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Sergey said.
    The kitchen was narrow and frightening, lined with gray floor-to-ceiling cabinets and chrome equipment. There was a huge marble counter with the stove in the middle of it that jutted right at them.
    “What’s this about?” Sergey asked, tugging on Vadik’s apron and pointing at the gleaming collection of pots and pans.
    “Exploring molecular cuisine,” Vadik said.
    “Uh-huh,” Sergey said.
    “I bought an immersion cooker and this amazing new app to go with it. It’s called KitchenDude. It tells me what to do. After I put the food in the cooker, I get texts that inform me about its progress. Like right now I have osso buco in there, and I’ll get a text when it’s ready.”
    Vica sighed. Another maddeningly banal app.
    “What did you call it? Bossa nova?” Sergey asked.
    “Osso buco!” Vica corrected him. “I can’t believe you don’t know about this dish. It’s mentioned in every American TV series.”
    Something buzzed with an alarming intensity.
    “The bossa nova ringing you?” Sergey asked.
    “Osso buco!” Vica hissed.
    “No, our friends are ringing me,” Vadik said and rushed to open the door.
    Regina raised both her arms to hug Vadik, a frosted bottle of champagne in each hand. Back in Russia, Regina had been a famous translator of North American literature. She’d even won a bunch of important prizes, as had her mother, who was even more famous. Both Sergey and Vadik mentioned the two women’s “magical touch.” Vica wasn’t persuaded. She had picked up Regina’s translation of
The Handmaid’s Tale
and wasn’t impressed at all. She then read
Howards End
in translation by Regina’s mother and didn’t love it either. The books were boring, but to be fair, perhaps that was Atwood’s and Forster’s fault, not Regina’s or her mother’s.
    When Regina was younger, people had often commented that she was a dead ringer for Julia Roberts. Vica always found that ridiculous. Regina did have a long nose and a big mouth, that was true, but she had never been pretty. She had always been clumsy and unkempt, and not very hygienic. Now that she was a rich man’s wife, she had managed to clean up a bit, but she seemed to wear her newfound wealth like a thin layer over her former subpar self. Her monstrously crooked toes showed through her Manolo sandals and her long Nicole Miller dress clung to her deeply flawed body. Bad posture, pouches of fat. With all that money and free time, Vica thought, Regina had an obligation to take better care of her body.
    Bob was different. Bob was so neatly packed into his clothes that they appeared to have been drawn on him. He had the solid frame of a former football player and a shaved head that gleamed under Vadik’s fluorescent lights. His face was impenetrable, like a marble egg. He was ten years older than Regina. Which would make him what? Fifty? Regina said that Bob wasn’t “really” rich. Not at all. What he had was moderate success, and he would never become a billionaire. He was too old—the field belonged to the young guys. In fact, Bob would have laughed if he knew that Vica considered him rich. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Vica thought.
    Still, Regina fascinated Vica. She often wished that they could be closer. Back in Moscow, it was Vica who thwarted all of Regina’s attempts at friendship. Ever since Sergey had dumped Regina to be with Vica, Vica had been suspicious of her, had expected Regina to get back at her, to harm her in some way. If Vica was in her place, she wouldn’t have accepted defeat with such calm. “But she is not like you,” Sergey would tell her, “Regina is not like you at all.” Then when Regina came to stay with them after her mother died, Vica felt so sorry for her that she offered Regina all the warmth she could summon. But Regina appeared to be thoroughly indifferent. And when she married Bob and came to live in the United States, she was cold and standoffish to Vica. Vica started to suspect that Regina felt