Still Here

The Last Chapter

Sergey winced at Vica’s stupid emoji and checked the time before putting the phone back into the pocket of his jeans. He still had about four hours before he had to head to Williamsburg for Vadik’s going-away party. He had called Sergey two weeks ago to tell him that he was leaving for Singapore. Sergey’s heart leaped with joy when he first heard Vadik’s voice, then he thought about him and Vica, and the joy got mired in anger and pain. They met for a drink and talked about what was happening with Virtual Grave, and Regina’s decision to adopt a child (Can you believe it!), and Vadik’s plans. They were both careful not to mention Vica. It turned out that Vadik didn’t really have plans. His headhunter had offered him a two-year contract overseas, and he had jumped at the opportunity. Singapore!

“Perhaps this was for the better,” Sergey said to Vica when he got home that night. Better for Vadik and for their friendship too. Perhaps what they needed was some distance in order to salvage what they had. Vica just nodded in agreement.

A bicycle bell made Sergey jump. He was walking down the narrow East Ninth Street on his way to Goebbels’s place. Even though he was officially back together with Vica, Sergey still had to feed Goebbels and spend some nights with him. He wondered if he was going to miss the cat. His owner was coming back in two weeks. Sergey would definitely miss this apartment, having a room of his own, getting to spend some time by himself. The idea of having a room of his own had supported him all through the turbulent process of reconciliation. He and Vica would be in the midst of yet another screaming fight and he would remind himself that there was a dark, quiet, cat-smelling retreat just thirty minutes away.

“But it’s getting better, isn’t it?” his mother asked. It was. He had to admit that it was.

The moment of clarity came after the call from Cleo. Bank of America had just offered him a junior financial analyst position. He had given up on Virtual Grave and was ready to accept it. He went ahead and took the drug test and filled out all the forms for the background check.

Then the call came just as he, Vica, and Eric were walking along the beach in Great Kills. Eric was crouching nearby trying to revive a horseshoe crab. The number was unfamiliar and Sergey hesitated before picking up.

“Sergey? This is Cleo Triantafyllides.” Sweet female voice. He had no idea who that was. He walked away from the surf to hear her better.

“We met a few weeks ago,” Cleo said. “I used to work as James Kisco’s assistant.”

Cleo! The doll-faced, slightly frightening girl.

“Yes, I remember,” Sergey said. He was pacing back and forth, barefoot, on the cold lumpy sand, while Vica sat down on a driftwood log.

Cleo told him that she had decided to branch out and set up her own start-up with her friend Mischa, another Wharton grad who was “amazingly savvy.” They were looking to develop a project that would truly stand out. And they thought that Virtual Grave would be an ideal start. Both she and Mischa loved how dark and edgy it was. They didn’t have a lot of money, so they couldn’t offer him much, but they were willing to pay him a modest salary while the project was in development stage. And a share of the profits later on. They had a wonderful team of very hot young programmers and designers. She knew that they could build something truly beautiful together. She hoped to meet and discuss the details in the next few days.

Sergey’s first thought was No, let me be. He was so tired of that roller coaster. Bob, Kisco, Kotov. Hopes up, hopes down. It was so much easier to give up. Sergey was almost hoping that Vica would tell him to do just that when he told her about Cleo’s call.

He walked over and sat down next to her on that driftwood log. He described Cleo’s offer, expecting her to say: “Forget about it! You have a nice offer from Bank of America.”

But instead Vica hopped off the log and started to jump up and down. “I knew it! I knew it!” she was screaming. “I always thought that Virtual Grave was a brilliant idea! Brilliant!”

Then she leaped at him, making him fall off the log, and fell on top of him. They toppled and tumbled around on the sand, laughing like crazy, until the worried Eric left his crab alone and ran up to them.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Eric! We just sold our app!” Vica screamed. “It’s gonna work. People are gonna use it!”

“Yeah!” Eric yelled and hurled himself down onto the sand too.

“There is no way of knowing if it will be successful,” Sergey said when they got up and were cleaning the sand off themselves.

“It doesn’t matter,” Vica said. “We need to see it through, up until the very end.”

“Is that the one where you’re respawning people?” Eric asked.

“Yep,” Sergey said.

“That’s seriously cool!”

Afterward, the three of them sat down at a picnic table and had a celebratory picnic of My Europe offerings. They kept talking and laughing, eating like pigs, protecting the food from the seagulls, protecting their napkins from the wind, smearing the sauces around. And all Sergey could think of was Vica. Here she was with her wild hair in the wind, sand all over her clothes, smiling at him, smiling at Eric, smiling at that stupid salami sandwich in her hand. Buoyant, victorious, half delirious with happiness.

I love her, he thought then. I really do.

