Still Here (31 page)

“It was only years later that I discovered Missed Connections, and I posted hundreds of inquiries about you. And then I found you on Facebook. By pure accident. I was browsing through a friend's photos and saw you in one of them. Her name is Serena Geller.”

“Yes,” Rachel said, “Serena. We were in grad school together.”

All this talking was making Vadik's nausea unbearable.

“Do you mind if I crack open the window?” he asked.

She shook her head. He might have been mistaken, but he thought he saw tears in her eyes.

They were approaching the bridge. The wind from the river whooshed right into his ear. He fought a painful spasm in his chest and continued.

“I went and stalked you on Facebook. That's how I knew about the reading. So I just went there, hoping to see you. I'd never heard of John Garmash before. I'm glad I bought the book though.” He pointed to it in his lap.

Rachel reached over and stroked the cover with her fingers. “I had no idea,” she said.

They didn't speak for the rest of the trip, but as the cab was approaching Williamsburg, Rachel tapped Vadik on the hand and said, “You know that name I called you, Vladimir? I had thought of it years ago. I thought that if I ever saw you again I would call you by some Russian name. A different Russian name. As if you were some random Russian dude who didn't matter. I was so proud of myself that I didn't lose my cool at the last moment, that I did call you Vladimir.”

Her voice kept breaking as she talked.

“I mean, how stupid we all are!”

And then it was Vadik's stop.

“Can I ride with you to Greenpoint?” he asked.

She shook her head.

Vadik paid the full fare plus twenty bucks extra for Rachel, then got out of the car.

The cab started to pull away. Rachel was looking at him through the window, then as the car sped up, she abruptly turned away.

Vadik followed the car with his eyes for as long as he could, until it merged with the other bright yellow spots on the road and disappeared behind the buildings. He kept staring ahead until it seemed that the streets and the buildings were moving too, moving away from him, getting smaller and smaller, merging with the horizon.

He had come to this city in pursuit of happiness, and the city had in fact offered him happiness on his very first day here, but he had been too stupid and too blind to recognize it.

Vadik was desperate to share this revelation with his friends, but did he even have friends anymore? Sergey wasn't speaking to him, Vica had just dumped him, and Regina wasn't answering his messages. Even the virtual friends he had on social media tended to ignore his posts. He imagined telling the Rachel story to some brand-new friends in some new city and perhaps even a new country, because, boy, was he done with this one!

He went home and shot a message to his headhunter asking her to find him a position in some faraway place.

Sergey imagined that Goebbels would be fat, but he turned out to be skinny, mean, and half-blind. “No, no, Goering was the fat one,” his new neighbor, Helen, explained. Helen had a history degree but worked as a receptionist at a beauty salon. Her apartment was on the fifth floor too, and just as tiny as Goebbels's. Helen was a divorcée who shared a one-bedroom apartment with her fourteen-year-old daughter, Teena. Teena, a pale, pudgy girl, was always there, mostly hiding out in the bedroom. Helen slept on the sofa separated from the rest of the living room by tall bookshelves. She took a liking to Sergey and often invited him over for a drink. She confessed that she hated Goebbels's owner because he was so rude to her and Teena. But she loved, loved, loved the cat! She also said that she didn't get the concept of online dating and would have loved to just meet a guy on the street and go home with him. Sergey had the sense that she would have liked for their relationship to be more romantic or at least more sexual, and he was attracted to her, but he couldn't bring himself to act. Helen was a robust Nibelungen blonde who spoke in a low voice and smelled of artisanal soaps she kept in a basket in her bathroom—Sergey's favorite were lavender harvest and lemon tea. She would invite him to watch Netflix and sit next to him on the couch, leaning closer and closer, tickling his neck with her hair, making his penis all but bounce in his pants, causing him to perspire from desire and panic. For all these years, having sex had meant having sex with Vica. He had had just two relationships since his separation, one was with an electronic voice of the GPS and the other was via Skype. The idea of touching, let alone penetrating, a real live woman terrified him. He confided this to Vadik back when they were still talking, but Vadik just shook his head. “It's not supposed to be like that, man! A new woman is exciting, with her new smell, and all these unexplored little nooks on her body.” Sergey knew that he should just take the plunge and have sex with Helen, but something stopped him every single time.

They did become friends though, a friendship mostly based on cat-care help and oversharing of their marital troubles. Helen once saw a huge Facebook photo of Vica open on Sergey's laptop. The caption read: “Enjoying sangria in the East Village. Could be worse 
.”

“That's my wife,” Sergey explained, blushing. “Ex-wife. We're separated.”

“She's pretty, but kind of angry looking,” Helen said. Sergey proceeded to spill out all his grievances with Vadik and Vica and his suspicion that they might have slept together some years back. Helen said that the suspicion was probably well-founded, because she too had cheated on her ex-husband with his best friend. Teena knew about it and hated her for it.

“This is the guy who takes care of Goebbels.” Helen introduced him to Teena.

“Sergey,” Sergey said.

“Sir what?” Teena asked. “Sir Gay?” And she curtsied, laughing.

A few minutes later Sergey overheard some hushed parenting in the kitchen.

“What did we talk about, Teena? Huh? What did we talk about? We don't make homophobic jokes in this household!”

“I wasn't being homophobic. It's just that his accent is superfunny.”

“Teena! We don't make immigrant jokes either.”

It took Teena about two weeks to stop rolling her eyes every time she passed Sergey on the stairs. In three weeks she warmed up to him enough to start calling him “Sergio.”

