Still Here (12 page)

It was eerily quiet at the office. Sergey arrived fifteen minutes early, but most of his colleagues were already at their desks. Their computers were on, but nobody seemed to be working. Their fingers didn't run across the keyboards, their eyes didn't move over the pages. They sat staring at their screens as if paralyzed. Sergey felt nauseous with panic. He nodded at Anil and the heavily pregnant Lisi, but Anil looked away and Lisi barely smiled. There was a half-dead helium balloon under Lisi's desk. A sad relic from her recent baby shower.

His coworkers started to disappear around ten o'clock. Every time Sergey raised his head, there would be another empty desk. And yet he couldn't catch the act of disappearance itself. Not until it happened to the man who sat in the next cube. His name was Mehdi. He was a thin man in his fifties with large expressive eyes that reminded Sergey of those of a sad cartoon animal. At eleven fifteen a pretty young woman appeared in the narrow space between their two cubicles. She wore a pencil skirt and a thin yellow cardigan that looked so soft and inviting that Sergey longed to touch it. Mehdi tensed but didn't turn around, as if he thought that ignoring the woman could make her go away. She tapped him on the shoulder. He stood up, moved his chair away, and followed her down the hall, all without raising his eyes. All his things were still in the cubicle: a scarf on the floor, a glass teacup with some tea in it, countless photographs of his family. Dark-haired, white-teethed—a good-looking bunch of people. Sergey was especially taken by a large photo of a young woman that stood right next to Mehdi's computer. The woman was in her late twenties; she must be Mehdi's daughter. She wasn't that beautiful and she wasn't smiling, but there was something warm in her expression, some unwarranted, undeserved kindness. She was looking away from the camera, but Sergey desperately wanted her to look at him, to see him, to have some of that warmth directed at him. He was still staring at the photo when he felt the tap on his own shoulder. There she was—the woman in the yellow cardigan. Sergey walked after her down the hall, his eyes following the pendulum-like rocking of her buttocks. She led him into the smaller conference room and disappeared. There they were: the grave David, the grave Brian, and a tense middle-aged woman from HR fingering a thick stack of papers. Sergey could barely understand what they were saying, but it didn't matter, because it was only a few minutes before he was walking toward the exit squeezing those papers in his hands. The woman in the yellow cardigan was nowhere in sight. He no longer deserved her. Instead, there were two bulky security guys who escorted Sergey out of the building.

Once outside, Sergey was assaulted by a burst of wind so strong that it seemed to be attacking him from all directions. What was the point of skyscrapers if they couldn't even shield people from the weather? Sergey checked the time and started to walk toward the ferry. When he turned onto Pearl Street, he slipped on a piece of a hamburger on the pavement and barely kept his balance.

His phone started to vibrate. Vica. She must've sensed that he had been fired. The thought of answering it and talking to her right now made him sick.

He passed an express bus stop. There was just one person waiting there, a sullen-looking man in his sixties wearing a thick sweatshirt with the hood down and work boots splattered with white paint. But then, of course, it was only twelve fifteen, too early for the commuter crowd. Sergey wondered if the guy had gotten laid off as well.

Sergey made it to the ferry just as the glass doors of the terminal were closing. He was completely alone on the left side of the deck. He could see the Verrazano Bridge in the distance, thin and fragile like a spiderweb.

He grabbed the railing and stared straight ahead, imagining himself in charge of the ferry.

Sergey strengthened his grip and steered it forward. The waves were thick but not too unruly. The important thing was to keep the ferry steady. It was a challenging task, trying to make it safely between all those barges and yachts and erratic speedboats. He managed to turn the ferry to the right toward the Statue of Liberty, when he noticed an enormous cruise ship right in front of them surging at full speed. In a split second, Sergey calculated the approximate speed of the cruise ship, its distance, and the angle at which it was going and decided that a collision could be avoided if he could steer his ferry to the left. He turned his head to see what was on the left side. There was a long, slow red barge, but it was far away enough. And the coast guard boat was getting pretty damn close. He should have given the signal to alert the coast guard boat to his intentions. But that was something he couldn't do. He had no power over signals. Only over the ferry. So he adjusted his grip again and took a very slight turn to the left. And then straight, then to the right again. The cruise ship was rushing right at them. Could it be that he had miscalculated the speed and a collision was inevitable? He felt like closing his eyes, but he knew that he couldn't. He had to stay in control. Strong grip. Steady course. Stare forward. Ignore the cruise ship. Ignore the boat. Forward through the wind. He made it!

