Still Here

Chapter 10: Fight It! Beat It!

“Get up,” Vica said and patted Eric on his warm, sticky shoulder.

He moaned and turned away from her. It had become such a pain to wake him up in the morning. There was a Three Musketeers wrapper stuck in his blanket and a Nintendo DS under his pillow. He must have been up half the night playing and munching. Vica suspected that it was Sergey’s mom, Mira, who had supplied the candy. It used to be Sergey’s job to control his mother’s whimsical grandparenting. Now Vica couldn’t complain to Sergey anymore. She couldn’t say anything to Mira either, because she relied so heavily on her help.

Mira would arrive at 7:00 A.M. every day so that she could feed Eric breakfast and walk him to the school bus, then she would wait for him to come home to feed him her elaborate meals. Mira wasn’t very good at being neat. There would be a small pile of dirty dishes in the sink, puddles of compote on the floor, and grease splattered on the stove. Mira wasn’t very good at overseeing homework either — Vica would come home and find none of Eric’s assignments completed. She was almost grateful now that Eric hadn’t taken the test to get into the Castle — he barely managed the workload of his public school.

“Get up!” Vica repeated, and this time Eric raised his head off the pillow and opened his eyes. Light brown and perfectly round. The eyes of a frightened cat.

“Grandma here?” he asked.

“Any minute now.”

Vica learned to time her departure with Mira’s arrival to avoid her mother-in-law’s incredulous look, meant to convey that Vica’s decision to separate from Sergey was shocking at best, criminal at worst.

So as soon as Mira entered, Vica was at the door and rushing to the express bus stop. She had exactly one second to say hello and not a second more to hear Mira’s reply.

Vica made it to the stop just as the bus was pulling in with its wheezing, groaning, and farting noises. She paid her fare and went straight to the middle to take her favorite seat on the right side by the window. Vica loved the hour-long bus ride. The seats were high and stately. The microclimate was always perfect, it was never too hot or too cold, even in the worst weather. And this was the place where Vica could have her precious alone time, where she could work on Virtual Grave and dream and plan her life undisturbed.

So much has changed in these last few months, Vica thought while applying mascara. She had to acquire the skill of putting on her makeup on the bus to save time. First of all, she had finally stopped thinking about Sergey all the time. She no longer had recurring dreams about him. She no longer mistook strange men on a street for Sergey. She no longer tortured herself with regret. She still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that separation was the right thing to do, but what was done was done. She had consulted with a mediator about their separation agreement. The mediator had advised her to just get it over with. She had accepted her upcoming divorce as a fact. And she had made a profile for herself on Hello, Love!

Online dating was interesting, very different from what she used to know. Back when Vica last dated, the process was dreamily slow, like a Victorian novel. Vica would fantasize meeting a romantic stranger, she would wait and hope and look for him at a party, on a street, on a subway, in a cafeteria, in a college library. Then just as she stopped dreaming and waiting she would meet somebody. And then there would be a hopeful anxiety, and anticipation, and more dreams now centered around that particular man. And then her favorite part — trying to solve the puzzle of that man’s feelings and thoughts, reading letters, analyzing words, interpreting stares, reliving touches.

Now the slow Victorian-novel part was out. If anything, dating resembled a TV series, the stupid kind that Regina liked to watch. The plot was fast-paced but predictable; there wasn’t enough time to explore interesting situations or to properly develop the characters.

Online men came in packs of three or four or more. She would plan a date with one of them, while answering a message from another, while browsing to find somebody better. There always was somebody who seemed better even though Vica wouldn’t have been able to explain what “better” even meant. A better human being? A better lover? A better fit? It was the seeming endlessness of choices that filled Vica with panic. Thankfully, she had her two dating coaches: Vadik and pretty Liliana from work. When she found a guy she thought she liked, she ran his profile by her coaches. Both Liliana and Vadik warned her not to get too attached. “Because, you know,” Liliana said, “he’s on Hello, Love! so he is seeing other women too.”

The most recent guy’s name was Franc. He was thin, wiry, French Canadian, with those European movie-star features that Vica liked so much. He said that he worked as a freelance architect, but he wouldn’t tell Vica what his current project was. That was okay — she didn’t tell him where she worked either. The mention of a cancer hospital wouldn’t put anybody in the mood for love. Franc’s only apparent flaw was that he was deaf in one ear — the effect of a mysterious autoimmune disease triggered by stress. But that was just a charming detail, not a real problem, especially in light of how attractive he was. They went to bed after the first date. Well, actually, Vica wasn’t sure that it had been the right thing to do.

