Linda's second question is even more succinct: "Alone?" In our private language that means something like, "Did Gatsby spend the night alone?" If I say that he didn't, Linda's asks, "Who?" She wants to know who's with him, naturally. She and I are, in this, much like real servants: We love to spy on our employer and rummage in his dirty laundry.

I, as his butler, am required to sort out his dirty laundry in the most literal sense of the word, to take it out of the suitcases he brings home after his trips around the globe, to fish it out of the extraordinary mixture of papers, new books, medicines, notebooks, cameras, cassettes, pants, jackets, and phone messages on stationery from hotels from all over the world, and foreign currency in every conceivable form, size, and color with which his suitcases are crammed.

Now I take the lion's share of whatever currency I find for myself. It wasn't that I was afraid to before, but simply that I didn't know how he would feel about that kind of expropriation. Convinced by all the evidence that he had no recollection of those paltry francs and pounds (my God, he spent hundreds of thousands a year, didn't he?), I started helping myself. No, no, I'm not talking about hundreds of dollars, just small amounts — five dollars here, twenty dollars there. After all, a butler has to do a little stealing, or what kind of servant is he? Employers are right to believe that all servants steal, but the good servants are the ones who do so within acceptable limits, whereas the bad ones do so impudently. I wouldn't let anybody plunder Gatsby's things, nor would I myself take even one object. When not long ago two little silver vases from a sterling service disappeared, I was overcome with self-pity and despair, lest Gatsby think I'd stolen his silver when I hadn't, but the forgotten bank notes justly belong to me, gentlemen, and no argument. After all, I only make a hundred and sixty-five dollars a week.

In answer to the question "Who?" I reply to Linda, "The Tea Lady," or, "Polly," or, "I think it's a new one." Linda is also interested in what kind of mood Steven is in that day. «Average» happens rarely; most often the answer is either «excellent» or "very bad." Armed with this knowledge and clutching an ashtray, Linda invariably goes upstairs to her room after pouring herself a cup of coffee and adding milk to it. She's been spilling milk on the kitchen table every day now for two years, just as I have been giving her reproachful looks for two years while she gets mad.

I wander idly around the house or sit by the kitchen window, my favorite spot, and look out at the street and think, while nervously waiting for Steven to make his appearance. I already know from the schedule, say, that there will be three people for lunch at 12:30. I've already set the table in the dining room and put out the silver bread-and-butter plates too. I haven't forgotten: Everything's ready, all our magnificence is on display, and there are new candles in the candlesticks, although I still don't know what Gatsby wants for lunch. I wait for him to escort his lady from the house and seat her in a taxi — for them to pass by the window, the lady in a fur coat and Steven without any jacket as usual — and then, as soon as he has returned to the house and before he has a chance to sit down in his office and make his first call, I deftly intercept him and ask, "Excuse me, sir [or Steven], what would you like for lunch today?"

And Gatsby will say, "Lamb chops. I haven't had lamb chops in a long time." But if he's had meat in the last few days, then he'll say, "Make something light, Edward. Let's have fish, salmon steaks, maybe, or Long Island Sound scallops." Or perhaps he will say in an irritable voice, "I don't know, Edward, make whatever you want. I'm sick of always having to decide and worry about everything." In the latter case, I always decide in favor of meat.

Having received my orders, I trot around to the stores as fast as I can, first calling the Ottomanelli Brothers butcher shop, if Gatsby has decided to stick with meat:

"Good morning! How's it going? This is Edward, Mr. Steven Grey's housekeeper."

And one of the butcher brothers, wiping his hand on his white apron, will say, "Great, Edward, what do you hear from Jenny? Has she had her baby yet?"

I'll say no, she hasn't, or later that yes, she has.

"What would you like today?" the Ottomanelli brother will ask me then, since they don't have time for long phone conversations — there are very probably about a dozen rich old twats standing in the shop who've come to pick out the best meat, and just as many maids who've come for the same purpose.

"Send me a dozen lamb chops for lunch, please," I'll say, "only hurry up this time. The last time your delivery boy was slow in getting here, and I had to serve lunch ten minutes later than planned."

"Of course, Edward. Don't worry, he'll be on time today," the butcher will say. "Bye!"

At first this ritual amused me. Now I'm sick of the regulated order of my life and the huge annual schedule on the cork wall in Linda's office and the monthly schedule that hangs in front of her nose and that's tacked to the lamp on the desk in Steven's office. The fact that I know what Steven will be doing in six months, and therefore what I'll be doing, is repellent to me. I live for the present, for those moments when Steven isn't in the house, and knowing beforehand that he'll be here, say, for five days next week, I already begin to anticipate how tired I'll be. I plunge into his visits with trepidation, with my eyes closed, and I reemerge from them with joy. Maybe that's only because I'm not a real housekeeper but a sham one, or maybe every servant feels that way. Or maybe I really am a housekeeper, and the writing business is just something I've made up for myself, it occurs to me sometimes. The only part of my life that has anything to do with writing are the few lines I scribble down in cheap notebooks from Woolworth's and the phone calls I make from time to time to my agent, Liza, to find out which publisher she's received a rejection from this time. There are already more than a dozen of them now — a dozen rejections. That's my whole connection to writing, whereas I'm connected to the world of service all the time. Probably I am a servant. I'm a servant, a servant, and writing is merely something I play at, I think bitterly.

After buying groceries, I drag myself home loaded down with packages and bags, trusting Olga to put everything away for me while I methodically set about preparing lunch. I've learned to be precise — I know when to put the Brussels sprouts on and when to begin cleaning the broccoli, and the only thing that might possibly put me off schedule is the inordinate activity of Steven and his businessmen. From time to time one of them will come in and ask me to bring him a cup of coffee. I then have to take the sterling tray with coffee pot, cups, and milk and sugar to Steven in the office. I take it in, although it makes me angry. Steven thanks me, and I go back downstairs to my spacious kitchen, where I sometimes open the door and stand in it, cleaning the vegetables and thinking how nice it would be if all of them — Steven, and his businessmen, and Linda — would just leave me in peace.

Linda always claims part of the lunch for herself: "Edward, always order for yourself and me whatever you order for Steven," she reminds me.

"If they'd only hurry up and finish stuffing their faces," I mutter to myself, "and get back into their papers and arguments and so on, I can take my time clearing the table and worry about myself and my own thoughts."

I cook the meat over a grill for five minutes on one side and three or four on the other. The Italian brothers without a doubt have the finest meat in the world; it melts in your mouth like butter. "Steven likes everything around him to be very classy," Linda never tires of repeating, and I try to make it all as «classy» as I can: The vegetables and the meat are served on sterling too. The table looks impressive and beautiful, and if Gatsby is in a good mood, he may express his appreciation by saying, "Thank you, Edward!" But if he's in a bad mood, you won't get a fucking thing out of him, not even if you cooked him angel's meat for lunch. Actually, his words of praise don't mean that much to me. The best thing he can do for me is to eat his lunch in forty minutes and get the hell out of the dining room. But Steven sits at the table with his very important guests for an hour to an hour and a half on the average, and sometimes for three. And I nurse my antipathy in the kitchen.