It took Goebbels about the same amount of time to stop attacking Sergey in dark corners and biting him on the ankles. It was then that Sergey decided that he loved the apartment. Technically it was a one-bedroom, but the living room was used mostly for storage. The guy must have had a thing for antiques—the room was crammed with old musical instruments, mostly string, with the addition of a few brasses. Sergey had to spend most of the time in the dark bedroom, where the only window was half blocked by the A/C and which he had to share with Goebbels and his enormous cat tree. He learned to appreciate the apartment though, once he realized how nice it was to live by himself for a change. He could do whatever he wanted without worrying that he would upset, annoy, or disappoint someone.

Within three weeks Sergey finished his prototype and started revising his pitch. He debated whether to include Vica's “prehumous” option and finally decided to do it. All the marketing manuals advised making his potential customer base as wide as possible, and considering the growing number of people concerned about their online legacy, Vica's idea served that purpose really well. The next step was to learn how to submit it to investors. He shelled out a hefty sum of money for a three-hour online class and followed the teacher's suggestions to the letter. His pitch turned out to be quite good: accessible, persuasive, detailed but not overly specific, peppered with power verbs and appealing visual images. He e-mailed it to the teacher, and he seemed to be impressed. “Yep, that's pretty solid,” he wrote back. Sergey did wonder if this was an automatic reply that he sent to all his students.

Then Sergey proceeded to submit his application and the written pitch to ARC Angel Fund NYC, Life Sciences Angel Network, New York Angels, Astia Angels, SNK Investments, Tribeca Angels, Golden Seeds, and Gaingels Syndicate.

He got no replies.

“Are you kidding me?” Helen said when Sergey wondered why he hadn't heard anything yet. “I don't have a fancy MBA like you do, but even I know that blind submissions never work! You have to use your personal contacts.”

That was what his online teacher kept saying too. Use personal contacts, networking, and crowdfunding. But he warned his students that crowdfunding wouldn't work unless you had a very strong online presence. Sergey's online presence was virtually nonexistent. And he didn't have any personal contacts.

“Oh, come on! One of your friends from your business school?” Helen asked. Sergey shook his head. He didn't keep in touch with any of his business-school classmates.

Later, in bed, with Goebbels curled up at his feet, Sergey considered what other personal contacts he might have. He had worked for large banks and investment firms for many years, yet his only contacts were his bosses, the bosses who had fired him, the bosses who had thought that he lacked “skills, spirit, drive.” He could've used Vadik's help, but they weren't talking. Then there were Bob and Regina, but Bob had never liked him, and Sergey couldn't endure yet another humiliation from Regina, who kept avoiding him after his separation from Vica as if he had the plague.

There was Sejun. She had offered to introduce him to a great investor, but asking Sejun would be awkward to the point of revulsion. He was still very angry with himself for starting that stupid, pathetic Skype affair with her. He didn't miss Sejun, but he did miss Vadik. They had never gone without talking to each other for more than a couple of days before. Every so often, while Sergey browsed through Facebook, he would look at the right side of his page and see the green light next to Vadik's name and be tempted to shoot him a brief message. He would stop short of that every time.

His remaining business contact was his former schoolmate from his university, Alexey Kuzmin. According to Facebook, he had recently moved to New Jersey and was involved in some kind of shady entrepreneurial scheme. They hadn't seen each other more than a few times since they graduated, but Kuzmin liked to engage Sergey in Facebook chats, the sole purpose of which was to brag about his superrich friends in Russia and the United States.

Sergey started with Kuzmin. Called him up, endured chitchat about health and family. Kuzmin inquired about “that very pretty wife of yours,” said that he was so sorry that they had separated! Then he said that he was still married to his first wife, even though he could afford a younger and much prettier woman now. “I guess that's called love, man,” he said. “I guess,” Sergey replied. He then told Kuzmin about his app. Vica had told him to be careful when pitching—she was afraid that somebody would steal his idea. Helen said the same thing. He thought they were both paranoid, but this Kuzmin was definitely sketchy, so Sergey tried to be as vague as possible.

“Hmm,” Kuzmin said, “virtual immortality, huh? So you're looking for investors?” Sergey confirmed that he was. “I'll have to think about it and call you back. You'll definitely hear from me, man. I can promise you that.” They hung up. Sergey thought that it was pretty clear that he'd never hear from Kuzmin again.

He made an enormous effort and e-mailed Sejun. He received a swift, brief, businesslike reply. Yes, she would be happy to introduce him to her good friend, James Kisco.

Sergey googled the name and found out that James Kisco was one of the original investors in Vine, Airbnb, and Eat'n'Watch. He also turned out to be thirty-two, good-looking, and surprisingly easy to reach. James's assistant sounded cordial, said that they had been expecting his call, and scheduled a “breakfast meeting” at their New York office within a week.

Sergey asked Helen and Teena to listen while he read his pitch aloud, because he wasn't sure how to pronounce certain words like
radial, infatuated,
or
neither.

“You look very handsome when you pitch,” Helen said after Sergey's first attempt. “Doesn't he look just like Gregory Peck, Teena?”

“Who?” Teena asked.

“Gregory Peck?
To Kill a Mockingbird?
”

“Oh, right!” Teena said. “He does. Like a short and Jewish Gregory Peck.”

“Teena!”

Sergey half expected Teena to call him “Gregory Pecker,” but she didn't.

He ended up reciting his pitch four times, until Helen and Teena finally said that he “got it.” Could it be that they were simply sick of listening to it over and over again? And even if he did “get it,” what if the whole idea for this app was foolish? Now that his idea was about to enter the real world, Sergey started to doubt it more and more.

Teena said that she liked it. She said it was creepy but kind of cool. Helen was more skeptical. In her opinion dead people shouldn't be granted either virtual presence or control over it.