Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

“Don’t you just love Whole Foods?” Vica said. “So many choices and the best salad bar in the city!”

Vadik saw that she hadn’t intended to offer herself to him. In fact, it was clear that the thought of offering herself to him hadn’t even occurred to Vica. He felt relieved, but a little bit annoyed too. The idea of dating Vica suddenly seemed filled with irresistible narrative logic. A guy makes a clean break from his past, goes away, explores another country, has adventures, overcomes setbacks, only to make a full circle and return to the woman he loved in his previous life. He imagined telling all this to Regina and seeing her approving nods, her admiring smile. “Yes, Vadik, of course! That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

But the woman he loved in the past wasn’t even looking at him. Vica kept piercing spinach leaves with her fork as if she wanted to see how much she could pick up in one go.

“So tell me honestly now. How is he?” she asked.

Just last night Sergey had confided to Vadik that he was able to envision his future for the first time in years. Before, every time he tried to picture it, he felt as if he had opened a door and there was nothing but dark stinky smog outside. Now, he could see some vague but cheerful shapes.

Vadik couldn’t bring himself to tell this to Vica. He sighed and looked away.

“That bad, huh?” Vica said.

She put her fork on the table and ran her fingertips over the tines.

“It was the right thing to do, right?” she asked. “It’s been hell for the last few months. You have no idea. He would walk in the door and I would immediately start fuming, because he didn’t shut the door well enough, or he slammed it too hard, or he didn’t put his boots in the right place. Or, you know, I would look into his eyes, and his expression would be so harsh, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me. And I would get so angry, so angry that I would try to do something to make him hate me even more.”

She kept talking, picking up her salad with her fork, putting it back, looking up at Vadik as if begging him for support. She seemed to want some reassurance that she hadn’t made a horrible mistake. She looked thinner and younger in her distress. Less like American Vica, more like the Vica he remembered from their days in Russia. He had never been nostalgic for the past before, but now he found himself missing not just that Vica but his college days, his time in Moscow.

Vadik felt like reaching for Vica’s hand and pressing it to his face, to his lips. He imagined the tart taste of her skin. He looked away, afraid that she would read his mind.

They ate in silence for a minute or two. Then Vica said, “Okay, so I need your advice.”

Vadik nodded.

“I keep thinking of Virtual Grave.”

“Uh-huh,” Vadik said.

“You see, Sergey is a quitter. I’m not.”

Vadik didn’t have the heart to tell her that Sergey was actually working on the app like crazy, because it would reveal that he wasn’t pining for her all that much.

“Bob turned us down, because the idea was too morbid,” Vica said, “just as I’d predicted. I’d always wanted to make it more optimistic and upbeat. I actually had some great ideas. It was Sergey who wouldn’t budge. So I’m going to try to rework it. It doesn’t even need to be an actual app, just a service for people concerned with their online legacy. I was thinking of writing a business proposal and then maybe approaching some people at work. But it has to be more palatable. No more Fyodorov! What do you think?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Vadik said. “No more Fyodorov!”

He wondered if he was wrong to encourage her about Virtual Grave, especially since he knew that Sergey was working on it too. The fact was that neither Vica nor Sergey had a chance to succeed. So what was the harm in their trying? If anything, it would distract Vica from her pain.

Vica smiled. She still had that tense closemouthed smile, a leftover from the era of crooked teeth. Vadik had forgotten how much he had always liked that smile.

“Do you want to go listen to some music?” Vadik asked after they scraped the last of their salads off the bottom of their Whole Foods containers. “There are some excellent venues around here.”

“No,” Vica said, “I have a bottle of sauvignon blanc waiting for me in the fridge. I’m going to drink the entire bottle as I browse through Hello, Love! I’ve been looking forward to doing that for ages!”

Vadik squirmed. The idea of Vica on Hello, Love! seemed offensive to him. Disgusting. Unbearable.

“What’s wrong?” Vica asked.

“Nothing. Just something in my teeth,” Vadik said.

When Vadik hugged her before they parted, he was overcome by that smell again. The sharp, chemical, merciless smell.

The smell haunted him all the way back to Williamsburg and for hours after that. It was barely nine when he got home, but he went to bed right away.

He woke up around eleven with a dull headache and exasperation over a wasted Saturday.

He sat up in bed and called for Sergey. There was no answer. He walked into Sergey’s room, but he wasn’t there. This was unusual, because Sergey started his day at six and didn’t like to stay up past ten thirty. He dialed his number, but there was no answer. Should I worry? Vadik wondered, then decided that he shouldn’t. Not yet.

He went to the living room, plopped onto the couch, turned on Netflix, and browsed for a long time until he found what he wanted to watch. Doctor Who, the series with David Tennant. Vadik was on episode six of season three when he heard some commotion at the door. Did he forget the key again? Vadik thought and went to open the door.

There was Sergey leaning against the wall kissing a girl. When Vadik opened the door, the girl moved her face away from Sergey’s mouth and said, “Hello.” She was small, with large, widely set brown eyes, a pale face, and long dark hair highlighted with yellow. Her smile exuded unwarranted friendliness.

“Hi,” Vadik said and stared at Sergey.

“Rachel, meet Vadik. Vadik, meet Rachel,” Sergey said. He looked a little scared and a little embarrassed.

Rachel #3, Vadik thought, even though for Sergey it was Rachel #1.

“Pleasure!” Vadik said.

“Likewise!”

Then they all fell silent. Sergey was the one to break it.

“I’ve had a very nice time, Rachel,” Sergey said. “I’ll call you soon.”

She looked a bit disappointed.

“I’m going out of town for a while. But call. Sure, call. Or, you know, message me on Facebook.”

“Sure,” Sergey said, and he and Vadik went into the apartment.

“Here, I brought some food for you,” Sergey said and handed Vadik a large paper bag. Then he went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

The paper bag had the words FETTE SAU BARBECUE on it. Inside there were three pork ribs, half a pickle, and a chicken drumstick with neat round teeth marks on it.

Vadik turned the TV back on and bit into the chewed-on drumstick, marveling at the degree of his discontent.

On her sixth day in Moscow, Regina woke up at six A.M. There was a message on her iPhone. “Good morning, honey. How are you? Love, Bob.” She texted back: “Everything’s fine with me. I miss you. I love you very much.”

She tried to go back to sleep, but the sticky anxiety she felt about the task she had to accomplish today wouldn’t let her.

Her flight back to New York was scheduled to depart in thirty-six hours, but she hadn’t seen Aunt Masha yet or visited her mother’s grave. “I will definitely do it today,” she would say to herself every morning, and late every night while she undressed to go to bed, she would say to herself: “I will definitely go tomorrow.”