Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

Vadik walked closer and took her in his arms. He had an erection. How stupid the human body is, Vica thought and moved away.

“Are you hungry?” Vadik asked. “Should we order something?”

Vica shook her head. She said she wanted to watch TV.

Doctor Who ? Vadik asked.

Vica said she didn’t care.

They watched a couple of episodes of Doctor Who, then went to bed, Vadik in his room, and Vica in what used to be Sergey’s room.

She woke up in the middle of the night burning with the worst panic she had ever experienced. She was in desperate need of comfort; she felt that if she wasn’t comforted right then, she would die. She got up and walked the short distance to Vadik’s room. His door was ajar, and the room was half lit by some feeble streetlights from the outside. Vadik was lying on his back, his mouth half open. Vica slipped under the covers and moved closer to him. He was so warm and so tall. His body took up a lot of space in bed. She hugged him and he hugged her back. They rolled over together so that she was underneath him now. He felt like the warmest, largest, most wonderful blanket. And so what if the blanket had a stiff dick, and so what if that dick was entering her? They were done in minutes, and Vica fell back to sleep immediately.

In the morning she felt much better, but nauseous with hunger. She went into the kitchen, cut herself a piece of cantaloupe, ate it, and went to shower. As she lathered herself with Vadik’s stinging body wash, she had a perfect Scarlett O’Hara moment. Tomorrow was another day, and today was tomorrow, and her goal was simple and clear — she had to get Sergey back.

No, Vadik wasn’t alarmed when he woke up and didn’t find Vica there. He was disappointed but not alarmed; he knew that she had to leave early to make it to work on time. The bathroom was still misty and fragrant after her shower and he found her freshly washed underpants hanging on the edge of the sink. The mere sight of them gave him a huge hard-on.

The kitchen had some traces of Vica’s presence as well. Some coffee left for him in the coffeemaker, a recently washed coffee mug and a spoon in the rack, a dollop of yogurt on the floor by the counter. He texted her: “How are you?” She replied almost right away: “Great! Thank you so much!”

Was she thanking him for fucking her? Or choosing to ignore the fucking and thanking him for letting her spend the night?

Both versions were disconcerting and painful.

He asked if he could see her. She texted that it was crazy at work, sending him into an agony of frustration. But then an hour later she offered to see him at lunch if he could come up there. He drank his coffee and went to his office in Dumbo, which seemed especially hideous that day.

Bob’s idea had been to furnish the office in an anti-Google way. He wanted conspicuously adult furniture with a cool modern feel. He adored Herman Miller pieces, which were elegant, sturdy, and expensive to the sight and touch.

Vadik sat down in his Aeron chair, thinking how much his ass hated the subtle curves of its seat, put his elbows on his glass-top desk, and started massaging his head. When he raised his eyes, he saw two flies moving across his computer screen. He made an instinctive movement to swat at them, but then remembered that they were part of the beautiful graphic design for their new project. They were deep into their work on the Dancing Drosophilae app. The new designer they hired offered to use the images of mating drosophilae just for fun. “Or, you know, whenever you find your genetic match, there would be a fly ‘hovering’ over your profile.” Both Bob and Laszlo thought this was brilliant. Now Vadik was in charge of embedding the flies’ movements into his script. The designer, whose name was Kieran, loved to make his life difficult. “Here, I made this little animation with the two flies tap-dancing together, let’s make sure it fits.” Making flies dance meant two more days of pointless idiotic work.

“Giddy-up, kids!” Laszlo yelled from his office. With Bob gone for a few weeks, Laszlo was in charge. Actually, Bob’s sudden departure was bizarre. He said that he had some urgent family business in Russia, that he was going there with his wife. Vadik had called and texted Regina several times, but she wouldn’t respond save for a brief note to let him know she was okay. They had never had a break in communication before. Regina’d acted so strangely at that team dinner back in February. He hoped she wasn’t having a nervous breakdown.

“Time to buckle down, pal!” Laszlo yelled to Vadik from his desk. Vadik made an effort to smile and peered into his screen with an expression of great concentration. Laszlo’s idea of leadership was to shower his employees with American idioms on the subject of hard work and devotion like “buckle down” or “dig in your heels” or “paddle your own canoe” that seemed to have been lifted from some out-of-date management manual. Vadik found himself unable to buckle down and just sat there staring into his screen and counting the minutes until he had to go meet Vica at a coffee shop on Fifty-third Street.

He arrived early and sat down on one of the squishy, slippery bar stools by the window. There she was, walking fast, almost running, crossing the street on the yellow light, waving to him, then opening the heavy door of the coffee shop. Panting, puffy-eyed, but radiant.

Vadik slid off the stool to give her a proper hug, but she squeezed past him and was up on her stool before he had a chance. They did kiss, and it was her kiss that told Vadik everything. Hurried and tense and trying so hard to pass for something friendly. He found everything about her embarrassingly stirring — her damp forehead, her forced smile, her sharp hospital smell — while she obviously didn’t want him at all, not even a little bit, and that was stirring too. It was over, whatever romantic history they had had together was over now, and it was as clear as day to Vadik, although not yet as clear to his dick. Oh, give up, will you! Vadik thought, addressing his inapt erection.

“So, how are you?” Vadik asked after they got their coffee and sandwiches.

“Much, much better!” Vica answered with her mouth full, then said that she had left her panties in Vadik’s bathroom. They hadn’t been dry and she had planned to stuff them into her bag, but she’d forgotten. She gave him an embarrassed smile that made him squirm.

She must have noticed his disappointment, so she started talking very fast, how she had been distraught last night and acting crazy, how she hoped that he wasn’t upset with her and that what had happened wouldn’t spoil their friendship.

Vadik rushed to assure her that he wasn’t upset in the least.

“Really?” Vica asked. “Good!”

She soon swerved to her favorite conversation topic: Sergey. Now she said that she had a plan to get him back and implored Vadik to listen carefully, because it was important for her to get a male perspective.

Is she really that insensitive? Vadik wondered. Or is this her way of telling me that we are back in the depths of the friend zone? This can’t be her revenge, can it? Because back then after their tryst on her Staten Island couch, it was Vadik who said that this was clearly a mistake. But no, he didn’t think so. Vica was tough, but she wasn’t malicious. It looked like she truly didn’t realize how much she was hurting him. He remembered how Sergey used to complain that Vica was emotionally obtuse.

“So I’m thinking something like this,” she was saying. “He comes to drop off Eric, right? And here I am, in my hottest outfit, but not like party-hot, more like casual-hot, or better yet homey-hot. A T-shirt and yoga pants? And I’ll have something on the stove, right? Warm, pleasant, homey atmosphere. And I’ll be kind and attentive to him. And hot. Like the best version of me, right?”