Free Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart Page B

metallic components found in most deodorants, create a curious array of post-mortal odors, of which “sardine breath” is the most benign.
    With one or two exceptions, I haven’t made any work-time buddies at Post-Human Services since I turned thirty. It’s not easy being friends with some twenty-two-year-old who cries over his fasting blood-glucose level or sends out a GroupTeen with his adrenal-stress index and a smiley face. When the graffito in the bathroom reads “Lenny Abramov’s insulin levels are whack,” there is a certain undeniable element of one-upmanship, which, in turn, raises the cortisol levels associated with stress and encourages cellular breakdown.
    Still, when I walked through the door I expected to recognize someone . The synagogue’s gilded main sanctuary was filled by young men and women dressed with angry post-college disregard, but projecting from somewhere between the eyes the message that they were the personification of that old Whitney Houston number I’ve mentioned before, that they, the children, were de facto the future. We had enough employees at Post-Human Services to repopulate the original Twelve Tribes of Israel, which were handily represented by the stained-glass windows of the sanctuary. How dull we looked in their ocean-blue glare.
    The ark where the Torahs are customarily stashed had been taken out, and in its place hung five gigantic Solari schedule boards Joshie had rescued from various Italian train stations. Instead of the arrivi and partenze times of trains pulling in and out of Florence or Milan, the flip board displayed the names of Post-Human Services employees, along with the results of our latest physicals, our methylation and homocysteine levels, our testosterone and estrogen, our fasting insulin and triglycerides, and, most important, our “mood + stress indicators,” which were always supposed to read “positive/playful/ready to contribute” but which, with enough input from competitive co-workers, could be changed to “one moody betch today” or “not a team playa this month.” On this particular day, the black-and-white flaps were turning madly, the letters and numbers mutating—a droning ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka—to form new words and figures, as one unfortunate Aiden M. was lowered from “overcoming loss of loved one” to “letting personal life interfere with job” to “doesn’t play well with others.” Disturbingly enough, several of my former colleagues, including my fellow Russian, the brilliantly manic-depressive Vasily Greenbaum, were marked by the dreaded legend TRAIN CANCELED .
    As for me, I wasn’t even listed.
    I positioned myself in the middle of the sanctuary to a spot beneath The Boards, trying to make myself a part of the soft jabber around me. “Hi,” I said. And with a splash of the arms: “Lenny Abramov!” But my words disappeared into the new soundproofed wood paneling while various configurations of young people, some arm in arm, as if on a casual date, swooped through the sanctuary, headed for the Soy Kitchen or the Eternity Lounge, leaving me to hear the words “Soft Policy” and “Harm Reduction,” “ROFLAARP,” “PRGV,” “TIMATOV,” and “butt-plugging Rubenstein,” and, attendant with female laughter, “Rhesus Monkey.” My nickname! Someone had recognized my special relationship to Joshie, the fact that I used to be important around here.
    It was Kelly Nardl. My darling Kelly Nardl. A supple, low-slung girl my age whom I would be terminally attracted to if I could stand to spend my life within three meters of her nondeodorized animal scent. She welcomed me with a kiss on both cheeks, as if she were the one just returned from Europe, and took me by the hand toward her bright, clean wedge of a desk in what used to be the cantor’s office. “I’m going to make you a plate of cruciferous vegetables, baby,” she said, and that sentence alone halved my fears. They don’t fire you after they feed you