A couple of tourists in yellow rain ponchos over their thick parkas walked on the deck, saw Sergey, and smiled at him. He became aware that he was still gripping the railing. He let go, and walked toward a bench. He had been holding on so hard that his fingers were stiff and white.

Once again the whistle that signaled the ferry's arrival came too soon. Sergey disembarked, walked to the parking lot, unlocked his car, and climbed in. He started the car, then hesitated. This was Tuesday, the day when Vica worked nights. She would be at home now. Snug in the armchair like a big lazy cat, her feet in warm socks on top of an electric heater. Watching TV. Her first reaction on seeing him would be annoyance at being interrupted. Then the true meaning of his coming home early would dawn on her and her face would take on an expression of woozy disappointment. He could deal with her anger, with her screaming, with her kicking things, but he couldn't deal with her disappointment. He couldn't possibly go home yet.

Sergey suddenly had an idea. There was that strange place he'd accidentally discovered a couple of months ago. He'd been driving home from the mall—he'd had to pick up some last-minute supplies for Eric's school project—and it was late. The usual route was closed due to road repairs, so he had to drive down some unknown, unmarked road. He soon saw that he had lost his way but continued to drive. He found himself on top of a hill overlooking the ocean and the glittering Verrazano. The road was narrow with charming villas on both sides half hidden in their lush gardens. The view reminded Sergey of the Mediterranean villages he and Vica had visited on their European tour five years ago. He had liked it so much that he'd saved the location in his GPS under favorites. He decided to drive there now. He would park the car, walk down the hill, explore the neighboring streets, find out if the place would hold its charm in the daylight. Sergey turned on the GPS, found the coordinates, and pressed Go.

“Turn right on Victory Boulevard,” the GPS commanded Sergey, and Sergey told him to go to hell. First of all, he didn't want to take Victory Boulevard—with the road repairs going on now, traffic would be awful. Another reason was that Sergey couldn't stand this GPS person (default American male)—he reminded him of his boss David's voice, brimming with overconfidence and extra
r
's. The name of the street came out as “Victorrrr Ry Boulevarrrd.” Sergey switched to the American female, but she proved to be everything that he hated about American females. She was too righteous, too optimistic, too enthusiastic. She reminded him of their tennis instructor. That had been Vica's idea—to make them all, including little Eric, learn how to play tennis, because she thought it was a necessary step on the way to becoming true middle-class Americans. Their instructor kept yelling “Good job!” when one of them hit a ball; “Good try!” if one of them missed. Her pointless praise made Sergey feel like an idiot. He switched off the American female and decided to try the Russians. There was no Russian male option, and the female sounded mean and controlling. She expected him to do whatever she told him, and there were really nasty gloating notes in her
“Pereschityvayu!”
when she was recalculating the route. That nastiness was all too familiar. Sergey hurried to switch her off. He didn't speak any other languages, but he didn't really need to know them to understand directions. All the GPS said was “turn left,” “turn right,” and “recalculating.”

The Italian man was dripping passion—he sounded too much for Sergey's taste.

The German man sounded disappointed.

The French woman sounded haughty and patronizing.

The Chinese woman was too harsh.

The Japanese woman was too playful; she seemed to be on the verge of giggling at all times. Sergey enjoyed it for a while, but then he started to doubt if she was sincere.

The Icelandic woman, however, was perfect.

She said: “
Snúa til vinstri.
” She said: “
Snúa til hægri.
” And when she attempted to recalculate the route, she simply said: “
Reikna.
” It must have meant “recalculate.” She sounded both respectful and firm. She sounded as if she were aware of Sergey's limitations but didn't mind them at all. He could miss a turn, miss a turn again, miss a turn twenty times in a row—she wouldn't be angry, annoyed, or disappointed. So what if he kept missing turns? There was still plenty about him to admire and appreciate. There was still plenty to love. The tone of her voice was perfect, the melodic notes magnificent. The way she rolled her
r
's and softened her
l
's made Sergey feel butterflies in his stomach. And the word
reikna
made Sergey's heart melt. He drove to the northern part of the Staten Island Greenbelt, found a deserted parking lot, and kept circling and circling it for the sake of hearing
“Reikna”
again and again. The parking lot was covered by last year's brown leaves. They made whooshing sounds under the wheels of the car. There were tall trees all around him, mostly bare but still beautiful, gracefully crisscrossing patches of blue sky.