He did love her, that much was clear. Whether they would be able to be happy together was a different question.

The staircase was dark as always and Sergey had trouble finding the keys to Goebbels’s door.

“Hey, there, Sergio,” Teena said, sticking her head out of her apartment. “Where’s my pal Enrico?”

“Eric,” Sergey said. “I promise to bring him next time.”

Eric loved feeding Goebbels, and Sergey would bring the boy with him from time to time. Teena had struck up a surprising friendship with Eric. They would play videogames in her room, building castles together, burning bridges, killing their enemies, and respawning their friends.

“Where’s your mom?” Sergey asked.

“On a date,” Teena said smugly.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, good for her. I made her sign up for Hello, Love! It’s not like she cares that you went back to your wife or anything.”

Goebbels meowed from behind the door and Sergey said good-bye to Teena and walked in. There he was, lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, flapping his tail against the tiles.

Sergey opened a can of minced duck delight, shaped the meat into tiny meatballs, and hid the anti-inflammatory pill inside one of them. That was Eric’s idea. He said that he did it all the time when he had to give medicine to Gavin’s cats. Then he confided to Sergey that his dream was to be a vet someday.

“But that’s so—” Sergey started to say “unambitious.” He stopped himself just in time. Let Eric figure out what he wants, he thought.

“Yeah, it’s tough, I know,” Eric said. “You have to have all As in biology, and Ms. Zeh keeps giving me Bs.”

Sergey put the meatballs into the bowl. Goebbels limped over to his food with great fervor. The medicinal piece was down (thank God) and now Goebbels was working on the remaining meatballs. He always turned his head sideways when he ate and that gave him a vicious expression, as if he was eating a live bird rather than the thoroughly processed minced duck delight.

Sergey’s phone beeped. There was a text message from Regina: “Is Vica with you?”

“No, why? Aren’t you meeting her at IKEA?” he typed.

“She’s not here and she’s not answering.”

“Must be on the subway,” Sergey texted back.

Regina sighed. She’d been waiting for Vica for twenty minutes on the crowded first floor of Brooklyn’s IKEA and she was getting restless. The place was awful, unbearable, loud, inspiring both agoraphobia because of its size and claustrophobia because of its crowded little pretend rooms. There were all these families moving in all directions half hidden behind the enormous boxes sticking out of their shopping carts. Angry, screaming, exhausted.

It was Vica’s idea to meet there. Regina had asked her if she knew a good place where she could look at children’s furniture and Vica said: “Are you kidding me? IKEA!” She offered to take Regina there and help her shop.

“Where are you?” Regina texted her again. Still no reply.

Ever since she returned to New York after three months in Moscow, Regina had been plagued by bouts of panic. She realized that during her time in Russia she was simply too busy — taking care of Nastya, handling the grueling adoption process — to feel anxious. Back home, between meetings with immigration lawyers, she had more free time to doubt the wisdom of her decision.

Regina had to rent an apartment in Moscow so that she could spend time with Nastya free of Aunt Masha’s supervision, but, of course, Aunt Masha dropped in for tea almost every day. Bob had spent the first three weeks with them. He was so good with Nastya that it intimidated Regina. Even though Nastya and he didn’t speak a common language, they seemed to communicate with ease, or at least with more ease than Nastya and Regina. Bob would play silly games with Nastya, take her on piggyback rides, or just run around a room on all fours and make animal sounds, making Nastya laugh and charming Aunt Masha. It got to the point where Regina was jealous. “She likes me better,” Bob said, “but I bet she’ll love you more.”

Still, she would have preferred it if Bob was as terrified as she was.

Then Bob went back to New York and Regina was left to figure out parenting on her own.

The amount of things she didn’t know about children was overwhelming. She had always been a serious reader, so in this situation too she turned to various self-help books on parenting and adoption. None of them helped; if anything, the books managed to intimidate her even further. There was only one book Regina could tolerate, and that was the Canadian novel Humdrum, the one she had just finished translating. Regina had reread it and was now hungrily waiting for the second one, which was supposed to come out later in the year. She found solace in the descriptions of the humdrum routine of caring for a child. There were so many urgent tasks described in the book that the reader didn’t have time to ponder the philosophy of mother’s love. Perhaps that was the philosophy of mother’s love — being so busy and concerned the whole time that you couldn’t possibly analyze it. Regina shared this thought with Inga, when Inga came over to meet Nastya, and Inga seemed to agree. She supported Regina’s decision to adopt, but Regina couldn’t help but notice that Inga thought there was something whimsical in it. As if Regina, who had always had such a charmed life, managed to find a fun and easy way to have a child too. Unlike Inga, who had her son in her sophomore year while in the university and had to work and study and care for the baby all at the same time!

