Still Here (2 page)

“You're here! You're here! You're here! The boy-genius and our perpetually angry little lynx!”

Vadik squeezed both of them in a hug. Sergey was just a little bit taller than Vica, but Vadik was much taller. He was wearing an apron over skinny jeans and a new expensive cologne. A lot of people found Vadik handsome. He had the straw-colored hair, prominent cheekbones, large mouth, and typical Russian nose that started unimpressively but gained in heft and complexity at the tip. Vica wasn't sure if that qualified as handsome to her. One thing was clear though, Vadik shouldn't have shaved his clumpy beard. He had that beard on and off. When he had it, Vica would pull on it and complain about how ugly it looked. But when he shaved it off, she found herself missing it. She thought if he still had the beard, that “angry little lynx” comment would have sounded nicer and funnier. Another thing was that Vadik was too tall and burly for an apron, and too Russian-looking for skinny jeans. The jeans must have been Sejun's idea. Vadik and Sejun had recently met through the Hello, Love! dating app. According to Vadik, Sejun was “exciting and complex.”

“I'll give it two more months, three at the most. Then he'll dump her,” Vica said to Sergey.

“I think she'll dump him,” Sergey replied.

“Where's Sejun?” Vica asked Vadik.

“She's back in Palo Alto. I don't want to jinx anything…but there's been talk about her moving here. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.”

“We all are,” Sergey said, and Vica kicked him a little. They all secretly joked about the fact that Vadik couldn't keep a girlfriend for more than three months. He claimed that he had found and lost the love of his life on his first day in New York. They didn't really believe him. What was more likely was that his love problems had to do with his quest to find his own personality. He couldn't possibly know what kind of a woman he needed before he decided what kind of a man he wanted to be.

That was another thing that made Vica jealous of Vadik. He was free to make bad choices. He could do something and then immediately undo it. She was stuck with what she had. Forever. She had been so eager to jump into that “forever” when Sergey asked her to marry him. Now the word made her head spin with horror.

“How's Eric?” Vadik asked.

“Good, fine,” Vica answered. “He's in the Poconos with Sergey's mom.”

She was always surprised when Vadik asked about their son. Most of the time he seemed to forget about Eric's existence. Regina was the same way. Vadik had a biological child in Russia. He had donated his sperm to a couple who had had trouble conceiving, and he knew that the wife had gotten pregnant, but he never even bothered to ask if they had a boy or a girl.

“Don't just stand there—come in, explore!” Vadik said, and prodded Vica in the back.

The living room was pretty unimpressive: large and dark. Very little furniture. No dining table, no chairs. Just a coffee table next to a skinny leather couch, two leather puffs, and a large flat-screen clipped to a bare wall.

“Nice! It has a futuristic-lab vibe,” Sergey said.

“Two bedrooms?” Vica asked.

“One,” Vadik said, “but enormous. With a terrace! And there are two bathrooms—one right off the kitchen. The kitchen is quite something here! Let me show you.”

“Whoa!” Sergey said.

The kitchen was narrow and frightening, lined with gray floor-to-ceiling cabinets and chrome equipment. There was a huge marble counter with the stove in the middle of it that jutted right at them.

“What's this about?” Sergey asked, tugging on Vadik's apron and pointing at the gleaming collection of pots and pans.

“Exploring molecular cuisine,” Vadik said.

“Uh-huh,” Sergey said.

“I bought an immersion cooker and this amazing new app to go with it. It's called KitchenDude. It tells me what to do. After I put the food in the cooker, I get texts that inform me about its progress. Like right now I have osso buco in there, and I'll get a text when it's ready.”

Vica sighed. Another maddeningly banal app.

“What did you call it? Bossa nova?” Sergey asked.

“Osso buco!” Vica corrected him. “I can't believe you don't know about this dish. It's mentioned in every American TV series.”

Something buzzed with an alarming intensity.

“The bossa nova ringing you?” Sergey asked.

“Osso buco!” Vica hissed.

“No, our friends are ringing me,” Vadik said and rushed to open the door.

