Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

“Forget about Rachel!” Vica insisted. “There is a good chance that she would have turned out anorexic, or bipolar, or just plain boring!”

All of them could’ve been right in a way. And yet Vadik couldn’t stop longing for Rachel. He could barely remember what she looked like anymore, but in the compact reality of his memory, Rachel remained perfect. There were times when Vadik tried to banish those memories because they were too painful. And there were times when Vadik felt numb and he would desperately try to conjure Rachel because pain was better than numbness. Once, in Avenel, as he sat perched on his exercise bike, in his empty white room, pushing and pushing on those dusty pedals, he said Rachel’s name out loud and felt nothing. Or rather he felt a palpable nothing, weightless and glutinous at the same time. He felt as if he were about to simultaneously float away and drown. He had never felt worse. It was then that he got off his bike and went to take the Tazepam.

That morning at Rachel’s apartment, Vadik woke at dawn. Rachel was still asleep, lying on her stomach, her face buried in the pillow, her mouth half-open. Vadik felt rested — he was still on Moscow time. He got up, pulled on his underpants, his sweater and jeans, and went to the bathroom. Everything in the apartment seemed smaller and shabbier in the morning. So much clutter in the bathroom. So many unnecessary things. Two blow dryers. Six different shampoo bottles. More clutter in the kitchen. Pots and pans peeking from the tops of the cabinets. Three ceramic cats. A ceramic dog. A ceramic chicken! Vadik went into the kitchen and looked out the long narrow window, but the view of the city was blocked by the stained brown wall of an apartment building across the street. He considered putting the kettle on and making some tea. He thought he would just sit there with his tea and read one of Rachel’s books until she woke up. But he suddenly found himself dreading that moment. Eventually he would have to leave. He would explain that he was going to live in Avenel. She would want to exchange numbers. He didn’t have a phone yet. Would he have to give her his e-mail? He had such a stupid e-mail address. Biggguy@gmail.com (with an extra “g” between big and guy). Rachel would hate how misogynistic that sounded. She hated Leonard Cohen! How could anybody hate Cohen? Anyway, she would ask when they would see each other again. He would have to promise to see her when? Next Friday? And then what? They would have to see each other every weekend? Vadik found the idea oppressive. This was only his second morning in the Land of the Free and he was about to be bound by some weekly routine. His new life was about to begin. He needed to be unbound.

He walked back into the living room and surveyed the scene. There was a notebook and a pen on the mantel. He tore out a page and pondered what to write. English poetry would have been great, but he didn’t know any poetry in English. And Cohen clearly was a bad idea. “You’re beautiful,” he finally wrote and put the paper in the middle of the table. Then he picked up his jacket and sat down on the sofa to put on his socks. They were still wet. He squirmed at the touch of damp cloth against his feet. Then he put on his shoes.

It was so cold outside that it seemed like his damp feet were turning to ice. Vadik knew — Sergey had explained it to him — that the X1 bus to Staten Island stopped every few blocks on Broadway. He had no idea how to get to Broadway though, and he had no idea where he was. He waved down a taxi and asked the driver to drop him off at the closest point on Broadway. It took them five minutes or so. He got out of the cab, bought himself a cup of coffee in a deli, and walked down Broadway until he saw an X1 stop. He wasn’t sure if the buses even ran that early. But the bus came within five minutes. Vadik was two quarters short of the exact fare, but the driver let him ride anyway. The bus was well heated and empty, and for some time Vadik just sat slumped in his seat enjoying the warmth. It was only on some overpass over Brooklyn that Vadik remembered that he had left Hell Is Other People at the diner. He had no idea where that diner was. He would never be able to find it again. He would never be able to go back there. Vadik felt a surge of panic and regret, so bad that it made his heart ache.

More often than not Regina woke up to the sound of Bob’s alarm.

This morning the sound was sharper than usual. Bob must have changed it the night before.

Regina moved closer to him and squeezed her fingers over his stiff dick without opening her eyes. There was nothing sexual about that move. Neither of them was aroused. Bob’s stiff dick in the morning was a simple fact of married life. Regina was thirty-nine, but before marrying Bob two years ago she had never lived with a man for longer than a month. And here was her man, a man of the house, a large and strong human being in possession of a penis.

Regina buried her face into Bob’s armpit. Bob smelled especially nice in the mornings. Less like a squeaky-clean American, more like a man.

Regina enjoyed the simple facts of married life more than anything else. She couldn’t have children. Bob didn’t need children (he had a grown daughter from his first marriage). They would have to just enjoy each other for the rest of their lives. That is, if they stayed together for the rest of their lives. But so far it looked like they would.

Their bedroom was huge, square, and perfectly dark. (“Wow, those are some blinds!” their friends said.) There was no light even on the brightest mornings except for the soft glow of Bob’s iPad screen. That was the first thing that Bob did every morning — checked his messages and the news.

“Did you sleep well?” Bob asked.

“Yes, Bobik, pretty well.”

She called him Bobik, and Bobs, and Bobcat, Bobbety Bob, and Bobbety Cat. This was another thing that she loved about her marriage — to be so close to someone that even his name felt like it belonged to her.

“Did you sleep well?”

“More or less. My shoulder’s acting up again.”

“Do you want me to put the ointment on?”

“Yes, please.”

Regina took her hand off Bob’s dick, which had become significantly softer, and groped for the ointment on the nightstand.

She squeezed out a cold slippery dollop and began to smear it a little above Bob’s right shoulder. His shoulder was freckled and substantial like the rest of him. The sharp sweetish smell of the alcohol in the ointment made her gag, but she continued to rub it in with tender force. This was her husband and she was eager to take care of him. Sometimes Regina wondered if it would feel any different if she actually loved Bob. She doubted that it would.

“Thank you, sweetie,” Bob said and climbed out of the bed. Regina wiped her hand with a tissue and stared at him as he did his morning stretches. All that square bulk. All those muscles gained on exercise machines. Even on his butt. She hadn’t known people had muscles in their butts. Her own butt was all skin and bones with some lumpy fat, as was the rest of her body. She didn’t like to be seen naked. She slept in her old gym shorts and a stretched-out tank top. Regina looked in the wall mirror and winced at her reflection. She wondered if her new hairdo with the part in the middle made her look like an Afghan hound. It did, didn’t it?

She was tall and long-limbed though. Bob got a kick out of how tall she was. Tall, long-legged, imperfect, and Russian. Ph.D. in linguistics, fluent in four languages, but missing two teeth. (The missing teeth were in the back of her mouth. This was not a big deal.) Regina suspected that Bob got a kick out of the strangeness of his choice as well.