Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

“Grandma here?” he asked.

“Any minute now.”

Vica learned to time her departure with Mira’s arrival to avoid her mother-in-law’s incredulous look, meant to convey that Vica’s decision to separate from Sergey was shocking at best, criminal at worst.

So as soon as Mira entered, Vica was at the door and rushing to the express bus stop. She had exactly one second to say hello and not a second more to hear Mira’s reply.

Vica made it to the stop just as the bus was pulling in with its wheezing, groaning, and farting noises. She paid her fare and went straight to the middle to take her favorite seat on the right side by the window. Vica loved the hour-long bus ride. The seats were high and stately. The microclimate was always perfect, it was never too hot or too cold, even in the worst weather. And this was the place where Vica could have her precious alone time, where she could work on Virtual Grave and dream and plan her life undisturbed.

So much has changed in these last few months, Vica thought while applying mascara. She had to acquire the skill of putting on her makeup on the bus to save time. First of all, she had finally stopped thinking about Sergey all the time. She no longer had recurring dreams about him. She no longer mistook strange men on a street for Sergey. She no longer tortured herself with regret. She still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that separation was the right thing to do, but what was done was done. She had consulted with a mediator about their separation agreement. The mediator had advised her to just get it over with. She had accepted her upcoming divorce as a fact. And she had made a profile for herself on Hello, Love!

Online dating was interesting, very different from what she used to know. Back when Vica last dated, the process was dreamily slow, like a Victorian novel. Vica would fantasize meeting a romantic stranger, she would wait and hope and look for him at a party, on a street, on a subway, in a cafeteria, in a college library. Then just as she stopped dreaming and waiting she would meet somebody. And then there would be a hopeful anxiety, and anticipation, and more dreams now centered around that particular man. And then her favorite part — trying to solve the puzzle of that man’s feelings and thoughts, reading letters, analyzing words, interpreting stares, reliving touches.

Now the slow Victorian-novel part was out. If anything, dating resembled a TV series, the stupid kind that Regina liked to watch. The plot was fast-paced but predictable; there wasn’t enough time to explore interesting situations or to properly develop the characters.

Online men came in packs of three or four or more. She would plan a date with one of them, while answering a message from another, while browsing to find somebody better. There always was somebody who seemed better even though Vica wouldn’t have been able to explain what “better” even meant. A better human being? A better lover? A better fit? It was the seeming endlessness of choices that filled Vica with panic. Thankfully, she had her two dating coaches: Vadik and pretty Liliana from work. When she found a guy she thought she liked, she ran his profile by her coaches. Both Liliana and Vadik warned her not to get too attached. “Because, you know,” Liliana said, “he’s on Hello, Love! so he is seeing other women too.”

The most recent guy’s name was Franc. He was thin, wiry, French Canadian, with those European movie-star features that Vica liked so much. He said that he worked as a freelance architect, but he wouldn’t tell Vica what his current project was. That was okay — she didn’t tell him where she worked either. The mention of a cancer hospital wouldn’t put anybody in the mood for love. Franc’s only apparent flaw was that he was deaf in one ear — the effect of a mysterious autoimmune disease triggered by stress. But that was just a charming detail, not a real problem, especially in light of how attractive he was. They went to bed after the first date. Well, actually, Vica wasn’t sure that it had been the right thing to do.

“How soon should I sleep with a guy?” she had asked Liliana.

“If you like him?” Liliana asked.

“Of course, if I like him! Why would I sleep with him if I didn’t?”

“Oh, many reasons, many reasons,” Liliana said.

“So when is it okay to sleep with a guy I like?” Vica asked again.

“Third date, I guess. If you do it on the second date, you would seem too eager. On the first date, you’d be a huge slut. And if you wait past the third date, there won’t be a fourth one.”

Vadik had a conflicting opinion. “If there is anything that guys hate it’s when women are too calculating. I want a woman to come to bed with me because we’re crazy about each other, because we both are dying to fuck, not because today happens to be the right date. And another thing that guys hate is when women present sex as this favor to a guy. There is nothing more off-putting.”

So Vica decided to go with her own intuition. She went to bed with Franc on their first date. It was awkward, but it was fun. She didn’t find seeing and touching a strange dick as repulsive as she’d feared. And soon she and Franc started seeing each other a couple of times a week, usually on weekends, sometimes after work, usually at his place.

Vica let out a little moan thinking of the weight of Franc’s body on hers, of going under, disappearing beneath him. A woman who sat across the aisle from her eyed her suspiciously. Vica straightened her back and turned away toward the window.

Vica even told her mother about the really nice man she was seeing. He gave her a La Perla slip for her birthday. She’d been dreaming of a La Perla slip for ages! It must have cost at least two hundred dollars, unless he had gotten it on sale. He said he wanted their relationship to be serious. He was eager to meet Eric. Vica meant to reassure her mother, she meant to show her that she was okay, that her life was good and only getting better, but her mother, usually so tough, started to cry.

As if to banish her mother from her thoughts, Vica took a small leather notebook out of her bag and started to work on her Virtual Grave proposal. She had so many ideas. If only she could have some real time to work on them. Vica did wonder if what she was doing was wrong. Virtual Grave was Sergey’s idea after all. It belonged to him even if he wasn’t doing anything about it. She had tried to talk to Vadik about it, but Vadik had tensed and said that Sergey had moved out and they weren’t speaking. He refused to tell her why. She decided that she’d talk to Sergey once the proposal was ready.

—

“Better protection for your social media accounts after you die,” she wrote. “Nobody should be allowed to post anything under your name.”

Her approach to this app was so much better than Sergey’s. In her version, customers would work on their own posthumous online presence while they were still here. They would be able to prepare for the time when they no longer would be. Having to work on that would actually help to prepare them for death itself. Alleviate some of the fear. She wondered what Ethan would think about that. Perhaps she could ask him that when he stopped to chat with her next time. Vica wondered if he had an appointment today. Last week he’d tweeted:

“Ultrasound technician,” Vica mentally corrected him.

She really wanted to talk to him about Virtual Grave. Her app was supposed to help people prepare. That was exactly what Ethan wanted. A thought about Ethan’s money crept through Vica’s mind like an ugly slug. What if he liked the idea so much that he offered to invest in it? He would be the ideal investor. He was both wealthy and high profile. Vica imagined the headline: Ethan Grail Invests in an App That Grants You Virtual Immortality on the Brink of His Own Death.