Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

Sergey had no idea what to say to that. He wasn’t sure if James told this story to imply that he liked Sergey’s pitch or that he hated it.

“That’s scary,” he said.

“Yes!” James agreed. “That’s fucking terrifying. You know what my shrink once said to me? ‘Death is not what it used to be.’ He’s a funny guy, my shrink is. His specialty is tech entrepreneurs.”

Cleo cleared her throat. Both James and Sergey turned to look. The wall now had large prints of dandelions with seeds flying away toward the corner.

“I’m sorry, James,” she said. “Do you want me to put up the flowers on the other wall too?”

“Not right now, Cleo. I want to see how I feel about the dandelions first.”

Cleo shrugged and went to sit on the ottoman next to James. She took a half-eaten dosa out of the bag and took a small bite.

“We just wanted something fun and uplifting for the office,” she explained to Sergey.

Sergey doubted that dying dandelions were uplifting, but then he never claimed to understand visual art.

“So back to your app,” James said. “What exactly do you want from me?”

“M-money,” Sergey said.

James and Cleo laughed.

“I get that. How much?” James asked.

Everybody said that you should be very specific about the amount of money you were asking for, and Sergey had prepared financial information to go along with his pitch, but asking for a specific amount still struck Sergey as rude. He dove in anyway.

“Well, I need a million to develop it properly, but, I guess, not right away. Maybe three or four hundred grand to start?”

There was another communal chuckle, to which Sergey reacted with another painful spasm in his stomach.

“No,” James said, “that’s not how you do it. You have to ask for an exact amount. And you have to sound confident, even arrogant. Even if you’re shitting your pants — act like a dick!”

Sergey stared at him in confusion.

“That was the problem with your entire pitch,” James said. “Lack of confidence. Didn’t you think so, Cleo?”

“Totally,” she said and took another delicate bite.

“You’re this brilliant guy with a brilliant idea, right?”

Am I? Sergey thought.

“You have to learn how to sell yourself. You graduated from NYSB, that’s good, I guess, but not superimpressive. Then you say that you’ve been working on Wall Street, but it doesn’t get you very far, does it? Who hasn’t worked there? And the fact that you’ve never got promoted past a junior position doesn’t sound very good either. But if you say that you’re a brilliant Russian linguist who also happens to have an MBA, that sounds much yummier.”

It does sound good, Sergey thought. It had been years since he thought of his Ph.D. in linguistics as anything but useless.

“Now that you’ve interested me in your person, sell me your idea. The best way to do it is to appeal to my FOMO.”

Sergey tried to guess what that was. Did he miss this term in business school?

“Look, Cleo, this guy here doesn’t know what FOMO is.”

“James, Sergey’s an immigrant!” Cleo said. “Give him a break!”

“Okay, point taken. FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out, is the most powerful tool of manipulation right now. Years ago, a guy approached me with this idea for a new social media platform where your posts would be limited to 140 characters. I said no, that’s stupid. Why would I want to read people’s random shit? Now I feel like an ass!”

“Twitter’s stock is up about 133 percent from its IPO price of twenty-six dollars,” Cleo said with a pensive expression, a small piece of dosa still in her hand.

“See what I mean?” James asked Sergey.

Sergey pondered FOMO. It did sound like a viable manipulation tool, but his app was so much more than that. He offered to conquer the ultimate fear — the fear of death — not the pathetic anxiety of somebody else making a profit.

“Your next step is to persuade me that people have an urgent need for your app. Cleo? How do we appeal to the need?”

It wasn’t clear to Sergey if James was involving her to teach her how to make a successful pitch or to actually ask for her advice.

“Cleo here is a graduate of Wharton. No shit, huh?” he said to Sergey.

Cleo swallowed whatever she still had in her mouth and wiped her lips, looking pensive.

“You say something like this,” she started. “Our generation is the first one that has two lives: real and virtual. So far nobody knows what to do about our digital legacy after we die. Do we erase it? Do we allow it to remain active? Do we protect it from being overtaken? We know one thing: We can’t just let it fend for itself!”

“Perfect!” James said, staring at Sergey. “You appealed to my Jeff Ufberg situation. I’m hooked. Now you offer me your solution. Cleo?”

“Sure,” she said and stared at Sergey too. “Using my unique knowledge of linguistic algorithms, I can build an application that would allow us to preserve and re-create the voice of any Internet user, rendering him or her virtually immortal.”

Sergey marveled at how Cleo managed to effortlessly combine his and Vica’s ideas.

“Bingo!” James said. “And then after you’ve shown how huge and exciting this is, you ask me: ‘Are you in? Because if you’re not, you’re going to fucking regret it!’ ”

Sergey shifted in his seat. He was impressed. He had never felt more enthusiastic about Virtual Grave. He was finally sold on his own idea.

“You’re in then?” he managed to ask.

Cleo stood up, picked up the takeout bag from the table, and went to throw it in the garbage.

James looked away and exhaled. “No, Sergey, I’m not. And here’s why. Your project is just a little too visionary, too ahead of its time. I’m really impressed with you, man. But to be honest, I don’t see how it can make a lot of money. Sorry, pal.”

James stood up and offered his hand. Sergey didn’t have a choice but to stand up too. They shook hands. Then Cleo appeared at his side and led Sergey through the assembly labyrinth to the exit.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She had to shout to be heard over all the construction noise. “I really, really liked your idea!”

On the way back, the subway train was much roomier. Sergey pushed away a crumpled McDonald’s bag and stretched in the seat at the back of the train. He realized he wasn’t upset. Getting funding from James Kisco would have been too unreal, too good to be true, so it was only natural that Kisco had turned him down. But he seemed to genuinely like his idea. He did! He wouldn’t have wasted his time teaching Sergey how to pitch it if he hadn’t. And when he said that he didn’t see how Virtual Grave could make money, he meant huge money, Twitter, Uber, Eat’n’Watch kind of money, James Kisco money, celebrity money. Sergey didn’t need any of that. What he needed was to earn just enough so that he didn’t have to feel like a failure, didn’t have to work at a job that he did so badly at that it hurt. Just enough money to regain the respect of his family and friends. Nobody said that Virtual Grave couldn’t generate that kind of money. And James and Cleo did give him a very good pitch. Sergey took out a notebook and a pen from his pocket and wrote down the lines of the pitch: “Are you in? Because if you’re not, you’re going to fucking regret it!”

Sergey closed the notebook and smiled. Upset? No. He actually felt pretty good.

He got home, took a shower, and was making lunch for Goebbels and himself when he got a call from Kuzmin.

“I have the perfect guy for you. Perfect!” Kuzmin screamed into the phone. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of him right away. My good friend Dima Kotov!”