Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

It was incredible how all his friends denied him the ability to experience genuine heartbreak. None of them cared about his breakup with Sejun. None of them took his suicide attempt seriously. None of them even pretended to believe that what he had had with Rachel I was love. There were times when he doubted it himself, yes, but he never let himself doubt it for long, because the loss of Rachel was the only thing that gave his life in America a hint of tragic beauty. Without it, all that had happened to him in all those years was a stupid farce. A ceaselessly spinning carousel of crazy women. He would hop on and hop off, hop on and hop off, and there was no end to it.

The immersion cooker announced its readiness with a series of happy beeps. Vadik mixed chopped broccoli florets with ground chicken, added minced garlic and ginger, poured over some soy sauce, and put the green-gray mass into the cooker.

“How much longer? I barely had any breakfast today,” Sergey yelled from the living room.

“Eight minutes, forty-three seconds,” Vadik said.

“Good!” Sergey said. “I think we should go out tonight.”

“Aren’t you going to Staten Island?”

“No. Eric’s on a school trip to Washington.”

The bathroom door opened and closed, and a few seconds afterward Vadik could hear Sergey’s flawed rendition of a Cohen song filter down the hallway.

Vadik went into the living room and sat down on Sejun’s squeaky loveseat. He had counted on Sergey’s being on Staten Island tonight because Vica had finally asked him out after all. She’d called and said that she really needed to talk to him, and suggested a nice place for dinner. Hole in the Woods. Right off Union Square, so it was convenient for both of them. She said that Saturday at six would work best for her, because she was doing a weekend shift until five thirty. Vadik had no interest in dating Vica, and he was fully prepared to turn her down, but he couldn’t possibly tell Sergey that he was meeting her. And if he just told him that he was going into Manhattan, Sergey would definitely want to go with him.

A series of loud beeps broke his reverie. There were two messages on his phone: “Your food is ready, dude” and “Seriously, dude.” Vadik made himself stand up and went into the kitchen. The chicken and broccoli looked gray and pathetic, and smelled like burned garlic.

They ate it anyway.

After lunch Sergey went back to work and Vadik tried to read some Sartre.

“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.” Vadik wondered if he should tweet it or post it on Tumblr. He decided to tweet it. And a few minutes later this: “Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.” #KnowThyselfie now seemed stupid, so Vadik changed it back to #KnowThyself.

Around five, Sergey knocked on his door. To be fair, he always knocked.

“I’m done for the day. What time are we going out?”

Vadik cleared his throat and looked away.

“I have a date tonight.”

“Nice! With who?”

“Just this girl I met online.”

Sergey shrugged. “I could never understand online dating.”

“And why is that?” Vadik asked.

“It’s just so rational, so unromantic.”

“And what is romantic in your opinion?”

“A sudden meeting, a thunderbolt kind of thing.”

“Like what you had with Vica?” Vadik didn’t want to be mean, but he couldn’t help it.

Sergey tensed. “Yes, or like what you had with Rachel,” he said and left the room.

But an hour later, they were fine again, and Sergey said that he’d walk Vadik to the subway and then go for a long stroll around the neighborhood.

And so they walked to the subway, a grumpy Vadik and Sergey, delighted with everything — strange angles of buildings, graffiti, window displays, girls with funny hair, girls with funny shoes on, girls in funny shorts over funny tights—“I don’t even want to talk to them. I’m just happy that they are in such near proximity.

“Would you look at that graffiti!” Sergey exclaimed, pointing to the crumbling wall of a building across the street.

Vadik squinted, but all he could see was the green and yellow muddle of lines. Looks like vomit, he thought.

“I think these are aliens invading the earth,” Sergey said. “Reminds me of Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death .”

It was probably Sergey’s enthusiasm that annoyed Vadik the most. His ability to enjoy the same things that depressed Vadik proved that there was nothing wrong with Vadik’s surroundings, but that, instead, there was something wrong with Vadik himself.

“Look at it, it’s really good!” Sergey insisted.

“I can’t see,” Vadik said.

“I’m worried about your eyesight. You should seriously check it out.”

Was it just Vadik, or was Sergey starting to sound like a wife?

It was such a relief to finally reach the subway and part ways.

He had to prepare himself to reject Vica though. He hadn’t heard about Hole in the Woods before, but the name sounded peculiar, and he imagined that it would be dark and romantic and they would be sitting in a booth, and at some point she would touch his hand. Would it be rude if he moved his hand away? Would she take the hint or continue with her advances? Wouldn’t it be better if he told her right away that they couldn’t possibly be a couple? He thought about it all the way to the Union Square stop.

He couldn’t find the damn place. He checked Fourteenth Street and Seventeenth Street, the east side and the west side. The restaurant wasn’t there. He even asked a few passersby — nobody had heard of it. He thought for a second that it was some stupid prank. He felt like a fool. Then he got a text from Vica. “Where are you? I’m already in.” “I can’t find it,” he texted back. “It’s right off the south side of the square.” He walked back to the south side. There wasn’t a single restaurant there. Just Burlington Coat Factory, Forever 21, and the huge Whole Foods.

Then it dawned on him. Whole Foods! That was what Vica had said. She didn’t mean to meet him in a dark romantic place. She meant the fucking salad bar at fucking Whole Foods.

He saw her right away, standing at the counter with a little paper container in her hand, dressed in a nondescript pantsuit and looking wan in the harsh fluorescent lights. She didn’t appear to be happy or excited to see Vadik. “Hi,” Vadik said, leaning in to hug her. She had the sad smell of a medical facility hanging about her, drowning out her perfume.

“Are you coming straight from work?”

“Yes, I signed up for a weekend shift since Eric’s not here. Grab some food. I’m starving.”

There was a pile of dry spinach leaves in her container and a large pile of shrimp that she must have picked out of the big vat of paella.

“Are you still eating according to your formula?” Vadik asked.

It took her a moment to understand what he meant. She forced a smile.

“Yes, kind of.”

Eight years before, when Vadik first arrived in the U.S., Vica shared a few personal survival rules with him, just as he did for Regina six years later. One of Vica’s tips was about choosing food in a salad bar.

“If you want to get the best value, pick the items that cost the most and weigh the least. Don’t pick a piece of meat that has a bone in it, like a chicken drumstick, bones give it extra weight. Don’t drown your salad in dressing, it’s both heavy and unhealthy; skip the gravy; pick the shrimp out of the pasta dish; pick the octopus out of the octopus and chickpea salad; leave the carrots and potatoes in the stew.”

Vadik quickly put some salad into his container and followed Vica to the cashier.

They picked a table by the window overlooking the square. It seemed squashed by the surrounding buildings.