Super Sad True Love Story

Over a week later, without a switch to Eunice’s GlobalTeens account, Shteyngart has Lenny recount his dream. In it, the immigration otter harasses him. It speaks with Noah’s voice, for whom Lenny still grieves, although only “shallow memories” (247) seem to populate his mind.

Lenny explains that he dragged Eunice “away from her goddamn Tompkins Park” (248) and that she has hardly spoken to him since then. Days later, the booms are still “relentless” (248). No äppärät can work after a “Nonnuclear Electromagnetic Pulse” (248) is released, likely by the Venezuelans. Without the destroyed Media, no one can really tell. Lenny cannot connect to his friends or family, just the scrolling Wapachung Contingency messages. With Eunice crying in the next room, Lenny realizes that he is “so scared,” for he has “no one” (249).

When the fighting calms, five days after what Lenny calls the “Rupture,” he is called back to the office. For not the first time, as Lenny says goodbye, he tells Eunice that he thinks they’re “just too different” (250) for their relationship to work. Without a response, he leaves.

The streets are largely deserted, but banks have lines outside. At his own bank, Lenny learns that he is no longer rich or comfortable, although “from the standpoint of survival, the new gold standard for all Americans, [he is] doing just fine” (251). He hails a car to drive him to the office, but a street filled with National Guardsmen stops the car; he has to walk. The office is “entirely surrounded” (252) with armed guards.

The guards were “protecting the doors of the building from a riotous horde of young people,” the “just-fired” (252) young and beautiful employees. Almost everyone is fired. But when Lenny approaches Joshie’s office, he registers as important, and the guards by the door open it immediately for him. Although he still looks young, Joshie looks “embattled” (254).

Joshie is happy to hear of Lenny and Eunice’s falling out. He shares the plan for America with Lenny: the IMF will flee, divide America, and distribute it to wealthier, more competent parties. It will be, he says, “a better America,” with cities that are “real lifestyle hubs” (255) that the Staatling-Wapachung will profit from. There is “a whole new demand for not dying” (255).

Lenny asks Joshie about the accusations against Wapachung that he heard on the street—accusations that the organization was responsible for the bombings and shootings. It becomes clear that Joshie does know who Noah was, that he was Media, when he explains that Media people needed to die. As he espouses the “creative economy,” Lenny recoils: “Fuck the creative economy […] There’s no food downtown” (256). Joshie slaps him.

That “paternal slap” from “his secondary father” (256) recalls his own father in childhood. Lenny encourages Joshie to fight him. Before he can punch him, Joshie calms Lenny. He feels “the alpha rays of Joshie’s fiberglass Buddha” (256) and follows orders to go home and come back the next day.

Lenny comes home to Eunice’s shoes packed by the door. He finds her, drunk, in the bathroom. She does not even fight him, only shakes and calls for her father in English and Korean. He holds her and recognizes that he needs to “accept” her or “spend the rest of [his] time searching for something else” (259).

For the first time, Lenny sees that “unlike others of her generation,” Eunice is “not completely ahistorical” (259). While she shakes, he performs oral sex on her, “waiting for the tremors to subside, for sleep to come” (259). Eunice is, Lenny thinks, “perfectly true” (259). 

Just before Lenny finds her in the bathroom, Eunice writes to David on her GlobalTeens account. After seeing him injured on her äppärät, she explains, she desperately wanted to see him. But more than knowing he is okay, she desperately wants to know if her sister was in the park. She says that David was “right about everything” and that she needs to give up “High Net Worth Thinking” (260). In response, she receives an error message: a generic no service note, followed with a “GlobalTeens Dating Tip” (260).

Eunice also reaches out to Grillbitch. She explains that she has “been trying to verbal” for a week but her äppärät “can’t connect on TALK or STREAM” (261). She refers to Grillbitch by her real name, Jenny Kang; she desperately wants to hear from her. Once again, she receives only an error message and a dating tip in return.

She messages her mother. She is “worried,” and she wants to know only that her mother “and Dad and Sally are all right” (261). Again, an error message; this time, there is no added dating tip.

Four days later, Eunice writes again, expecting an error message but writing still “in the hope that [Grillbitch will] get” (261) the message. She tries to accept the loss of everyone who might have been in the park. She also recognizes that she loved David, largely because of the kindness between the him and her father in the park. Eunice is amazed to realize in herself what her father recognized that day: that she has the “instinct to help” (262). Lenny is a good provider, but Eunice sees him as “too timid” (262) to really help the suffering, especially the old people in their building.

The error message, this time, has no elaboration. A message from Joshie, via the Wapachung Contingency, comes through. He explains that he will message her on an emergency frequency to make sure she and Lenny are safe. He urges her not to tell Lenny.

Two weeks later, Eunice writes Grillbitch, explaining that “things are much better” (263) with Lenny. Even though he nearly dumped her, she feels vulnerable. She now spends “half the day waiting for an emergency message from Joshie” (263), but she feels guilty for her small crush on him. This message also receives an error message response, as does her apologetic message to her mother two days later.

At the same time, Eunice receives a message from Joshie that he will send a care package to her. He is taking requests for the food she wants, and he also encourages her to prepare for their upcoming art class: “The whole situation is clearing right up” (264). Eunice responds kindly to Joshie, but she also explains that others in the building are struggling. She asks for the food that she wants, but she also asks him to search for her parents and her friend Jenny. She also says that her “friend David Lorring was in Tompkins Square” and that she wants Joshie to “check to see if he’s okay” (265).

In his response, Joshie focuses on their shared taste in cereal and their shared interest in health. “You and I,” he tells Eunice, “are really from the same generation of people and Lenny is form a different world, a previous world that was obsessed with death and not life” (266). He also explains his connection to the Wapachung Contingency and claims that he will try to look for her family and for Jenny.

He does not mention David. Instead, he tells Eunice that he has “strong feelings” (266) for her. He is concerned for her and her family, and he is afraid that this concern “might make [her] run away” (267) from him.