Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story

I took Barry all the way over to the wasteland of York Avenue to our research center, the ten-story slab of concrete that once served as an adjunct to a large hospital. It was time for him to meet out Indians. We have this Cowboys and Indians theme going on at Post-Human Services. At the Life Lovers Outreach division we call ourselves Cowboys; the “Indians” are the actual research staff, mostly on loan from the Subcontinent and East Asia, housed at an eighty-thousand-square-foot facility on York and at three satellite locations in Austin, Texas; Concord, Massachusetts; and Portland, Oregon.

The Indians keep things pretty simple. There really isn’t much to see in the areas to which visitors are allowed-basically the same thing you see in any office-young people with äppäräti, immune to the rest of the world, maybe the occasional glass cage filled with mice or some kind of spinning thingamabob. Two of our most sociable guys, both named Prabal, came out to greet him from the cancer and viral labs and burdened him with yet more terminology while letting out a few practiced promos: “We’re past the alpha testing, Mr. Barry. I’d say we’re definitely at the beta stage.”

Back at the synagogue, I gave Barry the willingness-to-live test. The H-scan test to measure the subject’s biological age. The willingness-to-persevere-in-difficult-conditions test. The Infinite Sadness Endurance Test. The response-to-loss-of-child test. He must have sensed how much was at stake, his sharp WASP-y beak aquiver as the Images were projected against his pupils, the results streaming on my äppärät. He would do anything to persevere. He was saddened by life, by the endless progression from one source of pain to another, but not more than most. He had three children and would cling to them forever, even if his present-day bank account would not be able to preserve more than two for eternity . I entered “Sophie’s Choice” on my intake äppärät, a major problem as far as Joshie was concerned.

Barry was exhausted. The Patterson-Clay-Schwartz Language Cognition Test, the final barometer for selection, could await another session. I knew already that this perfectly reasonable, preternaturally kind fifty-two-year-old would not make the cut. He was doomed, like me. And so I smiled at him, congratulated him on his candor and patience, his intellect and maturity, and with a tap of my finger against my digital desk threw him onto the blazing funeral pyre of history.

I felt shitty about Barry, but even shittier about myself. Joshie’s office was crammed with people all day long, but during a quiet moment I found him by the window, staring quizzically at a sky of untrammeled blue, just a fat lone military helicopter trudging toward the East River, its armored beak pointed downward as if it were a predatory bird hunting for food. I sidled up to him. He nodded, not unfriendly, but with some tired reserve. I told him the story of Barry, stressing the man’s innate goodness and his problem of having too many children, whom he loved, and not enough money to save all of them, which elicited a shrug on his part. “Those who want to live forever will find a means of doing so,” Joshie said, a cornerstone of the Post-Human philosophy.

“Hey, Grizzly,” I said, “do you think you can put me in for some of the dechronification treatments at a reduced rate? Just basic soft-tissue maintenance, and maybe a few bio years shaved off?”

Joshie regarded the nine-foot fiberglass Buddha that furnished his otherwise empty office, its blissed-out gaze emitting alpha rays. “That’s only for clients,” he said. “You know that, Rhesus. Why do you have to make me say it out loud? Stick with the diet and exercise. Use stevia instead of sugar. You’ve still got a lot of life left in you.”

My sadness filled the room, took over its square, simple contours, crowding out even Joshie’s spontaneous rose-petal odor. “I didn’t mean that,” Joshie said. “Not just a lot of life. Maybe forever. But you can’t fool yourself into thinking that’s a certainty.”

“You’ll see me die someday,” I said, and immediately felt bad for saying it. I tried, as I had done since childhood, to feel nonexistence. I forced coldness to run through the natural humidity of my hungry second-generation-immigrant body. I thought of my parents. We would all be dead together. Nothing would remain of our tired, broken race. My mother had bought three adjoining plots at a Long Island Jewish cemetery. “Now we can be together forever,” she had told me, and I had nearly broken down in tears at her misplaced optimism, at the notion that she would want to spend her idea of eternity-and what could her eternity possibly comprise?-with her failure of a son.

“You’ll see me extinguished,” I told Joshie.

“That would be a big heartbreak for me, Lenny,” Joshie said, his voice broken with exhaustion, or maybe just boredom.

“Three hundred years from now, you won’t even remember me. Just some flunky.”

“Nothing is guaranteed,” Joshie said. “Even I can never be sure of whether my personality will survive forever.”

“It will,” I said. A father should never outlive his child, I wanted to add, although I knew Joshie would disagree on principle.

He put his hand on the side of my neck and squeezed lightly. I leaned in to him a little, hoping for more of his touch. He massaged softly. There was nothing special in that; we Post-Human staffers massage one another regularly. Still, I soaked in his warmth and believed it was only for me. I thought of Eunice Park and her pH-balanced body, healthy and strong. I thought of the warm early-summer day gathering in force outside the bay window, the New York of early summers past, the city that used to hold so many promises, the city of a million IOUs. I thought of Eunice’s lips on my nose, the love mixed in with the pain, the foretaste of almonds and salt. I thought of how it was all just too beautiful to ever let go.

“We’re only getting started, Lenny,” Joshie said, his strong hand squeezing like a clamp at my tired flesh. “For now, diet and exercise. Focus on the work to keep your mind busy, but don’t overthink or give in to anxiety. There’s going to be loads of tsuris ahead. Trouble ,” he clarified, when I didn’t catch on to the Yiddish word. “But also loads of opportunities for the right kind of people. And, hey , be happy you got your desk back.”

“The LIBOR rate’s fallen fifty-seven basis points according to CrisisNet,” I said knowledgeably.

But he was looking into my äppärät, at an Image of Eunice flashing hard above the other data streams. She was pictured at a wedding of one of her ridiculously young Elderbird College friends in southern California, wearing a black polka-dotted dress that clung to her frame, desperately trying to coax out the preliminaries of an adult woman’s body. Her skin glowed in the warm afternoon sun, and her look was one of coy pleasure. “That’s Eunice,” I said. “That’s my girl. I think you’ll really like her. Do you like her?”

“She looks healthy.”

“Thank you,” I said, beaming. “I can forward you an Image of her if you’d like. She’s like a poster child for eternity.”

“That’s okay,” he said. He looked at the Image some more. “Good boy, Lenny,” he said. “Well done.”

The next day, Eunice and I took the Long Island Rail Road to Westbury, Long Island, to meet the Abramovs. The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons-it was systemic and it was complete. I knew Eunice was not ready to meet my parents, but she was doing it anyway, and she was doing it to please me. This was the first major kindness she had shown me, and I was drowning in appreciation.