“How soon should I sleep with a guy?” she had asked Liliana.

“If you like him?” Liliana asked.

“Of course, if I like him! Why would I sleep with him if I didn’t?”

“Oh, many reasons, many reasons,” Liliana said.

“So when is it okay to sleep with a guy I like?” Vica asked again.

“Third date, I guess. If you do it on the second date, you would seem too eager. On the first date, you’d be a huge slut. And if you wait past the third date, there won’t be a fourth one.”

Vadik had a conflicting opinion. “If there is anything that guys hate it’s when women are too calculating. I want a woman to come to bed with me because we’re crazy about each other, because we both are dying to fuck, not because today happens to be the right date. And another thing that guys hate is when women present sex as this favor to a guy. There is nothing more off-putting.”

So Vica decided to go with her own intuition. She went to bed with Franc on their first date. It was awkward, but it was fun. She didn’t find seeing and touching a strange dick as repulsive as she’d feared. And soon she and Franc started seeing each other a couple of times a week, usually on weekends, sometimes after work, usually at his place.

Vica let out a little moan thinking of the weight of Franc’s body on hers, of going under, disappearing beneath him. A woman who sat across the aisle from her eyed her suspiciously. Vica straightened her back and turned away toward the window.

Vica even told her mother about the really nice man she was seeing. He gave her a La Perla slip for her birthday. She’d been dreaming of a La Perla slip for ages! It must have cost at least two hundred dollars, unless he had gotten it on sale. He said he wanted their relationship to be serious. He was eager to meet Eric. Vica meant to reassure her mother, she meant to show her that she was okay, that her life was good and only getting better, but her mother, usually so tough, started to cry.

As if to banish her mother from her thoughts, Vica took a small leather notebook out of her bag and started to work on her Virtual Grave proposal. She had so many ideas. If only she could have some real time to work on them. Vica did wonder if what she was doing was wrong. Virtual Grave was Sergey’s idea after all. It belonged to him even if he wasn’t doing anything about it. She had tried to talk to Vadik about it, but Vadik had tensed and said that Sergey had moved out and they weren’t speaking. He refused to tell her why. She decided that she’d talk to Sergey once the proposal was ready.

—

“Better protection for your social media accounts after you die,” she wrote. “Nobody should be allowed to post anything under your name.”

Her approach to this app was so much better than Sergey’s. In her version, customers would work on their own posthumous online presence while they were still here. They would be able to prepare for the time when they no longer would be. Having to work on that would actually help to prepare them for death itself. Alleviate some of the fear. She wondered what Ethan would think about that. Perhaps she could ask him that when he stopped to chat with her next time. Vica wondered if he had an appointment today. Last week he’d tweeted:

“Ultrasound technician,” Vica mentally corrected him.

She really wanted to talk to him about Virtual Grave. Her app was supposed to help people prepare. That was exactly what Ethan wanted. A thought about Ethan’s money crept through Vica’s mind like an ugly slug. What if he liked the idea so much that he offered to invest in it? He would be the ideal investor. He was both wealthy and high profile. Vica imagined the headline: Ethan Grail Invests in an App That Grants You Virtual Immortality on the Brink of His Own Death.

The shame of having thought about that made Vica wince. She put her notebook down and looked out the window.

Staten Island seen from the bridge was at its most beautiful. Gone from view were the car dealerships, run-down storefronts, and stretches of cemeteries; all you could see were the magnificent green hills, the stretches of sand, the ocean, and the gentle contours of the Manhattan skyline on the horizon. The city looked pale, ethereal, and seemingly unreachable, yet Vica knew that in a mere forty minutes the bus would be right in the middle of it, squeezing down the loud, jam-packed streets between the looming robust buildings that were actually anything but ethereal.

The Bing Ruskin Cancer Center took up several blocks and was growing with impressive speed. There were three new construction sites visible from the bus stop. There were several hotels for patients and their families who came for treatments. There was a huge medical-supply store that sold everything from wheelchairs to chemo hats. There was even a grocery store that specialized in whatever items were touted as cancer fighting at the moment. This rampant capitalist ingenuity filled Vica with both disgust and awe. No commercial possibilities of sickness and death were overlooked there. The only thing that was missing was posthumous care. She thought that if she ever succeeded in creating her version of Virtual Grave, Bing Ruskin would be the very place to market it. Right now its services ended when its patients’ lives did, but it didn’t have to stop there. Why not keep making money off patients even after they were dead?

