Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

The problem was that Sergey was incapable of coming up with a simple idea, and the most obvious apps were the ones that were really taking off. Sergey’s mind was perpetually mired in existential shit.

“What about an online game that helps you find your soul mate?” he offered once. “Players are offered pairs to choose from: Godard or Truffaut, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, Chicken or Steak, Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. Hundreds of pairs. And after you’re done, you get to know the person with the matching results. Could be location based. You’re riding a bus and you can find out who else prefers Tolstoy to Dostoevsky on that same bus.” Or his other idea, also location based, called “Touch me!” It was an app that would provide immediate physical contact to people who needed it. You could press a button and find somebody in the vicinity who wouldn’t mind holding your hand or patting you on the shoulder.

“No, Sergey, no! Nobody needs that shit!” Vica would tell him again and again.

She did like his Virtual Grave idea though. It was existential too, even kind of morbid, but it was also practical. She believed in it. If only they could persuade Bob to take on the idea along with Sergey, who would be essential to developing it. Bob’s middle-aged clientele had to be interested in death. All they needed was a clever pitching strategy.

Vica turned to Sergey, who was still squeezing the steering wheel as if his life depended on it.

“Make sure it doesn’t sound like a pitch, okay?” she said. “Because if Bob catches even a whiff of a pitch he will shut you down. You have to be subtle and stealthy. We’re coming to see Vadik’s apartment, and we’ll talk about his apartment, and then when Bob is happy and drunk, you’ll just mention it, okay? Not to Bob, but to everybody. And don’t wait until Bob gets so drunk that he misses it. Okay?”

“Why don’t I just shout ‘Nodeathno’! Would that be subtle enough?” Sergey asked and then burst out laughing.

This time Vica did hit him.

They parked too close to the curb. The right front tire was up on the pavement, but Sergey shot Vica such a look that she decided to keep silent. It was a shock to come out of the air-conditioned car into the fierce July heat. It was past seven, but it was still unbearably stuffy. Staten Island was just as hot, but at least there an occasional ocean breeze made it possible to breathe.

Vadik’s street was a narrow one, with crooked five-story buildings clinging to one another, flimsy trees with listless branches looking parched, and piles of garbage bags exuding all kinds of rotting smells, fruit and fish and diapers all together. Unlike the other buildings on the street, Vadik’s looked empty and new, seemingly out of place, as if it had been put there by mistake.

“It has a terrace! I love it!” Vadik had told them.

“I’ll give him two months to start hating it,” Sergey whispered to Vica.

Vadik had moved to New York eight years ago, but this was his sixth housewarming party.

The problem wasn’t that Vadik couldn’t find a suitable place to live, but that he couldn’t figure out what kind of place would be suitable for him. For most people, the choice of apartment was determined by their financial situation, social status, and personality. But for immigrants it was more challenging. They couldn’t figure out what their social status was, their financial future was murky, and relying on one’s personality seemed too frivolous. Most immigrants just picked a ready-made “house in the suburbs/ski trip every year” lifestyle. That was what Vica and Sergey had done by moving all the way out to Staten Island, where there was space for a family and a little more room in the budget.

Not Vadik though. He decided to let his personality guide him, which turned out to be problematic. “Vadik shed his old personality when he left Russia, and the new one hasn’t grown in yet,” Sergey said after Vadik’s fourth housewarming. “What he has now is a set of borrowed personalities that he changes on a whim.”

“You’re just jealous,” she replied.

But that wasn’t true. It was Vica who was jealous of Vadik. Jealous of Regina too. Jealous of their money, of their freedom, but most of all of the boundless opportunities the future still held for them.

“You’re here! You’re here! You’re here! The boy-genius and our perpetually angry little lynx!”

Vadik squeezed both of them in a hug. Sergey was just a little bit taller than Vica, but Vadik was much taller. He was wearing an apron over skinny jeans and a new expensive cologne. A lot of people found Vadik handsome. He had the straw-colored hair, prominent cheekbones, large mouth, and typical Russian nose that started unimpressively but gained in heft and complexity at the tip. Vica wasn’t sure if that qualified as handsome to her. One thing was clear though, Vadik shouldn’t have shaved his clumpy beard. He had that beard on and off. When he had it, Vica would pull on it and complain about how ugly it looked. But when he shaved it off, she found herself missing it. She thought if he still had the beard, that “angry little lynx” comment would have sounded nicer and funnier. Another thing was that Vadik was too tall and burly for an apron, and too Russian-looking for skinny jeans. The jeans must have been Sejun’s idea. Vadik and Sejun had recently met through the Hello, Love! dating app. According to Vadik, Sejun was “exciting and complex.”

“I’ll give it two more months, three at the most. Then he’ll dump her,” Vica said to Sergey.

“I think she’ll dump him,” Sergey replied.

“Where’s Sejun?” Vica asked Vadik.

“She’s back in Palo Alto. I don’t want to jinx anything…but there’s been talk about her moving here. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

“We all are,” Sergey said, and Vica kicked him a little. They all secretly joked about the fact that Vadik couldn’t keep a girlfriend for more than three months. He claimed that he had found and lost the love of his life on his first day in New York. They didn’t really believe him. What was more likely was that his love problems had to do with his quest to find his own personality. He couldn’t possibly know what kind of a woman he needed before he decided what kind of a man he wanted to be.

That was another thing that made Vica jealous of Vadik. He was free to make bad choices. He could do something and then immediately undo it. She was stuck with what she had. Forever. She had been so eager to jump into that “forever” when Sergey asked her to marry him. Now the word made her head spin with horror.

“How’s Eric?” Vadik asked.

“Good, fine,” Vica answered. “He’s in the Poconos with Sergey’s mom.”

She was always surprised when Vadik asked about their son. Most of the time he seemed to forget about Eric’s existence. Regina was the same way. Vadik had a biological child in Russia. He had donated his sperm to a couple who had had trouble conceiving, and he knew that the wife had gotten pregnant, but he never even bothered to ask if they had a boy or a girl.

“Don’t just stand there — come in, explore!” Vadik said, and prodded Vica in the back.

The living room was pretty unimpressive: large and dark. Very little furniture. No dining table, no chairs. Just a coffee table next to a skinny leather couch, two leather puffs, and a large flat-screen clipped to a bare wall.

“Nice! It has a futuristic-lab vibe,” Sergey said.

“Two bedrooms?” Vica asked.

“One,” Vadik said, “but enormous. With a terrace! And there are two bathrooms — one right off the kitchen. The kitchen is quite something here! Let me show you.”

“Whoa!” Sergey said.

The kitchen was narrow and frightening, lined with gray floor-to-ceiling cabinets and chrome equipment. There was a huge marble counter with the stove in the middle of it that jutted right at them.