“
Reikna,
” the woman said.

“Yes,” Sergey answered.

He imagined her walking toward him wearing one of his dress shirts and nothing else. He couldn't see her face, but he saw that she had a full bush, like Vica used to have before she started doing Brazilian waxes. Thick brown hair with a golden tint. Just like Vica's.

“
Reikna,
” the woman said.

“Yes,” Sergey answered.

His right hand rested on the steering wheel while his left hand reached into his pants.

“
Reikna,
” the woman said.

“Yes,” Sergey answered and squeezed his cock tighter.

“
Reikna.
”

“Yes.”

“
Reikna.
”

“Yes,” Sergey said reaching for a tissue.

“
Reikna!
”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Fuck!”

It took Sergey a long time to catch his breath. When he finally got ahold of himself and pressed the gas, he heard that word again: “
Reikna.
” This time it annoyed and even embarrassed him. “Quiet,” he said to the woman, and turned the GPS off. He was driving uphill with the Verrazano looming far in the distance. He felt good. He felt energized. He felt better than he'd had in months.

“ ‘Is competent. Is clear thinking. Is vigorous,' ” he recited aloud, then added a few more.

“Lacks nothing.

“Fails at nothing.

“Is brilliant. Is persistent. Is strong.”

Sergey made a sharp right turn and headed in the direction of home.

“Next customer!” said the pale, pimply boy with the blue hair, and Vadik obediently unloaded his purchases onto the cashier's belt of HippoMart. When he first moved there, Vadik misread the name of the store and thought it was called HipMart. “How fitting! Even groceries are hip here,” he said to Vica, Sergey, and Regina.

Organic ground chicken, maitake mushrooms, a small container of coconut rice, a pack of mâche salad, eggs, Icelandic yogurt, Intelligentsia coffee, a thin wedge of Gruyère, a smallish bunch of broccoli, three bars of Ritter Sport chocolate, a six-pack of local IPA, ultra-strength toilet paper, a pack of condoms, and a package of dishwashing sponges. Wait, where was the package of sponges? Nowhere. He'd forgotten to pick it up. It was too late to run back and get it, especially since that ghoulish boy didn't seem too happy to be helping Vadik to begin with. He looked at Vadik's items with a patronizing smile, as if he had a way of knowing that all of them had been forced on Vadik either by other people or by circumstances. That he had switched to Intelligentsia coffee because of Sejun's insistence; that he didn't really like broccoli but kept eating it, because broccoli was on the list of the ten healthiest foods; that he didn't need his toilet paper to be ultra-strength; and that he longed to be in an exclusive intimate relationship that didn't require condoms. He composed a Tumblr post in his head: “I used to think that stocking up on condoms was a sign of virility, now I think it's a sign of loneliness.”

The cashier cleared his throat. Vadik looked up.

“Eighty dollars and seventy-five cents,” the boy hissed. Vadik swiped his credit card, picked up the plump shopping bag, and headed for the door.

All the passersby crowding Bedford Avenue on Saturday at midday were young and dainty, both men and women. Vadik felt bulky and old. He was thirty-nine years old, over six feet tall, and one hundred and ninety-five pounds. He didn't fit in here at all. And not just in his physical dimensions.

Here in Williamsburg, Vadik often felt as if he had wandered into the wrong theater by mistake and had to sit there watching some stupid play that he didn't understand and didn't want to watch, then finally realizing that he was sitting not in the audience but on the stage and was expected to act his part. The sensation of being onstage was even stronger at home. His new apartment was situated on the first floor with all of the windows looking out over the busy street, with its constant traffic of cars, bikes, and pedestrians. He felt like he was being watched even when the blinds were drawn.