The building that housed the radiology department of BR was two blocks away from the bus’s second stop in midtown. It took Vica exactly six minutes and twenty seconds to get there. As always, there was a line of large gray vans by the entrance. They belonged to a company that brought in Medicaid patients from Brooklyn and Queens. All the drivers were Russian and they knew that Vica was too, so they liked to chat her up whenever she passed them. One of them, Tolik, always offered her a treat — a Russian candy or a handful of sunflower seeds, or once even a dill pickle.

There he was in the driver’s seat of his van. Fat, sweaty, with a wide smile half hidden behind his long bushy mustache.

“Hey, Vicusha!” he yelled, blowing a raspberry in her direction. Tolik liked to behave like an idiot, but at times he would say something that made Vica think of it for days. He had once shown her the route map for his bus with the stops where he was supposed to pick up patients marked with black asterisks. “See what I got?” he had asked. “The cancer map of Brooklyn.”

This time he just gave her a candy called Belochka, Vica’s favorite, chocolate and nuts with a little squirrel on the wrapper.

The lobby of BR radiology was enormous and filled with light. There was a fountain in the middle with a few little fish in it. In the corner behind the fountain was a small group of teenage girls in green cheerleader outfits practicing their routine.

Fight it,

Beat it,

Go all out to Defeat it!

Christine had told Vica that the girls were juniors from expensive private schools who thought that volunteering at a cancer hospital would look good on their college applications. They were part of the new emotional health program.

Vica winced at the girls and walked down the long hall to the elevator. Once inside she was greeted by the words BING RUSKIN #1! And her own smiling face. Last year, Vica had been picked as one of the eight employees to represent the diverse population of Bing Ruskin on a poster. Vadik said that they picked her because she was the prettiest one. But Vica thought it was because she was one of the few radiology technicians who was white. The administration didn’t want to support the cliché that most of the doctors at Bing Ruskin were white, most of the nurses Hispanic, and most of the technicians black (even though this was certainly true), so for the poster they had decided to include one black and one Indian doctor, two Asian nurses, and Vica — a white radiology technician. They were all holding something that looked like a blown-up business card that said BING RUSKIN RATED #1! Vica had to reach for the card from behind the substantial shoulder of Dr. Gupta, so it appeared as if she was pinching rather than holding it. Her smile didn’t come out that great either. “You look rather menacing here,” Vadik said when she showed him the photo. “Vica Morozova — the face of cancer!” But then he asked her for a copy so that he could hang it up in his bedroom. Vica didn’t know whether he was joking or not. Vadik had been acting weird lately. Reluctant to help her with Virtual Grave, annoyed when she asked him for dating advice, vague on the subject of Sergey. Not that she cared. Sergey was on his own now.

Sometimes the center’s personnel or even patients riding the elevator with her would recognize her from the poster.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” they’d ask, excited, as if they had just encountered a celebrity. “Bing Ruskin number 1!” she’d respond and pump her fist in the air, and they would laugh with delight. Vica hated when that happened, so she tried to stand in the darkest corner of the elevator. But from there her stare would be inevitably drawn to the elevator’s board where the passing floors were being lit with a soft neon glow, as if illuminating everything that might go wrong with a person. Cancers of the digestive system, urological cancers, gynecological cancers, and the scariest of them all — pediatric cancers. The radiology department was on the ninth floor, with medical radiology offices on the right side and diagnostic radiology on the left. The walls of the entire hallway were covered with inspirational quotes. Her least favorite was by Willa Cather: “Where there is great love, there are always miracles.” The quote itself was okay, but it struck Vica as cruel and unfair in this setting. What about terminal patients? There weren’t any miracles for them. Did that mean that the love in their lives wasn’t great enough?

Her favorite quote belonged to John Cheever: “My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.” Vica thought that if she ever got cancer she would find this sort of quote uplifting. She would make sure to be mean to cats.

It was hard not to become morbid at her job. Just the other day one of her patients said to her: “I used to think cancer was this singular tragedy, something exclusive, something shameful, like an embarrassing curse. Now I think it’s kind of inevitable, like one of the expected phases in your life. You get born, you go to school, you get a job, you get married, you get cancer, you die.”

Vica shared it with Christine. “Well,” Christine said, “if that’s how it is, then at least we’re better off than most people, because we know what to expect.”

