parents, who are not as difficult as yours but let’s just say we’re not a happy family either. God, I don’t know why I just constantly want to open up to you. Again, I’m sorry if I embarrassed you with that ridiculous stream and with the stuff about you reading books.

(Still) Your Friend (hopefully),

Lenny

EUNI-TARD ABROAD
TO
LEONARDO DABRAMOVINCI:

Okay, Leonard. Fire up that eggplant, I think I’m coming to New York. It’s “Arrivederci, Roma” for this girl. Sorry I’ve been out of touch for so long. I’ve been sort of thinking about you too, and I really look forward to staying with you for a little while. You’re a very sweet and funny guy, Len. But I want you to know that my life blows major testes these days. I just broke up with this guy who was really my type, stuff with my parents, blah, blah, blah. So I may not always be the best company and I may not always treat you right. In other words, if you get sick of me, just throw me out on the curb. That’s what people do. Hahaha!

I’ll send you the flight info soon as I can. You don’t have to pick me up or anything. Just tell me where to go.

I hope this doesn’t make you uncomfortable, Lenny Abramov, but my freckles really miss you.

Eunice

P.S. Have you been brushing like I showed you? It’s good for you and cuts down on bad breath.

P.P.S. I thought you were pretty cute on your friend Noah’s stream but you should really try to get off “101 People We Need to Feel Sorry For.” That guy with the
SUK DIK
overalls is just being cruel to you. You are not a “greasy old schlub,” whatever that means, Lenny. You should stand up for yourself.

TOTAL SURRENDER

JUNE 18

Dear Diary,

Oh my God, oh my God, Oh My God! She’s here. Eunice Park is in New York. Eunice Park is in my apartment! Eunice Park is sitting NEXT TO ME on my couch while I’m writing this. Eunice Park: a tiny fragment of a human being in purple leggings, pouting at something terrible I may have done, anger in her wrinkled forehead, the rest of her absorbed by her äppärät, checking out expensive stuff on AssLuxury. I am close to her. I am surreptitiously smelling the garlic on her breath, diary. I’m smelling a lunch of Malaysian anchovies and I think I’m about to have a heart attack. Oh, what’s wrong with me? Everything, sweet diary. Everything is wrong with me and I am the happiest man alive!