Virtual Grave

“Promise you won’t call it Virtual Grave,” Vica said as they turned onto Vadik’s street. “The name’s a downer.”

“Well, the entire idea is about death. And death happens to be a downer,” Sergey said.

They had been discussing this the whole time in the car, all the way from their home in Staten Island to Vadik’s new apartment in Morningside Heights, and Vica was getting tired.

“You’re not getting it, are you?” Vica asked. “Death is a downer. But your app is about fighting death. That’s why you should be talking about immortality, not death.”

Sergey groaned and squeezed the steering wheel tighter.

He’d been steadily losing his looks for the last year or two. He used to be one of the handsomest guys in their school. Everybody said that he looked like a French movie star. Now, his angular features became unsteady and incomplete as if worn down by constant disappointment, even his wiry frame became kind of unwired and clouded with fat. Vica had been watching the demise of his former splendor with mixed feelings. There were times when she felt sorry for him. There were times when she gloated. But mostly she felt cheated.

“How about calling it No to Death or No, Death, No?” she asked.

“No, Death, what?”

Sergey started to laugh. His laugh was throaty and coarse and sounded a lot like a cough, like a very bad cough. And it seemed to sputter resigned disapproval, as if he was trying to say that he found her disgusting and stupid, but he was used to her and almost okay with it.

Vica hated his laugh so much that she wanted to kick him, but instead she proceeded with her instructions.

“Make sure it doesn’t sound like a pitch, okay? Because if Bob catches even a whiff of a pitch he will shut you out. You have to be subtle and stealthy. We’re coming to see Vadik’s apartment, and we’ll talk about his apartment, and then when Bob is happy and drunk, you’ll just mention it, okay? Not to Bob, but to everybody. And don’t wait until Bob gets so drunk that he misses your pitch. Okay?”

“Why don’t I just shout: ‘Nodeathno!’ Would that be subtle enough?” Sergey asked and burst out laughing.

This time Vica did kick him.

They parked too close to the curb. The right front wheel was on the pavement, but Sergey shot Vica such a look that she decided to keep silent.

Vadik’s street was a narrow one, with crooked five-story houses clinging together. Bare trees. Piles of garbage bags gleaming under the streetlamps.

The building looked dark, empty and new, seemingly out of place, as if it was built there by mistake.

“It has a terrace! I love it!” he had told them.

“I’ll give him two months to start hating it,” Sergey said to Vica.

Vadik had moved to New York only eight years ago, but this was his sixth housewarming party.

The problem wasn’t that Vadik couldn’t find a suitable place to live, but that he couldn’t figure out what kind of place would be suitable. For most people, the choice of place would be determined by their financial situation, social status, and personality. For immigrants, it was more challenging. They couldn’t figure out what their social status was, their financial future was murky, and relying on one’s personality seemed too frivolous. Most immigrants just picked a ready-made “house in suburbs/ski trip every year” lifestyle. That was exactly what Vica and Sergey did. Not Vadik, though. He decided to let his personality guide him, which turned out to be problematic. “Vadik shed his old personality when he left Russia, and the new one didn’t grow yet,” Sergey said after Vadik’s fourth housewarming. “What he has now is a set of borrowed personalities that he changes on a whim.”

“Oh, you’re just jealous,” she replied.

But this wasn’t true. It was Vica who...