There weren’t any patients yet. Early mornings were usually slow, but Vica knew that the hallways would get crowded by ten thirty and overcrowded right after the lunch break.

Liliana was sitting in an armchair in the waiting room, leaning over a stack of postcards.

“Hey, Vica, do you know how to spell condolences, c-e-s or s-e-s?”

“With the c, I think,” Vica said. “Why?”

“I’m writing Dr. Jewell’s notes. To the families of the dead ones. They have to be handwritten. You know how people like a personal touch.”

“So she picked you to do her personal touch for her?”

“I have the best handwriting!” Liliana bit on the tip of the pen. “You know what, I don’t trust condolences, I better stick with ‘Sorry for your loss.’ ”

Vica reached over to pour herself some coffee, but Liliana stopped her. “That one’s empty. They have fresh coffee in the treatment lounge.”

The adjacent lounge was reserved for the patients waiting for radiotherapy. Vica peeked in hoping to see Ethan. It was mostly empty too, save for a Pakistani family and a thin young woman in a blue cancer hat slumped in a corner chair.

Vica finally found coffee at the machine right outside of Eden’s beautiful office. She could see Eden at her desk going through some papers, taking tiny bites of something that looked like an almond croissant. Vica tried to pour her coffee as quickly as possible so Eden wouldn’t notice her. It was important not to let Eden see her, because she might have yet another interpreter’s job for Vica. They never had enough official interpreters, and the first place they looked for help was in radiology with its multi-ethnic, mostly immigrant staff. Vica was usually eager to be useful, always volunteered her services, but the last incident about five months ago was just too hard to bear.

Dr. MacEarchern from the fourth floor had been looking for a Russian speaker. A stately, patrician woman with the features and demeanor of a purebred horse, she was looming over her desk, casting shadows on the papers in front of her. She was also heavily pregnant. For some reason, Vica found this disturbing.

The two people sitting across from the doctor in the narrow armchairs moved very close together; they looked the very opposite of patrician. They were both in their late seventies, small, round-faced, dressed in clothes that seemed to be a mix of things they had brought with them from Russia and bought at discount stores here. The husband was squeezing a checked umbrella, the wife was holding a patent leather bag decorated with rhinestones — Vica’s grandmother used to have a bag just like that. Both looked tired and frail, so Vica couldn’t tell right away which one was the patient. Then she saw the purple chain of injection bruises on the wife’s arm.

“Please introduce yourself,” Dr. MacEarchern said.

Vica told the couple that she was Vica Morozova from the hospital’s staff and she would serve as the interpreter.

Both the husband and the wife seemed relieved to the point of tears to hear her accentless Russian. Here was a nice Russian girl. She was there to guide and protect them in this doubly foreign and incomprehensible world of America and medicine. The husband took Vica’s hand, squeezed her fingers, and called her “daughter.” And the wife simply smiled and smiled at her.

“Let’s start, then,” Dr. MacEarchern said and shuffled a thick heap of medical reports in front of her.

“Doesn’t she look like a horse?” the wife whispered, pointing to the doctor. Vica couldn’t help but snicker. “She speaks like a horse too. We know some English, but we don’t understand her at all,” the old man added.

“Don’t worry, I will translate every word,” Vica reassured him.

Dr. MacEarchern started to talk. She spoke in long but perfectly precise sentences, pausing at even intervals to let Vica translate. She looked directly at her patient while she spoke and only occasionally glanced at Vica to make sure she was following her. But the patient and her husband kept their intense gaze on Vica the whole time. Vica translated everything with diligence and precision, trying to copy Dr. MacEarchern’s empathetic but businesslike tone. She listed all the tests and procedures the woman had undergone and waited until Dr. MacEarchern finished describing the clinical picture. Stage IV. Inoperable. Distant lymph nodes. Metastasis in the lungs. Metastasis in the liver. Secondary tumors.

“In the doctor’s opinion,” Vica started to say when she suddenly stopped. She was about to deliver what was essentially a death verdict. She hadn’t expected this. She’d thought it would be a routine appointment. Nobody had warned her about this! She couldn’t. She couldn’t do this to these people who looked like her grandparents, who were counting on her to protect them. They clearly hadn’t expected anything like it or they wouldn’t have made that stupid joke about the horse. Vica stared at Dr. MacEarchern as if willing her to say something else. She didn’t.

Vica felt a painful constriction in her throat. She was afraid that if she opened her mouth she would start sobbing. And the old people were staring at her so intently. They must have noticed her shock. The old man put his arm over his wife’s shoulders. They exchanged a long look.

