Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

Sergey tried to sound impressed, but since he didn’t know who Kotov was, it was hard.

“Oh, come on, man. Kotov? He’s rich. Insanely rich. He’s been on and off the list of the hundred richest men in Russia. And he’s way into the immortality business. He has a good life, so good that it’s understandable that he doesn’t want for it to end. Kotov is fifty-two and for the last few years he’s been looking to invest in whatever will help him live longer. He’s built this huge high-tech yoga gym and a chain of health food stores. He’s bought a whole fleet of medical-testing equipment along with some Swiss doctors to run the tests. He’s invested in cryonics. He shelled out ten million to NYU for a research grant on longevity just a few weeks ago. There’s a whole team of scientists working on the longevity formula. As far as I understand it, the secret to the formula is to up the dosage on multivitamins.”

Sergey felt as if Kuzmin’s lustful spit was flying from the telephone right into his ear. He moved the phone away. Now Kuzmin’s screaming reached Goebbels, who didn’t seem at all happy about it. Sergey stroked him behind the ears and asked: “So you really think he’d be interested?”

“That I can’t promise you, man. Kotov’s unpredictable. But we should definitely set up a talk. I got in touch with his assistant. He happens to be on his ranch in Costa Rica now, then before going back to Russia he’s going to spend a few days in New York. I guess we should pounce, man.”

“Let’s pounce,” Sergey said.

The meeting with Kotov was to be a “breakfast meeting” too. They set the time — nine — and the place — Kotov’s New York apartment on Eighty-sixth and Central Park West. Kuzmin suggested that they meet by the entrance so that they could go up to the apartment together. Sergey arrived five minutes early and had to stand leaning on the blue mailbox across from the building, while Kotov’s doorman eyed him suspiciously. Kuzmin arrived in a business suit and Sergey wondered if he had made a huge mistake wearing jeans and a sweater. “What is that?” Kuzmin asked, pointing at Sergey’s computer bag.

“My laptop, in case Kotov wants to see how it actually works.”

“Trust me, he won’t.”

The lobby of the building didn’t look as grand as he’d imagined. He thought that Bob and Regina’s place was more impressive, and the doorman here wasn’t nearly as imposing as theirs. Another thing that surprised Sergey was that he wasn’t all that anxious. Kuzmin, on the other hand, appeared to be a nervous wreck. He stuttered, he stumbled, he even farted while they were riding the elevator. Sergey pretended that he didn’t notice.

A puffy Uzbek woman in her fifties opened the door for them. She was wearing a long bright green tunic and wide pants underneath it.

“Hurry up!” she said when Sergey hesitated before entering — he couldn’t decide if he should remove his dirty shoes. “Hurry up! I have kasha on the stove.”

She led them into a spacious but drab living room, pointed to the gray sofa, and told them to sit down. “He will see you,” she said before retreating to the kitchen. Sergey noted that she didn’t add “soon” or “in a moment” to that sentence.

“He doesn’t use the place that often,” Kuzmin whispered in an attempt to justify the lack of glamour.

The only bright feature of the living room was the magnificent view of Central Park from the window. Sergey stood up to see it better, but Kuzmin hissed at him: “She told us to sit down.” His eyes were shiftier than ever, and he was visibly sweating and exuding a barely noticeable stench, as if something inside him had started to rot. Sergey sat down and listened to the faint sounds of the shower. Finally, the water stopped and they heard the loud bang of the bathroom door, and a few moments later Kotov appeared in the living room.

He was barefoot, wearing loose linen pants and a white cotton sweater, his short light brown hair wet from the shower. He smelled of something very expensive.

Sergey was surprised to find that Kotov was delicately built.

He shook hands and sat down across from them in a low armchair. He had an unusual face with thin lips, pointy ears, sharply defined cheekbones, and slanted gray eyes. The eyes of a bobcat, Sergey thought. He fixed his stare on both of them and seemed to be reading them carefully. His expression was tense, alert, wary. A protruding zigzaggy vein kept throbbing in his right temple.

The Uzbek woman walked in and sidled up to Kotov with a tray that held a single glass filled with thick yellow juice. “Orange mango,” she said. Kotov drained the juice, wiped his lips, and kissed her dark swollen hand.

“Thank you, darling,” he said with stifled affection in his voice.

She leaned in and kissed him on the top of his head with a fierce proprietary expression.

“Dinara used to be my nanny,” Kotov said after she had retreated into the kitchen. “I was ten and she was fifteen.”

“Was that your entire breakfast?” Kuzmin said with a stupid chuckle.

“I’ll have kasha when it’s ready.” He turned to the kitchen and yelled, “Dinara, how much longer?”

“Ten minutes,” she yelled back.

“Ten minutes,” Kotov said. “That should be enough for your pitch.”

“Plenty,” Sergey said. No, he wasn’t nervous. Not even a little bit. Probably because he wasn’t hoping to succeed. He was enjoying how calm he was, confident, arrogant. Arrogant was good, wasn’t it?

He managed to keep calm throughout the pitch, even though it was getting increasingly obvious that Kotov wasn’t and wouldn’t be interested. He kept scratching his neck, glancing toward the window, and checking his reflection in the gleaming surface of his Rolex. He wasn’t stirred by the beauty of Fyodorov’s philosophy. He wasn’t even a little impressed by the quote from Hamlet. It was clear that the rest would indeed be silence. That is, if Sergey didn’t come up with a new explosive punch line.

“Listen,” he said to Kotov, “my app won’t make you immortal. You will die.”

Kotov stopped playing with his Rolex.

Kuzmin audibly drew his breath in.

“But,” Sergey continued, “death is not what it used to be. You can actually screw it now. And that’s exactly what my app does.”

Now Kotov was listening with attention. He squinted, which made him look ruthless, more like the image of a shady Russian billionaire that Sergey had had in mind. He proceeded to give Kotov the details. At some point Kotov jumped out of his armchair and started pacing across the room. “Oh, the sweetness, the sweetness,” he moaned, looking out onto Central Park.

“I could arrange that for my wife. She would get a text from me. Every year for her birthday. ‘You’re a psycho bitch.’ ”

“Every year?” Sergey asked. “What if you change your mind?”

“Change my mind? I’ll be dead, dude!”

And right then Kuzmin squeaked from his seat: “We need two million in initial funding.”

Kotov frowned. “Two million? What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t need two million. Use programmers from Belarus, they’re dirt cheap! I’m giving you a million and a half, and then we’ll see.”

Sergey could barely register the rest of the talk. Kotov was going back to Russia. Kuzmin was to contact his accountant next week. Kotov would leave him the instructions. He expected to be informed about every aspect of the process. He wished them the best of luck.

“Can we trust him?” Sergey asked when he and Kuzmin exited the building.

“Oh, yes. He would never go back on his word. We got it!”

He made an attempt to embrace Sergey, but Sergey dodged the hug.

“We have to celebrate!” Kuzmin insisted. “Get brunch! Get drunk!”