Still Here (36 page)

There was a forceful ring of the doorbell.

Bob, Vadik thought. Nobody else rang the doorbell with such poise.

“Am I the first to arrive?” Bob asked.

“Yep,” Vadik said.

It had been a little awkward between them since Vadik announced his decision to leave DigiSly.

“Of course, man, I get it,” Bob had said to him. “You need a change of atmosphere.” But there was hurt and incomprehension in his eyes. It was clear that he struggled to understand how anybody could want to leave such a cool job under such a wonderful boss. They shared a common pain though, and that was Sergey's success. Bob was suffering from a bad case of FOMO, even though he kept saying that he stood by his word that Virtual Grave didn't have a chance to become hugely successful.

“It's not a success yet, far from it,” Sergey said to Vadik when they were having drinks. “There is no way of knowing if there will be any revenue.”

But what had happened was better than financial success, and they both knew it. Sergey had created something from scratch, something he was passionate about; he had fought for it with all his might and he had won. While Vadik was back to square one, starting his life anew yet again.

“This looks nice and airy,” Bob said, walking into the living room and taking in the emptiness.

“Vodka?” Vadik asked.

“Sure!” Bob said.

“Is a coffee mug okay? I sold all my glasses.”

“A coffee mug of vodka would be very welcome!” Bob said. “With ice, please.”

Vadik handed him a mug with the words
#1 BOYFRIEND
. He couldn't remember whether it was a gift from Rachel II, the sane Sofia, or Abby. He poured a generous portion for himself into a mug with a picture of the Empire State Building on it.

They sat down right on the rug and took a few sips in silence. Bob picked up a dumpling on a fork and bit off about half of it.

Both Bob and Vadik were visibly struggling to find a conversation topic.

“Did you find an apartment in Singapore?” Bob asked.

“The company found one for me.”

Vadik's fortieth birthday was coming up a week after he was supposed to arrive in Singapore. He would have to celebrate it on his own. Fuck, that was depressing. He needed Bob to change the topic.

“So what's the process now with that little girl?”

“Nastya? We're working on her immigration papers. I have pretty solid connections, so everything should go smoothly on this side. Especially compared to the Russian bureaucratic nightmare. Regina is going back there in a week, and if all goes well, I'd say we could bring Nastya over in a couple of months.”

“Great!” Vadik said. “You must be excited.”

Bob swirled the ice in his mug and looked Vadik in the eye.

“To tell you the truth, man, I'm fucking terrified. Raising your own kid is tough. But a kid from an orphanage…”

“Regina said you've been very chipper throughout the whole thing.”

“Well, I had to put on a brave face for her sake.”

“But you are really sure this adoption is the right thing to do?” Vadik asked. He remembered Regina's telling him that Bob strongly believed in doing the “right things.”

“The right thing?” Bob asked. “Do you think there is the right thing to do for every situation? I don't! No, I'm not sure. Not at all! But that little girl, Vadik! My heart just goes out to her. And I think it's what Regina really wants too.”

“It'll be okay, Bob. I can feel that it will,” Vadik said, and they clinked their mugs.

The vulnerable, terrified Bob was somebody Vadik didn't have the chance to know. They could've been closer. Vadik felt a momentary regret, which was interrupted by the sharp ringing of the doorbell.

Vadik got up to let in Regina and Vica.

“Vadik!” Vica said. “Look how thin you are!”

They hadn't seen each other in months. Vica had felt that it was important not to aggravate things with Sergey.

“She's right,” Regina confirmed. “Let's hope they'll fatten you up in Singapore.”

Vadik went to retrieve two more mugs: one that had the figure of a jazz musician leaning back with his sax, and the other that simply said M
O
MA. He poured some vodka into each and handed the mugs to Regina and Vica.

“Isn't your birthday coming up?” Regina asked.

“Yep,” Vadik said. “I'll be in Singapore.”

“We'll make a virtual party for you!” Vica said. “We'll go to a resturant together and you'll be with us via Skype.”

Great, I'll be like a ghost, Vadik thought. Fortunately, Vica found a diversion.

“What's in there?” she asked, pointing to the huge plastic container in the corner.

“Random junk that didn't sell. Take anything you want.”

Vadik dragged the container closer and put it in the middle of the rug next to the food.

“What's that?” Bob asked, pointing to the wooden handle sticking out of the container.

“My first tennis racket,” Vadik said.

“It can't be!”

Bob reached for the racket and took his time examining it.

“My father used to have one exactly like that. I've seen it among his things.” He stroked the rough surface with his fingers.