“I think we understood,” he said to Vica. His wife nodded. “Metastasis is the same in Russian,” she said.

“She didn’t say it was hopeless though,” Vica said. “They have very good chemo here.”

Good chemo? What was she saying? Quality carboplatin as opposed to subpar carboplatin around the corner?

“I know,” the old woman said. “I understand.”

Dr. MacEarchern saw that the verdict had been delivered. She put her hand on the box of tissues on her desk and gently moved it in the direction of her patient. The old woman’s lips quivered, but she squeezed them into a thin white line and shook her head. Her husband moved the box back. They were too proud to cry in Dr. MacEarchern’s presence.

There was more information that Vica was required to translate, but she saw that the couple had stopped paying attention. The wife was staring down, fondling the stupid rhinestones on her bag, and the husband was stroking her arm with one hand while continuing to squeeze his umbrella with the other.

They exited the office together. The old man shook Vica’s hand and the old woman said, “Thank you, daughter.” Vica gave them her card and said that they could call her anytime with questions.

She never heard from them again.

It was only later that day, on the bus back to Staten Island, that Vica realized that it was the old people who had protected her, not vice versa. They had protected her from having to deliver the verdict.

By the time Vica made it home, she was shaking with sobs. Sergey sent Eric to play in the basement, walked her to the bedroom, then went to fix her some tea. He brought it in on a tray with some salami sandwiches. When she told him how they had called her “daughter,” he started to cry too. They had been fighting for weeks before that, but in that moment Vica felt that she had never felt as close to anybody and she never would.

And now Sergey was gone.

Patients started to flock to radiology around ten o’clock. There were so many of them that Vica stopped making distinctions. She glided and glided and glided her magic stick over their body parts, as if they were the same endless body. By the lunch break it was especially hard. Vica was physically tired, and her back started to ache, and she couldn’t help but imagine herself trembling on that table while a cold slippery wand slid over her cancer-ridden stomach or chest.

As it always happened before lunch, some of the patients were getting hysterical.

“Don’t you have, like, a shred of a soul?” one woman asked after she had begged Vica to let her husband cut the line.

“We need to see the liver doctor at one thirty. If we miss the appointment, they will reschedule and we will have to come again. From Scranton. Do you know where Scranton is? Do you realize what it’s like for Peter to be in a car for two and a half hours?”

Peter was sitting right there, painfully thin, with a yellow tint to his skin and a permanent grimace of pain, ghostlike, and perfectly oblivious to the scene.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t make the rules,” Vica said.

And then the woman broke down sobbing and she kept saying through her sniffles and hiccups: “I understand that he has to suffer chemo, radiation, but why does he have to suffer these endless lines? Couldn’t he be spared that at least? He has less than a year to live!”

No, he couldn’t be spared that. When Vica had first started working at Bing Ruskin, Christine had explained to her the necessity for the lines. Everything at Bing Ruskin was designed to make the machinery of the hospital run most efficiently. Doctors and technicians were moving swiftly from one appointment to the next, the expensive equipment was working at its full capacity. The interns worked their endless shifts. The precise number of personnel was determined by the cost efficiency. And if that meant less efficiency and longer waits for the patients, so be it. The patients were thought of not as important clients to whom you were supposed to suck up for the benefit of your business, but as faceless insignificant consumers who should be grateful for the services provided.

Vica got very angry at Christine back then. She had just started working there and she wanted to think of herself as part of a team concerned with saving lives, helping people, rather than making money off their pain. But the longer she worked at Bing Ruskin, the more she saw the truth of Christine’s words. In a couple of years, Vica started to see the hospital as a huge chemical processing plant, where the patients were treated like the chemical matter to be processed, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

What a relief it was to finally exit the hospital at her lunch break. Vica never ate her lunch in the hospital’s cafeteria; it was important for her to leave the place even if only for fifteen minutes or so. To go out onto the street, even if their block was always teeming with ambulances, people on stretchers, people in wheelchairs. This time there was an unusual commotion by the ER wing. There was a lineup of news vans and a small crowd by the entrance. She saw Tolik sitting on the stoop of his van and walked up to him. He was drinking coffee from a paper cup and munching on a meat pie. “Want a pie, little nurse?” he asked Vica. “Still warm. I got them in Brighton Beach on my last run to Brooklyn.”

“What’s all that about?” she asked, pointing to the ER wing.

