Still Here Read Online Free PDF Page A

here. I lived in Carteret first, then in Avenel. Avenel had Mom’s Diner. Carteret had a view of the Staten Island dump. In Avenel, I rented a two-bedroom. I had just come from Istanbul and I had a two-bedroom there, so I thought that that was what I wanted. But in Istanbul, I had furniture, and here there were three enormous rooms, perfectly empty. I put the bed in the master bedroom. I put the TV and the exercise bike in the living room, but there was nothing left for the second bedroom. The emptiness scared me. I tried to avoid it, but I kept wandering in. So I decided to put the exercise bike in the middle of the second bedroom. It looked small in all that empty space. I got on it and started pushing the pedals. I was pushing and pushing, but then I caught my reflection in one of the windows. I was perched on that bike, pushing the pedals, inside of that huge white box. I looked like a lab rat strapped to some piece of equipment. I got off the bike, went to the bathroom, and grabbed a bottle of Tazepam. I didn’t know how many pills I’d need to kill myself. Ten? Twenty? Thirty just to be sure? I unscrewed the bottle and there were three. Just three. I remember thinking how pathetic that was. Well, I took those three and went to sleep. I slept for fourteen hours. When I woke up, I packed up my things—a suitcase, a computer bag, and two boxes of books—and escaped to the city.”
    Regina started either sniffling or snickering, as she always did at the end of this story.
    “What’s Tazepam?” Bob asked.
    “Russian tranquilizer,” Sergey explained.
    “Can you get it here?”
    “I don’t know. It’s kind of like Xanax but deadlier.”
    “So how many do you need to off yourself?” Bob asked.
    “Still no idea,” Vadik said. “I wish there was an app that helped you commit suicide. Just, you know, help you find the easiest and most rational way to do it.”
    “Suicide Buddy?” Sergey asked. They all laughed.
    Now, now was the perfect moment to bring up Sergey’s idea! Vica thought. But Sergey being Sergey, he wasn’t getting it.
    Vica reached around Regina’s back and prodded Sergey with her fork. He didn’t budge. She prodded him harder. He glared at her. She knew exactly what he was thinking: that she was a coldhearted bitch to try to pitch their idea right after the suicide story. But she didn’t care what he thought.
    “Bob,” she said.
    Bob raised his eyes to her. His eyes were now the same color as his face. Red. Forget about their encounter in the kitchen, he looked as if he’d have trouble remembering who she was. She hoped he wasn’t past lucidity.
    “Bob!”
    “Yeah?”
    “Speaking of death…”
    “Yeah?”
    “Sergey has the most amazing idea for an app.”
    They all stared at her as if she were drunk. She was tipsy, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about being subtle either. She would just pitch the idea head-on. And she would pitch it right to Bob.
    “This new app, Bob. It would allow you to fight death.”
    Bob stretched and screwed up his face while making an honest effort to understand. “To fight death?” he asked.
    Sergey cleared his throat. They all turned to look at him.
    “Well, not exactly, of course, but it would allow you to keep your online presence after you die,” Sergey said, “to remain immortal in a virtual reality. You see, the idea that inspired me comes from a nineteenth-century Russian philosopher, Nikolai Fyodorov.”
    No, not Fyodorov! Vica thought. But then she looked around and saw that Bob was listening with great interest.
    “Fyodorov’s main idea was the resurrection of the fathers. He thought that it was the duty of every son to resurrect his father.”
    “Huh,” Bob said. “My shrink thinks just the opposite. ‘Bury your father’ is what he tells me. Bury your father, free yourself of his grip, or you’ll never become your own man.”
    “Well, not so in Fyodorov’s opinion. He thought that the problem with modern man was that he