Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

What a relief. What a relief, Regina thought. I’m so happy.

The microwave beeped again, demanding her attention, but Regina ignored it. She walked into the bedroom, got into bed, turned to the wall, and started to sob.

She must have dozed off because an urgent buzzing in her pelvic area roused her. She found her phone in the pocket of her cardigan and checked the message. Her calendar app was reminding her that she had a “Dinner with Bob’s team” today. They were celebrating the official start of their Dancing Drosophilae project. Regina groaned. She could barely tolerate Bob’s team on a normal day, but today it would be torture. And she couldn’t possibly skip the dinner. It was really important to Bob that she go to these dinners, much more important than her fitting in with his family. She could kind of understand that. Bob’s team was his essence in a way that his family wasn’t. His family was a given, but it was he who had picked the team, created the team, lived and breathed with the team. Regina had never felt more alienated from Bob than she did at these dinners. It wasn’t just that the team members seemed like aliens to her and she could never find anything to talk to them about; her worst concern was that Bob would inevitably turn into a stranger. He couldn’t help but look at her through the eyes of his team, and through the eyes of his team she was a sorry sight. A gawky, homely, expensively but still unflatteringly dressed, gloomy, tongue-tied woman. Bored. That was probably the worst. Bob took it as personal affront if she looked bored when they discussed business.

She sent a quick text to Vadik to ask if he would be there tonight. She needed all the support she could get to survive the dinner. Vadik replied: Yes, of course. He was part of Bob’s team, wasn’t he?

She took a shower and put on “safe” clothes that weren’t striking but never looked awful either. It was her face that was the problem. Her skin was blotchy and creased and her eyes were so puffy that she could barely open them. Cucumber mask. She had heard some women (possibly Vica) mention that it helped reduce swelling. She did a quick Google search and found a video of a Korean woman dressed in a black bra and panties grating a whole cucumber and slapping it onto another woman’s face. Regina rushed into the kitchen. Luckily there was a cucumber in the fridge. She grated it, but since there was nobody to slap it onto her face, she simply held her breath and pressed her face against the cold green mound on her cutting board. She ate the couple of cucumber shavings that got into her mouth and decided that she felt better, far from great but ready to face the team.

The restaurant that Bob chose, Borghese, was everything that Regina hated about New York restaurants. The decor resembled a library/dining room/wine cellar in a medieval castle. There were cavernous hallways, antique wine barrels, and shelves filled with old books. While Regina had to admit that it did evoke the life of medieval nobility, why would a medieval nobleman eat in a library or read in his wine cellar? The hostess led Regina through the labyrinth of tables all the way to the back. The place was nearly empty. There were just a few couples here and there, looking bored and cold. They were clearly outnumbered by the army of snotty-looking and impeccably attired waiters, eyes trained on their unprotected customers. They reminded Regina of the birds in the Hitchcock movie.

She saw Bob in the very back presiding over a long table aligned with benches rather than chairs. Across the table from him were three ethnically diverse men. Bob had told Regina that he liked to hire immigrants because they were both brave enough and naive enough to tackle impossible tasks.

Bob’s men were sitting with their backs to Regina, but it was easy to recognize them. The widest and most relaxed back with a lush silk-clad muffin top belonged to Laszlo Zelahy, Bob’s CEO, the man with whom Bob went “way back.” He didn’t have a perfect athletic body like Bob’s, but he seemed just as comfortable in his own skin. The shortest, skinniest, and tensest back belonged to Nguyen Tan, Bob’s director of marketing, who was very much into martial arts and claimed that he could break a TV with his little finger — Regina planned to take him at his word one of these days. Not now though, not while she still cherished her TV so much. The longest, slightly awkward back belonged to Dev Mazoomdar, the most brilliant of Bob’s programmers. Vadik disagreed that Dev was all that brilliant, saying that all he had was an incredible ability to focus. He burrowed into his work as if it were a tunnel. But perhaps that was what brilliant meant, Regina thought. Back when she worked in Russia, she had to have a truly amazing ability to burrow. Did that make her brilliant too?

Vadik wasn’t there yet. Regina sighed.

Bob waved her over. Regina waved back and put on a bright smile. Laszlo, Nguyen, and Dev all made an honest attempt to stand up and greet her, but since that involved moving the bench back, which required excellent coordination from the three of them, they decided not to bother. They greeted her by raising and twisting their bodies. “Hi, guys,” Regina said, making her way to Bob’s side of the table.

“Honey,” she said, but Bob raised his finger to shush her. Bob was deep in a wine list that looked as thick as Infinite Jest, and he was not to be disturbed. Bob had taken not one but three different wine classes, so he knew his wine. One of the waiters brought over the bread. Regina took a piece, dunked it into the tiny dish of olive oil, and started to chew. The bread was good, but Regina found that she couldn’t enjoy it. Something was missing and she knew exactly what that was. The TV screen. She looked around, hoping to spot ESPN at the bar — no such luck. Instead, there was a gloomy-looking pianist in the corner tapping his finger against the closed top of his instrument. Regina was itching to be entertained. She raised her eyes to the three men across the table from her. All were hopeless at conversation. Dev never spoke. She could possibly prod Nguyen to talk about martial arts, but why would she want to do that? And Laszlo was studying her himself, at a loss as to what to talk to her about. A gloomy Russian woman like her.

“Some day, huh?” he finally said. “Freezing!”

“Yeah,” Regina answered with a too-wide smile. She had had to learn how to smile when she got to the U.S., but she couldn’t calibrate her smiles yet.

Bob was now talking to the sommelier, and she knew better than to disturb him. She knew his main goal was not to pick the perfect wine for his dinner but to impress the sommelier, to make him realize that this squarely built bald man knew his wine better than most people, and definitely better than the sommelier himself. The sommelier answered with a respectful smile, but Regina couldn’t help but see some disgust underneath it. “You think I care, buddy?” he seemed to be saying from behind that mask of politeness. Regina turned away, embarrassed for Bob. The desire to watch TV was getting overwhelming.

“Taste it!” Bob said when the sommelier poured a trial splash into Bob’s glass.

“Why?” Regina asked.

“Just taste it,” Bob insisted.

“I can’t even tell white from red with my eyes closed! Why would I taste it?” Regina asked.

The sommelier snickered and quickly covered it with a cough. Now it was Bob’s turn to be embarrassed. He nodded to the sommelier to fill everyone’s glasses and gave Regina a long, displeased look.

“You have something on your face,” he whispered. “On your cheek, closer to your right ear.”

Regina touched her face and found a few damp slivers of cucumber. She removed them with a furtive glance at the men. Fortunately, they were too polite to show that they’d noticed anything.