“You didn’t hear? Some famous actor died this morning. It’s all over the news.”

“Who?” Vica cried.

“Ivan Grail,” Tolik said. “I think that’s his name.”

“Ethan!”

Vica took out her phone and checked her news feeds. There was the obituary.

Ethan Grail, the former TV actor who made his breakthrough in the

Legends of the Dorm

series and who evolved into the richly nuanced, award-winning

film

star, infusing his performances with deep empathy, staggering emotional power, and brilliant wit, died this morning in the emergency room of the Bing Ruskin Cancer Center, following a heroic battle with a non-small-cell lung cancer. He was thirty-two.

Vica’s hands started to shake so hard that she couldn’t finish reading. She’d seen Ethan only last week. He’d said to her “See you soon.” The doctors had given him a year and that was just a few months ago. He wasn’t ready! This wasn’t fair!

“Did you know him?” Tolik asked.

Vica nodded, unable to speak.

“I’m not a big fan of the movies myself,” Tolik said. “Natasha and the kids love that shit, but I just fall asleep right in the middle.”

Vica nodded again and started to walk away.

“Take your pie!” Tolik said.

Vica took a pie and hurried away from the hospital to the nearest coffee place. She ordered a hot tea and sat down at a corner table.

All her social media was abuzz with the news of Ethan’s death. Twitter and Facebook were bursting with stills and movie clips all featuring a handsome, lively Ethan, even as his ravaged, exhausted body was lying in the depths of Bing Ruskin’s morgue.

Vica found it insulting. But what she really hated was the speed with which some of Ethan’s fans appropriated his death. Fellow actors shared news of upcoming films featuring Ethan and themselves. Journalists jumped at the opportunity to rehash their old profiles on Ethan. Ordinary individuals dug up and posted their selfies with him. Those who didn’t have a photo to share just described their devastating sadness, all-consuming grief, and shattering despair. Come on! Vica thought. He was just an actor you saw a couple of times a year on a screen — you can’t be despairing! I actually knew him! Still, the worst was a huge portrait of a sad German shepherd with the byline: “Ethan’s costar Brunhilde mourns his death.” She wondered who had broken the news to Brunhilde. And how. Did they show her a photo of Ethan Grail and then tear it to pieces? Or did they use sign language? Vica heard that some monkeys knew how to sign, but she wasn’t so sure about dogs. If they did, they must have signed: “Guess, what, Brunhilde, your old pal Ethan just kicked the bucket.” And the dog signed back: “Fuck. This makes me sad.”

Vica felt that this absurd public outpouring stole her grief from her, cheapened it somehow, cheapened the memory of someone she might have considered a friend. She had a momentary urge to share this with Sergey. He would’ve been just as appalled at she was.

She really had to stop thinking about Sergey! He was gone. Gone, gone, gone!

Perhaps she could share this with Franc.

Vica looked at her watch — it was time to go back. She finished her meat pie, threw away her empty cup, and rushed back to Bing Ruskin.

In the elevator, everybody was discussing Ethan Grail. “Have you heard?” “Right here in the hospital!” “In this hospital? I might have seen him?” “What a loss!” “Such a talent!” “Such a handsome man!”

On the radiology floor, all the staff was talking about Ethan as well. Vica saw Santiago and Liliana by the coffee machine, both staring at their phones. Sharing the news with each other that their friends had shared on Facebook. Vica rushed past them to her room.

Eric texted her just as she was finishing with the last patient. His fat friend Gavin, whom Sergey used to call Sir Eatalot, invited him for a sleepover. Their homework was very light and there was no school the next day. “Okay,” Vica texted back, “but no junk food.” “Sure, Mom,” Eric wrote, “we’ll have a carrots ’n’ broccoli night.” She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. Her evening was suddenly free. She could spend some time with Franc. Maybe even have dinner in one of those East Village cafés near where he lived? She dialed his number. He wasn’t picking up. Perhaps he couldn’t hear the ring because of his hearing problem. She texted him. Waited for the reply. None came. She finished up at the office. Changed back into her street clothes. Poured herself some tepid coffee. Texted Franc again to see if he’d gotten her previous text. Franc hated spontaneity. He liked to arrange their dates well in advance, which made Vica a little suspicious. Made her wonder if he was seeing other women as well. Or if he wasn’t as available as he claimed to be.

Christine peeked into Vica’s room and said that Sam, a nurse from the endocrine cancers floor, was inviting everybody to her place for a makeshift Ethan Grail party. “We’ll just drink beer and watch Ethan’s comedies on Netflix.”