As soon as Regina got back to the United States, she was attacked by swarms of people congratulating her on her “noble deed” or pushing their vague child-rearing ideas on her.

There was Becky, Bob’s daughter, hugging Regina and saying, “You can’t imagine how much I admire you for this.”

There was Regina’s dad, who said exactly the same thing and then started to cry.

There was Bob’s family, who insisted that she should baptize Nastya right away.

There were Laszlo and his wife, the proud parents of four children, who thought that she should model her parenting on their style.

There were Bob’s friends, who kept sending her links to books and articles on adoption and child-rearing.

There were distant acquaintances, who wouldn’t answer her very specific questions but would say instead that she had to listen to her heart and that her heart held all the answers. Well, guess what, her heart didn’t hold the answer to the question of whether American schools accepted Russian immunization records.

Sergey would just tell her an occasional useless fact like: “Eric used to drink from the bottle until he was four.”

And Vadik preferred to keep mum on the subject altogether.

Even Bob scared her! Regina couldn’t help but feel that he was expecting too much. “You’re gonna be a spectacular mother,” he would say, and she would panic and think: What if I fall short of spectacular?

Vica turned out to be the only one with whom it was easy to talk about motherhood. She was eager to share her parenting experience, but she never made Regina feel like an idiot. Her best advice came in the form of this sentence: “No matter what you do, you can be sure that you’re doing something wrong.” That actually made Regina feel relieved. Every parent was bound to screw up in one way or another. She would screw up too. But it would be okay.

Yet another shopping cart bumped into Regina. Where the hell was Vica?

“This place is awful!” Regina texted her. “I don’t think I can wait here for much longer.”

“Five more minutes. I’m on the boat,” Vica texted back, shaking her head in disbelief. She was no more than fifteen minutes late. There had been this amazing sale at Century 21 downtown that Vica couldn’t miss. And IKEA was awful? IKEA! She couldn’t believe how spoiled Regina had become. IKEA was Vica’s favorite store! The store that let the customers ride these beautiful yellow boats! Free on weekends! Free on this warm and beautiful Saturday in May.

Vica was standing on the upper deck clutching the railing, swinging back and forth on her toes, listening to the slosh of the waves, letting the wind pummel her face. Thinking how unimaginable it was that if she died everything around her would have to stop. There would be no sounds, no images, no sensations. Nothing. Nothing at all. It was strange, but ever since she got back with Sergey, Vica had started to think about death more often and more intensely. It wasn’t that she was scared, she just really, really didn’t want to die. Not ever. She took so much pleasure in her life right now that it felt like it would be incredibly unfair if it would have to end.

Even though things with Sergey weren’t exactly smooth. Far from it. She’d told him about Vadik. She felt that she had to — she wasn’t sure why.

“You’re crazy!” Vica’s mother had screamed at her via Skype. “He will never forgive you!”

And so far he hadn’t. “Vica, please, try to understand, it’s not that I can’t forgive you. I don’t exactly have the right to forgive or not forgive you. We were separated. But I can’t forgive the fact that it happened.”

Vica felt a strange satisfaction when he told her that. Perhaps she’d been compelled to confess to him because she wanted to test his love in some perverse way. If her confession hurt that badly, it must mean he really loved her, didn’t it?

When the ferry finally docked, there was Regina, tall, stooped, and so stricken with panic that Vica felt sorry for her.

“Don’t worry,” Vica said to her. “I invented a very efficient way of shopping here, so we’ll be done in no time.”

She dragged Regina onto the escalator and headed straight to the kids’ department. “We’ll only look for what you need and then you’ll just scan the barcode with your phone and you can take another look at each piece online.”

“I like the castle bed over there. And the tent bed,” Regina said to Vica. “Wouldn’t it be cool to wake up as if you were in the woods?”

Vica shook her head. “No, Regina, no! Don’t look for ‘cool’ things. Look for comfortable and familiar. That’s what this girl needs. You don’t want to make her life even weirder.”

Regina nodded. She looked very intimidated, the poor thing.

“Look at this storage system,” Vica said. “Now this is superconvenient.”

She wished she had the money to buy all this stuff for Eric. Perhaps one day she would. There was no guarantee that Virtual Grave would make any money at all, but she was hopeful. They were hopeful.

“You definitely want this desk! Look, there’s so much space for random crap underneath,” she said to Regina.

Regina went ahead and scanned the barcodes.

Later when they were drinking excellent Swedish coffee in the IKEA café, Vica asked Regina about Nastya.

“You know,” Regina said, taking a hesitant sip, “I think I miss her.”

“Already?” Vica asked. “That’s a good sign!”