Regina leaned into Bob and kissed him on the cheek. “You should take it, honey. It will be a nice memento.”

“Can I?” Bob asked.

“Sure,” Vadik said.

“Thank you, Vadik,” Bob said and put the racket in his lap.

“And I'll take these pretty dishes and this pot and—what is this, a vase?” Vica said.

“It's yours.”

By the time Sergey arrived, they were all digging through Vadik's stuff, getting a little tipsy and laughing.

“Drinking and pillaging, huh?” Sergey said. “I want in!”

Vadik handed him a mug with Warhol's Marilyn on it.

“Hey,” Sergey said, pointing to the tennis racket, “isn't it your first racket?”

“Is it? I thought Vadik was kidding,” Bob said.

Vadik picked the racket up and ran his fingers over the rough surface of the head. He bought it a few weeks after he had arrived in the country. Vica had explained to him that all middle-class Americans enjoyed playing tennis, and if he wanted to fit in, he would have to learn. Sergey had offered to teach him. “Rackets are expensive, buy one on eBay,” Vica had said. Vadik had had no idea what a tennis racket looked like. He had bought that one because it was the cheapest. Only twenty dollars.

“Oh, yeah, I remember,” Vica said. “He brought it to our court on Staten Island so that Sergey could teach him. Here we are, all ready to play, and Vadik produces this monstrosity! I mean, he was really going to play with it!” Vica was laughing so hard that she almost spilled her drink.

“That's right,” Sergey said, “I remember. And what about his first attempt to ski?”

Yeah, yeah, very funny, Vadik thought.

Downhill skiing was the other thing all middle-class Americans were supposed to enjoy. Vadik thought that he knew how to ski, because he had been an expert cross-country skier since he was a child and he could manage the steepest hills. So one day he just went to Shawnee Mountain (it was the cheapest and the closest), presented a half-off coupon, paid for his “after dusk” lift ticket, put on his rented boots, strapped on his rented skis, and took the lift to the top. This is spectacular! he thought, taking in the view of pink clouds at sunset. Within seconds, he made the rather painful discovery that he had no idea how to slow down or control his direction. He was zipping downward, gaining terrifying speed, sure that he would die and horrified that he would die a stupid, embarrassing death like this. Fortunately, he soon crashed into a snowboarder and managed to fall on the icy snow with most of his bones intact. He did break his wrist though. He had to abandon the skis and hobble all the way down in his ski boots, howling from the pain like some wounded wolf.

“Adaptation is a painstaking process,” Sergey had told him as he drove him to the hospital. “You keep trying to fit in right away and end up breaking your bones.”

And now Sergey was laughing at his haplessness. He could afford to laugh. He was a man who had finally made it.

The party went on for a while, each of them taking one of his things, stroking it, fondling it, telling yet another episode from the life of poor dear Vadik.

Am I the only one who thinks that this sounds like a memorial service? Vadik wondered. All these speeches, all these fond memories, all these jokes, as if he weren't there. It was a relief when they all finally left. Drunk, wobbly, carrying their loot. Bob with his racket. Regina cradling a small potted orchid. Vica and Sergey hauling the rug and two garbage bags filled with everything from kitchen utensils to half-used shampoos.

I might be a loser in their eyes, Vadik thought, but none of the winners could resist my free offerings.

He didn't feel sad though. Not at all. He felt better than he had felt in years. He thought about how much he had always liked leaving. Fitting in was humiliating and painful, but leaving was great, leaving was liberating. Perhaps he was really made for the road, perhaps it was a mistake to try to stop, to try to fit in. Perhaps what he was was a perpetual nomad.

He closed the door behind them and found himself alone in his thoroughly empty apartment. With the curtains gone, his denuded place was fully exposed to the passersby, their legs and feet fully exposed to him. Vadik took out his laptop and sat down in the middle of the bare floor. There was one more thing he needed to do before his departure. He had decided to delete all of his social media accounts. What he needed was to pull himself together, and how could you possibly do that if you had pieces of your soul scattered all over virtual space?

The first account he had ever created was on LiveJournal. He was surprised to find that it still existed. Reading his old entries was as embarrassing as listening to stories of his immigrant mishaps, like the one with the tennis racket. His entries were mostly about his adventures, some real, but most made up. There was the story of his meeting Rachel, told with light self-deprecating humor. It generated plenty of comments. Most of them from people eager to boast that the same thing had happen to them. Then there were his dating profiles on Match4U and Hello, Love! He actually had four different profiles on Hello, Love! He would tweak and change his profile every couple of months, when the existing ones failed to attract the women he thought he deserved. It made his skin crawl when he saw what a fake, cutesy mask he chose to present to the world.