Getting drunk and laughing at Ethan’s antics on the very day he died?

Vica said that she had to rush home.

Soon everybody from her shift had left, but there was still no word from Franc. Vica checked her phone again. Nothing. It was stupid to hang out in the hospital waiting for him. Vica exited the building and walked toward her bus stop. The X5 bus arrived within minutes. A thin line of people formed for boarding. But what if Franc called when she was on the bus? She wouldn’t be able to get off. Vica decided to walk toward the East Village. It would take her half an hour or so. If Franc called, she would meet him; if he didn’t, she would just take the X1 bus to Staten Island, the one that stopped downtown. It was unfair that Vica worked in the city but so rarely got to enjoy it. The light had changed to that deep golden color that only came up an hour before sunset on a very bright day. The buildings were lit up as if by an invisible lamp. She had forgotten how much she loved New York, what a pleasure it was just to walk down the street, looking up, savoring the sights.

Vica got to the East Village in no time, but there was still no reply from Franc. Now she was in the midst of all those cafés with outside tables and chairs that seemed too small for the happy people occupying them. This was one of the first days of the season when it was warm enough to sit outside. The waiters hurried with their trays of steaming food. Vica was overwhelmed by all the different aromas coming at her from different directions: basil pasta, French fries, roasted meat. But it wasn’t just the smell of the food, there was also the sense of fullfillment and well-being that was emanating from the restaurants. Her stomach rumbled and she remembered that she hadn’t eaten anything today except for Tolik’s pie. Vica checked her phone again, saw that there were no messages, and decided that she didn’t need Franc to have a nice dinner in the East Village. She walked up to the hostess of the place that had the most delicious smell and asked if there was an available table. The place was crowded, so Vica expected to be turned down, but the hostess said, “Just you? I think I can squeeze you in.” Vica thought she caught the warmth of single-woman camaraderie in her expression. There was a tiny row of tables facing the sidewalk, each meant for one person. One of them was empty, and the waiter led Vica right to it, saying, “We’re having a sangria special tonight. A glass of sangria and two tapas for twenty dollars.” Vica asked for a white sangria, baked shrimp, and croquettes with ham. The waiter put a tiny plate with olives in front of her, but no bread. She ate the olives right away, then dipped her finger into the dish and licked the oil off it. Then the sangria arrived. The first sip made Vica feel fantastic. A man passing on the sidewalk smiled at her. She thought that she must have made a pretty picture right then. A young, beautiful woman enjoying a glass of sangria in this elegant, lively place. Vica pulled out her phone and took a couple of selfies, making sure to smile and get rid of that tense critical expression she so often wore. She picked the best photo and posted it on Facebook with the caption: “Enjoying sangria in the East Village. Could be worse .” Let both Franc and Sergey know that she didn’t need their company. She paused, thinking of the people from Bing Ruskin. Would they get mad that she had blown them off to hang out by herself? Should she delete the post? Vica weighed the risk of pissing off her colleagues against the pleasure of showing the world how great her life was. She decided to let the post stay.

Vica leaned back in her chair and looked out on the street as if it were TV. She had forgotten how much fun it was to people watch. There walked an old man with a mane of white hair reaching to his waist. There walked a young woman in a bright pink leather coat. There walked a woman with a double stroller with two kids who were feeding each other their toys. There was a woman in her forties standing next to a pet store across the street struggling with her cat. She had it in her arms wrapped in a sweater. The cat was wet, shivering, and trying to escape, but as soon as it was about to slip out of her grasp, the woman would push its wiggly butt up. Vica laughed so hard that she splashed her sangria. Then a man came out from the pet store, took the cat, and secured it in his arms. The man looked like Sergey. Vica sighed — she’d thought she was past mistaking strange men for Sergey. Still, she couldn’t help but look again. Could it be? Yes, it actually was Sergey. There was Sergey, and he was with a woman, and they had a cat. After the first shock of recognition, Vica felt numb. She was aware of two things though: that she shouldn’t let Sergey see her no matter what and that she should capture every detail about him and the woman so that she could come up with a clinical picture of their relationship. Vica hid her face behind the umbrella stand near her table and peered at them. Sergey was talking to the cat. Vica couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his expression was similar to the one he always wore when he reprimanded Eric. The woman was laughing while patting Sergey’s back with one hand and stroking the cat with the other. She was a tanned, husky blonde with wide shoulders and thick legs. She had long frizzy hair. She was wearing leggings and Uggs. She was taller than Sergey. She was older than Vica. She was unmistakably American. Too comfortable in her own skin, in her hideous Uggs, to be Russian. Did they live together? They must live together. They had a cat together! Did Vadik know about this? Then she remembered that Vadik and Sergey weren’t speaking. The woman looked happy. And Sergey? What about Sergey? He appeared to be perfectly at ease with her. He said something with that ironic smile on his face, and the woman laughed and kissed him on the cheek. The pain of seeing that was so great that Vica thought she might lose consciousness. She closed her eyes and grabbed onto the edge of the table to steady herself. When she opened her eyes in what seemed like a second later, Sergey and the woman were gone. She thought that maybe this had been a hallucination, but she knew that it wasn’t. The smiling waiter brought her food, but the smell of garlic made her want to vomit.