He decided that he didn't have the strength to go home yet and entered a small expensive coffee place on the corner of Bedford and Fifth. Vadik ordered an espresso and sat down at a table away from the window, with his bag by his feet—veggies, condoms, ground chicken, and all.

Williamsburg had been Sejun's choice. She had announced her decision to move in with him in August. Vadik was overjoyed, even though the circumstances of the announcement were a little strange. In the weeks leading to her decision, they were getting more and more distant—Vadik had prepared himself for the imminent breakup. But then Sejun asked him to come visit her in Palo Alto. “I'll come in a few weeks,” Vadik said. “No, come now! Come this weekend!” she insisted. That last-minute ticket was outrageously expensive, but it was worth it. Sejun was unusually affectionate to Vadik. She kept snuggling against him, crying and laughing, cooing over him and praising him, and telling him how he was so much better than all the other jerks out there. At the end of his short stay, she announced that she was done with California, that she would be looking for a job in New York, and that they would be living together. Vadik was so happy that he picked her up, squeezed her in a hug, and spun her around the room so hard that she hit her shoulder against her garage-sale antique armoire. It was only when he was on the plane back to New York that her behavior started to seem suspicious.

“Sounds fishy!” Vica said, adding to his unease. Regina agreed. But Sergey was all “Sejun's coming!”

Vadik half expected her to call him the next day and say that she had changed her mind. She did call him very early the next morning—it must have been 6 
A.M.
in California—and his heart dropped, but she just wanted to tell him that she had sent out her résumé to several promising places in New York.

She found a job in no time, at some hip start-up in Brooklyn. They asked if she could relocate in two months. She said yes. “
Ura!
” Vadik screamed into his iPad. He immediately imagined all the wonderful dishes he would cook in his immersion cooker for her, all the wine that they would drink on his beautiful terrace, and all those interesting stimulating things they would do in his enormous bedroom. But when he shared some of his fantasies with Sejun—fantasies that included cooking and fantasies that didn't—she said: “No! Your apartment is too far from Brooklyn, you need to find a new one.”

Vadik went silent. He thought about the deposit he would lose if he moved out of his current place and all the other costs of moving again so soon, but then he thought that he should be ashamed of worrying about such things on the verge of this life-changing event.

“Hello?” Sejun said.

“Yes?” Vadik answered.

“What do you think about Williamsburg?”

Vadik didn't know much about Williamsburg, but he figured that if Sejun thought it was a cool place, there was no reason he wouldn't be happy there.

Over the next few days, Sejun picked out a few places on StreetEasy and asked Vadik to go there with his iPad so that she could check them out via Skype.

“Okay, now move it forward so that I can see inside that closet. Oh, wow, that's huge! I'm not in love with the bathroom tile though. Ask the landlord if we're allowed to change it.”

The apartment Sejun finally approved was a large two-bedroom (“We need a second bedroom in case my parents come to visit from Seoul”). It was on the first floor, but Sejun said she didn't mind. The rent was a little higher than Vadik'd expected, but he thought that with two salaries they could certainly manage it. The next step was to pick out the furniture. Sejun allowed Vadik to keep his immersion cooker, but not much else. Most of his things were either sold or ended up in Vica and Sergey's house on Staten Island. Sejun then furnished all the rooms via her iPhone using an app called Stuff Me! All Vadik had to do was receive the furniture when it was delivered and connect Sejun with the delivery guys so that she could explain where exactly she wanted it.

Two weeks before she was supposed to arrive, Vadik vacated his old place in Morningside Heights and moved into the new one.

“Show me all the rooms again,” Sejun demanded on his first night there. “I want to see how they look with a person there.”

It was then that Vadik noticed the first signs of trouble. Once Sejun saw the pictures of the apartment “with a person there,” she didn't seem to love it as much as before.

“Shit, you're too tall for that chair,” she said.

“You can use it then,” Vadik said.

“No, no,” she said, “I ordered it specifically for you. I won't be comfortable in that chair. Oh, and please don't lean on the table—it's delicate.”

“It seems like she likes everything about our apartment except for me in it,” Vadik complained to his friends. Sergey laughed. Vica said, “Imagine that!” Regina was the only one to reassure Vadik, but even she didn't sound too convinced.