He was equally disgusted with his tweets. Quotes from Sartre? Was he fucking kidding?

Still, his Facebook was the worst. When he first started Facebook, he browsed through the posts of his friends and acquaintances and came to the conclusion that the main purpose of Facebook was to boast of nonexistent happiness and barely existent achievements. Just look at the photos of Vica and Sergey's 2010 ski trip to Vermont. All beaming smiles, bursting with happiness. Vadik happened to know that this was a particularly miserable trip, because the weather was awful, Eric had an ear infection, Sergey had the stomach flu, and he and Vica had fought the whole time. And so Vadik followed suit and started covering up his own misery, only posting optimistic photos. It was only when he was going through an especially hard breakup that he realized how cruel this strategy was. He would turn to Facebook in search of some friendly warmth and be hit with this obnoxious parade of happiness that only made his pain stronger by contrast.

Yep, he had to delete all of that shit!

All the social media giants reacted to Vadik's decision with displeasure.

“Hopefully this is just hypothetical!” Tumblr responded, when Vadik typed in “how to remove my account.” They tried to be good sports and sound humorous, but Vadik felt the pleading desperation as he followed the necessary steps, all boasting countless warnings about how much he would lose.

“You must have found your soul mate,” Hello, Love! said in a mocking tone.

Twitter refused to use the words
remove, or cancel,
or
delete.
What you could do was to
deactivate,
which sounded less permanent and less scary.

Facebook's tactic was to hide the instructions. Vadik had to browse for a long time until he finally found a way. Apparently you couldn't delete your account, but you could ask nicely, and the Facebook team was willing to do it for you. The tone was slightly threatening:

“If you don't think you'll use Facebook again, you can request to have your account permanently deleted. Please keep in mind that you won't be able to reactivate your account or retrieve anything you've added.”

Vadik shook his head at Facebook's self-importance and proceeded to follow the suggested steps for all of the sites.

When all of that was done, Vadik shut his laptop and got off the floor.

Now that his virtual self was in the virtual grave, he was ready to go on living.

I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Lynn Nesbit, a super-agent and super-woman, who inspires borderline-crazy admiration in me. To Lynn's wonderful assistant, Hannah Davey, whose very voice gives me hope and whose edits are very much appreciated.

To my fantastic editor, Alexis Washam. I still can't believe how lucky I got with her.

To the entire terrific team at Hogarth, Lindsay Sagnette, Rachel Rokicki, Kevin Callahan, Sarah Grimm, Annsley Rosner, Kayleigh George, and Sarah Bedingfield.

To the brilliant Deborah Treisman, whose support has helped sustain me through my entire career.

To my supremely talented colleagues at Columbia's MFA department, whose mere presence at the same program inspires me. Special thanks to Binnie Kirshenbaum, Victor LaValle, June Folley, Stacy Pies, Steven Hutkins, and Mark Mirsky for their support and encouragement.

To my amazing students, who made me discover so many unexpected aspects of writing.

To my extraordinary American professors, Nancy Miller, Louis Menand, Andre Aciman, Lawrence Weschler, Mary Ann Caws, and Elizabeth Beaujour, whose insights I still remember and shamelessly use.

To my excellent Russian linguistics professors, who taught me how speech recognition works.

To the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ledig House residencies for providing me with such divine escapes and inspiration.

To the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Foundation of Jewish Culture for providing me with their invaluable support.

To all the brilliant artists and academics I befriended at residencies and panels. Especially Chloe Aridjis, Jennifer Gilmore, Olga Gershenson, Jonathan Wilson, Josip Novakovich, David Means, Mary Gaitskill, Chris Sullivan, Anya Ulinich, Kathleen Tolan, Valerie Hegarty, Rebecca Schiff, Vadym Neselovsky, Mikhail Shishkin, and my beautiful “swim team” (Shelly Silver, Meredith Maran, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and Sarah Woolner).

To Andre Yanpolsky, Stepan Pachikov, and Alex Fridlyand, who supplied me with priceless infomation about the tech and investment businesses. To the friends who gave me insights into the world of online dating.

To David Gelber for being the first person to suggest that I should try writing.

To my kids, who were patient with my questionable writer-style parenting and provided me with warmth and support. To David for his lecture on video games and the sticker of a sheep. To Stephanie for her astute literary criticism, insights into the dark workings of a teenage mind, and sounding sincere when she said that
Still Here
was one of the best novels she has ever read.

To my husband for being the best husband and the best literary critic ever.

And finally, to Vadym Tyemirov for coming up with the idea of the Virtual Cemetery.