Vica put twenty-five dollars under her plate, then left the restaurant and started to walk away. It was hard not to run. After a few blocks, she realized that she was going in the opposite direction from the bus stop. She was drained of strength. She couldn’t walk anymore. She stopped at the nearest town house and sat down on the stoop. Her phone beeped. For a second, Vica was terrified that it was Sergey, that he had seen her after all and had seen her run, but it was only Franc. He just got her message and would be happy to meet up. Vica thought that she had never been more uninterested in a man than she was in Franc at that moment. She texted that she was already at home. She thought about taking a taxi to the bus stop, then taking the bus home, but she couldn’t bear the thought of spending the night on her own. A man and a woman passed her by. They didn’t even look in her direction. She was completely alone here. On this stoop, in this city, in this country. Her phone beeped again. She thought it was another text from Franc and was briefly annoyed, but it was an activity Facebook notification. Vadim Kalugin commented on her photo: “Could be worse indeed!”

Vadik! she thought. She dialed his number. He answered right away. “Vadik, are you alone?” she asked. He said that he was. She made him promise that there wouldn’t be any questions, then asked if she could spend the night. A long pause ensued. Vica worried that he’d turn her down, but he said, “Of course! Absolutely!” Vica got up from the stoop to look for a taxi.

Half an hour later, she knocked on Vadik’s door. “Come on in, it’s open,” he yelled, and she entered an empty apartment. She walked in and stopped in the middle of Vadik’s elegant living room, not knowing what to do. There was a collection of bottles on the top shelf by the window and she went to inspect it: whiskey, brandy, vodka, a strange little jar whose handmade label read “For a broken heart.” How perfect, Vica thought and tried to unscrew the lid. Vadik emerged from the bathroom, wearing a nice shirt, his hair damp and freshly combed. He saw the jar in Vica’s hands and said, “No, not that! That’s some shit left over from DJ Toma.”

He took the jar away from her and poured her some brandy. Vica drank it in thirsty gulps as if it was a glass of juice. She suddenly thought about Ethan Grail. Ethan Grail died today! Seeing Sergey made her forget about it. She put her glass down and started to cry.

Vadik walked closer and took her in his arms. He had an erection. How stupid the human body is, Vica thought and moved away.

“Are you hungry?” Vadik asked. “Should we order something?”

Vica shook her head. She said she wanted to watch TV.

Doctor Who? Vadik asked.

Vica said she didn’t care.

They watched a couple of episodes of Doctor Who, then went to bed, Vadik in his room, and Vica in what used to be Sergey’s room.

She woke up in the middle of the night burning with the worst panic she had ever experienced. She was in desperate need of comfort; she felt that if she wasn’t comforted right then, she would die. She got up and walked the short distance to Vadik’s room. His door was ajar, and the room was half lit by some feeble streetlights from the outside. Vadik was lying on his back, his mouth half open. Vica slipped under the covers and moved closer to him. He was so warm and so tall. His body took up a lot of space in bed. She hugged him and he hugged her back. They rolled over together so that she was underneath him now. He felt like the warmest, largest, most wonderful blanket. And so what if the blanket had a stiff dick, and so what if that dick was entering her? They were done in minutes, and Vica fell back to sleep immediately.

In the morning she felt much better, but nauseous with hunger. She went into the kitchen, cut herself a piece of cantaloupe, ate it, and went to shower. As she lathered herself with Vadik’s stinging body wash, she had a perfect Scarlett O’Hara moment. Tomorrow was another day, and today was tomorrow, and her goal was simple and clear — she had to get Sergey back.