Super Sad True Love Story

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 apparat. 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.

JULY 24

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 amp;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

19 THE RUPTURE

FROM THE DIARIES OF LENNY ABRAMOV

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, huevon!” “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 apparat, 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