11 THE NUCLEAR OPTION
Dear Diary,
I learned how to say “elephant” in Korean this week.
We went to the Bronx Zoo, because Noah Weinberg said on his stream that the ARA was going to close the place down and ship all the animals to Saudi Arabia “to die of heatstroke.” I never know which part of Noah’s streams to believe, but, the way we live now, you can never be too sure. We had fun with the monkeys and “José the Beaver” and all the smaller animals, but the highlight was this beautiful savannah elephant named Sammy. When we ambled up to his humble enclosure, Eunice grabbed my nose and said, “Kokiri.”
“Ko,” she explained, “means ‘nose.’ Kokiri. Long nose. ‘Elephant’ in Korean.”
“I hab a long dose because I’m Jewish,” I said, trying to pull her hand off my face. “Dere’s duthing I can do aboud it.”
“You’re so sensitive, Lenny,” she said, laughing. “I heart your nose so much. I wish I had a nose.” And she started kissing my comma of a snout in full view of the pachyderm, going gently up and down the endless thing with her tough little lips. As she did so, I locked eyes with the elephant, and I watched myself being kissed in the prism of the elephant’s eye, the giant hazel apparatus surrounded with flecks of coarse gray eyebrow. He was twenty-five, Sammy, at the middle of his lifespan, much like I was. A lonely elephant, the only one the zoo had at the moment, removed from his compatriots and from the possibility of love. He slowly flicked back one massive ear, like a Galician shopkeeper of a century ago spreading his arms as if to say, “Yes, this is all there is.” And then it occurred to me, lucky me mirrored in the beast’s eye, lucky Lenny having his trunk kissed by Eunice Park: The elephant knows. The elephant knows there is nothing after this life and very little in it. The elephant is aware of his eventual extinction and he is hurt by it, reduced by it, made to feel his solitary nature, he who will eventually trample his way through bush and scrub to lie down and die where his mother once trembled at her haunches to give him life. Mother, aloneness, entrapment, extinction. The elephant is essentially an Ashkenazi animal, but a wholly rational one-it too wants to live forever.
“Let’s go,” I said to Eunice. “I don’t want kokiri to see you kissing my nose like that. It’ll only make him sadder.”
“Aw,” she said. “You’re so sweet to animals, Len. I think that’s a good sign. My dad had a dog once and he really took care of her.”
Yes, diary, so many good signs! Such a positive week. Progress on every front. Hitting most of the important categories. Lov[ing] Eunice (Point No. 3), Be[ing] Nice to Parents (Within Limits) (Point No. 5), and Work[ing] Hard for Joshie (No. 1). I’ll get to our (yes, our!) visit with the Abramovs in a second, but let me give you a little breakdown on the work situation.
Well, the first thing I did at Post-Human Services was march into the Eternity Lounge and talk to the guy in the red bandana and SUK DIK suit, who put me on his stream “101 People We Need to Feel Sorry For,” Darryl from Brown, who stole my desk while I was in Rome. “Hey, guy,” I said. “Look, I appreciate the attention, but I got this new girlfriend with 780 Fuckability”-I had made sure to put an Image of Eunice I had taken at the zoo front and center on my äppärät screen-“and I’m kind of, like, trying to play it real coolio with her. So would you mind taking me off your stream?”
“Fuck you, Rhesus,” the young fellow said. “I do whatever I want. You’re not, like, my parent. And even if you so were my parent I’d still tell you to go plug yourself.”
As before, cute young people were laughing at our interaction, their laughter slow and thick and full of educated malice. I was frankly too stunned to reply (I was of the opinion that I was slowly befriending the SUK DIK guy), and even more stunned when my co-worker Kelly Nardl stepped out from behind the fasting-glucose tester, her arms crossed over the redness of her neck and chest, her chin glistening with alkalized water. “Don’t you dare talk to Lenny like that, Darryl,” she said. “Who do you think you are? What, just because he’s older than you? I can’t wait to see you hit thirty. I’ve seen your charts. You’ve got major structural damage from when you were into heroin and carbs, and your whole stupid Boston family is predisposed to alcoholism and whatever the fuck. You think your metabolism is just going to keep you skinny like that forever? Minus the exercise? When was the last time I saw you working out at ZeroMass or No Body? You are going to age fast, my friend.” She took me by the arm. “Come on, Lenny,” she said.
“It’s just because he used to be a buddy of Joshie’s,” Darryl shouted after us. “You think that gives you a right to defend him? I’m going to tell on both of you to Howard Shu.”
“He didn’t used to be a buddy of Joshie’s,” Kelly growled at him, and how delightful she looked when enraged, those fierce American eyes, the forthrightness of her tremendous jaw. “They’re still friends. If it weren’t for Original Gangsters like Lenny, there would be no Post-Human Services and you wouldn’t have your fat salary and benefits, and you’d probably be getting an M.F.A. in so-called art and design at SUNY Purchase right about now, you little turd. So be thankful to your elders or I will fuck you up.”
We both left the Eternity Lounge proud and confused, as if we had stood up to some crazed, violent child, and I ended up thanking Kelly for half an hour, until she kindly told me to shut up. I worried that Darryl would tell Howard Shu, who would tell Joshie, who would get upset that Kelly was stressing Darryl out, the stressing out of Darryl types a big no-no in our organization. “I don’t care,” she said, “I’m thinking about quitting anyway. Maybe I’ll move back to S.F.” The idea of leaving Post-Human Services, of giving up on Indefinite Life Extension and eking out a small hairy lifetime in the Bay Area, seemed to me tantamount to plunging off the Empire State Building with such mass and velocity that the myriad of safety nets would snap beneath you until your skull knew the pavement. I massaged Kelly’s shoulders. “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t even think about it, Kel. We’re going to stick by Joshie forever.”
But Kelly never got reprimanded. Instead, when I walked into our synagogue’s main sanctuary one humid morning, Little Bobby Cohen, the youngest Post-Human staffer (I think he’s nineteen years old at the most), approached me wearing a kind of saffron monk getup. “Come with me, Leonard,” he said, his Bar Mitzvah voice straining under the profundity of what he was about to do.
“Oh, what’s all this?” I asked, my heart pumping blood so hard my toes hurt.
As he led me to a tiny back office where, judging by the sweet-briny smell, the former synagogue’s gefilte-fish supply was stored, Little Bobby sang: “May you live forever, may you never know death, may you float like Joshie, on a newborn’s breath.”
My God! The Desking Ceremony.
And there it was, surrounded by a dozen staffers and our leader (who hugged and kissed me)-my new desk! As Kelly fed me a ceremonial garlic bulb, followed by some sugar-free niacin mints, I surveyed all the pretty young people who had doubted me, all those Darryls and friends of Darryls, and I felt the queasy, mercurial justice of the world. I was back! My Roman failures were near-erased. Now I could begin again. I ran out into the synagogue’s sanctuary, where The Boards were noisily registering my existence, the droning but comforting sound of the letters “LENNY A.” flipping into place at the very bottom of one of the boards, along with my last blood work-not so hot-and the promising mood indicator “meek but cooperative.”