“We had two couches close together in that rental apartment. And she would jump from one to the other and scream ‘Egina, look!’ She calls me Egina; she has this little problem with her r’s. Her jumping used to annoy me, because she wouldn’t let me read in peace, but now I miss that.”

“Egina?” Vica asked. “That’s funny! Does she listen to you?”

Regina blushed as if Vica had caught her on some parental incompetence.

“Not always, no. And she often lies.”

“Oh, that’s normal. Kids lie all the time. I would find all these candy wrappers in Eric’s schoolbag and he would insist that they weren’t his. ‘They’re Gavin’s. Gavin put them there.’ And I would say: ‘What about that fat on your stomach? Huh? Did Gavin put it there too?’

They both laughed, then Regina asked how things were going with Sergey.

Vica tensed. She had never trusted Regina and she suspected that she was secretly happy when she and Sergey had split up. Her first impulse was to lie, to say that yes, they were back together and happier than ever.

“Good,” she said, forcing a bright smile. “Really good. Especially since he sold Virtual Grave. He promised that if everything goes as planned I can quit my job and go to graduate school within a year.”

“Medical school?” Regina asked.

“Probably not. I’m fed up with medicine. I was thinking about a degree in marketing or business. You know that girl Cleo, the one who is developing our app, she says that I have some terrific business ideas. She actually likes my ideas better than Sergey’s.”

Regina nodded thoughtfully. She didn’t appear haughty or patronizing. On the contrary, she seemed as lost and insecure as a person could be. She was looking at Vica with kind attention, urging her to tell the truth. “Regina knows how to listen,” Vadik had told Vica once. “She has pulled me through a lot of shit by just listening to my rants. I’ve never met anybody as capable of empathy as her.”

Vica was hungry for empathy. She decided to be honest.

“Actually, it’s been really hard with Sergey,” she said. “We’re back together, yes, but he’s still struggling to forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what?” Regina asked.

Vica took a long sip of coffee and cleared her throat.

“I slept with Vadik and I told Sergey about it,” she said.

Regina put her mug down and stared at Vica.

“We were separated and I thought that Sergey was sleeping with somebody else.” She tensed, expecting something like incredulous judgment from Regina. What she got instead was a strained silence followed by hysterical laughter.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Regina kept saying, choking with laughter, which turned out to be rather contagious.

Honestly, Vica couldn’t think of a more fitting reaction to the story of her love troubles.

“So how did it happen?” Regina asked.

“Do you want to hear the whole story?” Vica said.

“Of course!”

“Let’s go out for drinks sometime soon. I know this perfect little place in the East Village with the best happy hour. Twenty bucks for two tapas and a glass of sangria!”

“I’d love to!” Regina said. “Let’s do it soon, before I leave for Moscow.”

And they got up and went to the exit.

“Listen,” Vica said when they got on that little IKEA ferry that would carry them back to Manhattan, “you can’t let Vadik and Sergey know that I told you, okay?”

“Of course not!” Regina said with a new spurt of laughter.

“And don’t you giggle!”

“I’ll mask it with a cough.”

Vica rolled her eyes in a joking way and took out her phone. “Reg and I are on our way,” she texted to Vadik.

“Cool,” he texted back.

Vadik thought that it was Regina he would miss the most. She was the only one who ever offered him true friendship. Vica and Sergey hadn’t. They were so eager to pull him into that vile complicated mess of their marriage only to spew him back out when he wasn’t needed anymore. Regina was different. She did care about him. Fuck, he had been such an asshole when he said to her that the only way she could take care of a child was to eat it. How could he possibly have known that she was actually considering becoming a mother? But even if he stayed in the U.S., he doubted that they could remain true friends now that she had a child. It was already clear that the child dominated most of her faculties. Well, he could understand that. There were so many ways to screw up a kid, you had to be in a state of constant alert. Vadik had always wondered why people even wanted kids. He didn’t. He had passed on his good sturdy genes, but no kid in the world needed him to pass on his doubts, restlessness, and insecurity as well.

He walked into the living room and surveyed the place. Most of his furniture was already gone. There were just a few pieces left along with a few items of his sports equipment. There was a sense of bareness and open space to the apartment that Vadik hadn’t had a chance to enjoy before. In two days, he would be gone to start his life anew in another foreign, unlived, perfectly clean space. He had never been to Singapore and he knew very little about it, which would make his fresh start even fresher. He had made the mistake of trying so hard to fit in, first in Moscow, then in Istanbul, then in New York. He would make no such claim on Singapore. He would just try to enjoy the foreignness of the place for as long as it was enjoyable.

Vadik counted his bottles of booze again. One, two, three, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift.

He went to the kitchen, defrosted the dumplings and the edamame, put them on a tray, and carried the tray back into the living room. He put it right in the middle of the rug.

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 MOMA. 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.