A few days before Sejun's arrival date, Vadik called to ask her for her flight number—he wanted to meet her at the airport.

There was a long pause and then Sejun said that she hadn't bought the ticket yet.

Vadik almost dropped his phone. “But you have to start work in less than a week!”

Sejun explained that she was waiting for a cheaper last-minute rate.

“I'm fucked, right?” Vadik asked Regina.

“I'm afraid so,” she said.

After that conversation, it became really hard to reach Sejun. She refused to pick up the phone and ignored Vadik's texts. Her final communication came in the form of an e-mail with a huge video attached. Vadik read the text of the e-mail while lying on the Danish Modern bed she had ordered, so low that it seemed like a continuation of the sidewalk outside. If Vadik opened the blinds, there would be strangers' legs on the same level as his head, marching back and forth and all over him. Sejun explained that they couldn't possibly live together. How they didn't match at all but were simply drawn together out of loneliness, and how terribly sorry she was for making him move. “It's a really nice apartment though, I'm sure you'll grow to love it.”

Then Vadik opened the attachment. It was an electronic collage of their best moments together. A tasteful and moving collection of their photographs, with snippets from their e-mails dancing on the screen to Cohen's “Dance Me to the End of Love,” hiding, fading, suddenly coming into focus and ultimately merging into a large “I AM SORRY!”

Cohen! What a nice touch! Vadik thought before smashing his iPad to pieces against the footboard of his Danish bed.

This new place was the seventh apartment he had had since he moved to the U.S. Seventh! He knew that his friends made fun of this fact, but he had never thought it was ridiculous. He had tried out different places and he had enough courage to admit that they were wrong and move. He used to think it was admirable. A lot of people hated their lives, but just a few were able to admit it, and even fewer to make a change. And how on earth were you supposed to figure out what worked for you if you hadn't tried and discarded the things that didn't work? Weren't you defined by what you were not? Wasn't it Sartre who said that? Vadik took a sip of his espresso and googled the quote, confirming the words did belong to Sartre, but the sentence was a little different. “You are what you are not and are not what you are.” The second half made the entire sentence pretentious and senseless. Vadik decided to tweet just the first part and typed: “You are what you are not. #KnowThyself.” That sounded too serious. He changed the hashtag to #KnowThyselfie.

His phone buzzed just as he was posting the tweet. “Where are you? I'm hungry,” the text read.

Vadik sighed, left a generous tip on the table, and hurried home.

When he opened the door, he found Sergey in his usual position: sprawled on the settee by the window with his old laptop propped against his chest. Comfortable, contented. His dainty frame made him fit Sejun's furniture better than Vadik. Sergey even enjoyed the fact that the apartment was on the first floor. He insisted that they leave the blinds up, because that way he felt “in the middle of the racket.”

“Hi, there!” Sergey said.

“Hi,” Vadik said, trying hard not to wince. Seeing Sergey first thing when Vadik entered his apartment was getting harder and harder to tolerate.

When Sergey appeared on Vadik's doorstep three weeks ago, Vadik had no choice but to take him in. He was even a little excited. Vica threw Sergey out! No, he didn't gloat that Vica and Sergey had finally broken up, he was excited because something huge had happened, some major event that would inevitably change their lives—his and Regina's too. Of course Vadik welcomed the distraction from the prickly humiliation of his breakup with Sejun.

So he had led Sergey into the living room, brought him a shot of vodka and a huge mug of green tea, and listened to the stuttering account of what had happened.

Vica wasn't shocked or angry when Sergey told her he'd been fired. Her expression was that of deep revulsion. She said that she knew it would happen. She asked if he understood how selfish it was of him to keep losing his job. Yes, she thought it was his fault. He acted like a child. He was ridiculous. What grown man would insist on drinking a glass of milk before bed? She said that he would never ever accomplish anything with the apps either. He was delusional about his genius. He was incredibly, sickeningly pretentious and some foolish people took this for intelligence. She used to be one of them. She was duped into admiring him. But now she was positive that not only was he not a genius, he wasn't even very smart. He had loser genes. He was pathetic. She was sick of him. The thought of touching him made her shudder with disgust.