Regina raised both her arms to hug Vadik, a frosted bottle of champagne in each hand. Back in Russia, Regina had been a famous translator of North American literature. She'd even won a bunch of important prizes, as had her mother, who was even more famous. Both Sergey and Vadik mentioned the two women's “magical touch.” Vica wasn't persuaded. She had picked up Regina's translation of
The Handmaid's Tale
and wasn't impressed at all. She then read
Howards End
in translation by Regina's mother and didn't love it either. The books were boring, but to be fair, perhaps that was Atwood's and Forster's fault, not Regina's or her mother's.

When Regina was younger, people had often commented that she was a dead ringer for Julia Roberts. Vica always found that ridiculous. Regina did have a long nose and a big mouth, that was true, but she had never been pretty. She had always been clumsy and unkempt, and not very hygienic. Now that she was a rich man's wife, she had managed to clean up a bit, but she seemed to wear her newfound wealth like a thin layer over her former subpar self. Her monstrously crooked toes showed through her Manolo sandals and her long Nicole Miller dress clung to her deeply flawed body. Bad posture, pouches of fat. With all that money and free time, Vica thought, Regina had an obligation to take better care of her body.

Bob was different. Bob was so neatly packed into his clothes that they appeared to have been drawn on him. He had the solid frame of a former football player and a shaved head that gleamed under Vadik's fluorescent lights. His face was impenetrable, like a marble egg. He was ten years older than Regina. Which would make him what? Fifty? Regina said that Bob wasn't “really” rich. Not at all. What he had was moderate success, and he would never become a billionaire. He was too old—the field belonged to the young guys. In fact, Bob would have laughed if he knew that Vica considered him rich. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Vica thought.

Still, Regina fascinated Vica. She often wished that they could be closer. Back in Moscow, it was Vica who thwarted all of Regina's attempts at friendship. Ever since Sergey had dumped Regina to be with Vica, Vica had been suspicious of her, had expected Regina to get back at her, to harm her in some way. If Vica was in her place, she wouldn't have accepted defeat with such calm. “But she is not like you,” Sergey would tell her, “Regina is not like you at all.” Then when Regina came to stay with them after her mother died, Vica felt so sorry for her that she offered Regina all the warmth she could summon. But Regina appeared to be thoroughly indifferent. And when she married Bob and came to live in the United States, she was cold and standoffish to Vica. Vica started to suspect that Regina felt that being friends with Vica was beneath her. She must have felt that way. Vica worked as an ultrasound technician and struggled to keep her family afloat, while Regina had a Ph.D. and knew all those languages and lived in Tribeca.

Vica watched how Bob inched past them and planted himself on the couch. She couldn't read his expression. Vica had lived in this country for many years now, but she still didn't understand Americans. Especially American men. She had a vague understanding of women, because she'd watched every season of
Sex and the City
three times over. But a man like Bob—what made him tick?

“Young people,” Regina told her once. “He hates that they're running the tech business.”

“What else?”

“What else? Death. Death makes him tick. He's scared of death.”

“Isn't that true of everybody?” Vica asked.

“No. When I think of death, I just get depressed. But Bob's been gearing up to fight it.”

“How?” Vica asked.

“Well, for one thing, he's obsessed with preventive measures.”

Vica had made a mental note to remember that.

“Vica!” Regina cooed, reluctantly making an attempt to hug Vica but not quite doing it. Regina's eyes had recently developed a strange glazed look as if she had trouble focusing. People thought she was perpetually stoned, but Vica knew that the glaze came from watching TV shows for eight to twelve hours a day. Regina didn't have children and she didn't have to work for a living. She would wake up in her enormous Tribeca loft, make herself a pot of coffee, and spend the day on the couch watching
Frasier, Seinfeld,
and
Cheers
reruns plus all the new shows that popped up on the screen. Their apartment had one of the best views in the city, but Regina preferred to keep the blinds closed to avoid the glare on her TV screen.

“When I think about what it does to my brain,” Regina once said to Vica, “I imagine a melting ice cream cone, all gooey and dripping. It's terrifying. The other night I struggled to read a Lydia Davis story. She used to be my favorite writer. There were just one hundred and sixteen words in the story. I spent two hours reading it and I couldn't finish it!”

