Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Services. Vegetables are a sign of respect. Then again, Kelly was an exception to the hard-edged types around here, Louisiana-bred for kindness and gentility, a younger, less hysterical Nettie Fine (may she be alive and well, wherever she is).
    I stood behind her as she dotted golden cress along steppes of Siberian kale. I rested my hands on her solid shoulders, breathed in her sour vitality. She leaned her hot cheek against one of my wrists, a motion so familiar it seemed to me we had been related even before this lifetime. Her pale, blooming thighs spread beyond a modest pair of khaki shorts, and I remembered again to
celebrate
, in this case, every inch of Kelly’s imperfection. “Hey,” I said, “Vasily Greenbaum’s train got canceled? He played the guitar and could speak a little Arabic. He was
so
‘ready to contribute’ when he wasn’t totally depressed.”
    “He turned forty last month,” Kelly sighed. “Didn’t make quotas.”
    “I’m almost forty too,” I said. “And why isn’t my name up on The Boards?”
    Kelly didn’t say anything. She was parsing cauliflower with a dull safety knife, moisture beading her white forehead. Kelly and I had once shared an entire bottle of wine—or “resveratrol,” as we Post-Humans like to call it—at a tapas bar in Brooklyn, and after walking her to her violent Bushwick tenement I wondered if I could one day fall in love with a woman so unobtrusively, compulsively decent (answer: no).
    “So who’s still around from the old gang?” I asked, voice atremble. “I didn’t see Jami Pilsner’s name. Or Irene Po. Are they just going to fire all of us?”
    “Howard Shu’s doing fine,” Kelly told me. “Got promoted.”
    “Great,” I said. Of all the people still employed, it had to be that sleek 124-pound bastard Shu, my classmate at NYU who had bested me for the last dozen years in all of life’s gruesome contests. If you ask me, there’s a little something sad about the employees of Post-Human Services, and to me brash, highly functional Howard Shu isthe personification of that sadness. The truth is, we may think of ourselves as the future, but we are not. We are servants and apprentices, not immortal clients. We hoard our yuan, we take our nutritionals, we prick ourselves and bleed and measure that dark-purple liquid a thousand different ways, we do everything but pray, but in the end we are still marked for death. I could commit my genome and proteome to heart, I could wage nutritional war against my faulty apo E4 allele until I turn myself into a walking cruciferous vegetable, but nothing will cure my main genetic defect:
    My father is a janitor from a poor country.
    Howard Shu’s dad hawks miniature turtles in Chinatown. Kelly Nardl is rich, but hardly rich enough. The scale of wealth we grew up with no longer applies.
    Kelly’s äppärät lit up the air around her, and she was plunged into the needs of a hundred clients. After the daily decadence of Rome, our offices looked spare. Everything bathed in soft colors and the healthy glow of natural wood, office equipment covered in Chernobyl-style sarcophagi when not in use, alpha-wave stimulators hidden behind Japanese screens, stroking our overactive brains with calming rays. Little framed humorous hints scattered throughout. “Just Say No to Starch.” “Cheer Up! Pessimism Kills.” “Telomere-Extended Cells Do It Better.” “ NATURE HAS A LOT TO LEARN FROM US .” And, fluttering in the wind above Kelly Nardl’s desk, a wanted poster showing a cartoon hippie being whacked over the head with a stalk of broccoli:
    WANTED
For electron stealing
DNA killing
Malicious cellular damage
    ABBIE “FREE RADICAL” HOFFMAN
WARNING: Subject may be armed and dangerous
Do not attempt to apprehend
Call authorities immediately and increase intake of the coenzyme Q10
    “Maybe I’ll go to my desk,” I said to Kelly.
    “Honey,” she said, her long fingers around my own. You could drown a kitten in her blue