Vica often wondered if Regina remembered that she owed her good fortune to her. Regina met Bob two years ago when she came to spend a week with Vica and Sergey. Vica had designed a very tight cultural program for them to follow, but then one evening, when she and Regina were going to see a Broadway show, both Sergey and Eric came down with the flu, so Vica had to stay at home. She made Regina go alone. “Make sure you sell the extra ticket!” she told her again and again. Regina sold the extra ticket to Bob. Six months later he asked her to marry him. Asked Regina! Regina, with her crooked toes and her ill-fitting bras. Some people were just lucky like that.

Sergey sat down next to Bob.

“So, Bob,” he said. “How's business?”

“Can't complain. What about you?”

“Funny you should ask. I've been working on something really amazing.”

Vica tensed and frowned at Sergey. Now was not the time! He had no idea how to be subtle. Last year at Regina's birthday, Sergey had cornered Bob in the kitchen and started whispering in his shaky drunken English, spitting into Bob's ear and into the bowl of Regina's homemade gazpacho that Bob was holding in his hands. “Bob, listen. Listen, Bob. Bob! We need an app that would provide immediate physical contact to people who need it. Like a touch or a hug. Real touch. The opposite of virtual! Like when you're feeling lonely and you're, let's say, in Starbucks or at the mall, and you press a button and find somebody in the immediate vicinity—in the same Starbucks or in the same stupid Macy's—who wouldn't mind holding your hand or patting you on the shoulder. Do you get it, Bob? Bob?” And Bob had winced, then shrugged and tried to squeeze past Sergey or at least to move the bowl away from Sergey's face.

Finally he had shaken his head and said, “You immigrants think of apps as this new gold rush.”

“Yes, we do,” Sergey had said. “What is so wrong about that?”

“Oh, my poor friend.” Bob had smirked.

The mere memory made Vica shudder. Now she grabbed Sergey by his sleeve and dragged him away.

They all drank champagne on the terrace.

The door to the terrace was in the bedroom, so they had to walk along the long hall and then through the bedroom past Vadik's unmade bed. Vica found his crumpled mismatched sheets stirringly indecent.

Outside, they leaned over the railing and pretended to admire the view. Vadik's apartment was on the fourth floor, so there wasn't much to see. It was still very hot, but now there was a warm breeze that felt more like a jet coming out of a hair dryer than a refreshing one.

“Can I make a toast?” Bob asked.

“Sure, man,” Vadik said.

Look at him sucking up to his boss, Vica thought.

“So you're all what, thirty-eight, thirty-nine now, right?” Bob asked them.

“Yep,” Vadik agreed.

“Hey, I'm thirty-five!” Vica said, but Bob ignored her.

“That's a crazy age,” he continued with the hint of a smirk. “Kind of like puberty for adults. When you're forty, you're branded as what you really are, no wiggle room after that—you gotta accept the facts. People do a lot of crazy shit right before they turn forty.”

But I still have a little wiggle room, right? Vica thought.

“You know what I did between thirty-nine and forty?” Bob asked. “I divorced my wife, sold my house, quit my corporate job, started DigiSly, and ran for office.”

“I didn't know you ran for office,” Vadik said. “Which office?”

“Doesn't matter. It didn't work out,” Bob said. “My point is, let's drink to Vadik, and to all of you and to your pivotal time in life!”

They cheered and drank.

I'm younger. I must have at least some wiggle room! Vica thought. She took a sip of her champagne and the bubbles got into her nose. She snorted, then choked and started to cough.

Vadik pounded her on the back.

“Better?” he asked. She nodded.

His expensive cologne had worn off and now he had his dear familiar smell of briny pickles. She remembered that smell ever since she and Vadik had dated in college, and also from the miserable day five years ago when they'd spent two hours kissing on the couch in her house on Staten Island. She'd reached for him, but he'd jerked away and the buckle of his belt scratched her right cheek. It had even drawn a little blood. Vadik acted as if he had long forgotten those two hours. One hour and forty minutes to be exact. He was right. It was wiser to forget. It was always wiser to forget, to let go, to not expect too much, to not demand too much from life.