But Linda's principal merit is that she talks to me. Several times a day I go up to her office, sit down on the couch next to her desk, and if she isn't busy, gossip with her or talk about politics. But our main discussion club is in the kitchen, where during lunch we talk about the news of the day. I read all the international news in The New York Times without exception, and I regularly read Newsweek and Time, and for that reason am better acquainted with what's going on than Linda is; I'm a newspaper freak and Linda respects my knowledge.

After my private eighteen-month propaganda campaign for an equal and unified humanity, Jenny departed for Los Angeles a very different Jenny than she'd been when I first met her. She hadn't become pro-Russian or a great lover of communists, but after associating with me for a while, she realized that the human beings living on the other side of the globe are people too and not monsters. Weak, poor, intelligent, and stupid — people of all kinds, but people… The realization that Russians aren't a 260-million-strong band of evil-doers and criminals was, gentlemen, no small thing for the mind of a girl raised in a country where the word «communist» had not long before been used to frighten children. An achievement, you might say.

Linda is a very skeptical person. She is, moreover, strongly influenced by David, who really dislikes Russians. He's a cultivated person, a stage designer, and it would be difficult to suppose that he's a racist, especially since Russians aren't the most appropriate object for racism. Most likely he's just a failure who has found himself a sufficiently remote target on which to vent his anger, since in my opinion he's a coward — hence his karate.

David, although he's friendly enough with me personally, half-seriously considers me a Russian spy. Linda certainly doesn't share that opinion — she's seen me scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees too many times, an image of me that has obviously displaced from her mind the image of Edward in a KGB cap being photographed with his fellow spy school graduates with the Kremlin in the background. But Linda is by nature a skeptic; she doesn't trust the world. She cautiously peers out from behind her skeptical armor, and at any little thing withdraws again.

We discuss international problems until we're hoarse, especially relations between America and Russia, although we always reach the same conclusion every time, namely that our peoples are decent and hard-working, and that it's the fucking politicians who are trying to make us quarrel.

"Suckers!" I say. "Suckers!" Linda answers.

Thus we talk if Linda has time, and of course she doesn't always, unfortunately, which is why she always sits in the same place in the kitchen next to the phone, since people call her during lunch too, which makes us both very angry; it interrupts our conversations. Angry or not, as soon as Linda picks up the phone, she's instantly polite. "Hello, Steven Grey's office! How may I help you, sir!" Even though she's just shouted, "Fucking bastards! Why do they always have to call me at lunchtime!"

Linda always sits with her back to the window, whereas I always sit facing it — I like to watch the street. Our kitchen is about three feet below the sidewalk, so that the feet of people passing by land at about the level of our table. Actually, those "passing by" aren't passing by at all but out for a stroll, since they don't walk by our part of the street but come to it: It ends at the East River. They are almost always the same people — either rich ladies and gentlemen from expensive neighboring apartment buildings, the most expensive ones in the city, or their children, or their servants out walking their dogs. Only occasionally does a chance romantic couple wander past to sit by the river, smoke, and fondle each other. The characters in the street show are always the same, and you can set your watch by some of them. Thus, seeing a probably crazy elderly woman pass by the window on the other side of the street with a springy martial stride, you can say with certainty that it is exactly four minutes after nine. And that after going in the direction of the river, she will pass by the window again two minutes later, this time on our side of the street and going in the opposite direction. The only thing that changes in the course of the year are her clothes. In summertime she wears an orange plastic visor, and in wintertime, a blue nylon jacket. I think she's an old maid who obviously lives somewhere nearby. During the year she never deviates from her schedule of 9:04 by more than a couple of minutes.

In the mornings our street belongs to the limousine chauffeurs waiting to take our bosses to the office so they can conduct their important affairs. Many of our little neighbor ladies have nice portfolios of stocks in companies with impressive, internationally famous names like Avon, Amoco, Texaco, and so on. Open the Wall Street Journal and run your finger through it, and you'll make no mistake: you'll find precisely the same company names that my neighbors gaze at with satisfaction every morning as they flip through their own Wall Street Journals. The limousine chauffeurs in their suits and caps polish their cars with rags or stand in groups, cautiously talking. Gatsby is one of the few on our block who rarely uses a limousine; he prefers taxis. The reason for that isn't his liberalism but simply the fact that he doesn't live here continuously; he doesn't, however, hesitate to use his private plane to fly to his estate in Connecticut.

Our street is animated early in the morning not only by chauffeurs, but also by beautiful women — it's a favorite site of New York commercial photographers. The façades of our buildings are exceptionally respectable, and we have a view of the river, so that our block has an old English look to it. And so almost every day on our street you'll see a bus with half-naked girls inside being made up by fussy homosexual make-up men, while women with cigarettes dangling from their lips and dressed in trousers of the sadistic lesbian style hoarsely direct elegant young people where to drag the next case of camera equipment, and the photographer himself, most often a Jew, although Japanese are starting to turn up with ever greater frequency now, fiddles with his camera — the Jews anxiously, and the Japanese like brand-new automatons.

And I, the servant, gladly slip outside whenever the boss isn't around to check out the girls, who are forced to repeat the same scene a dozen times — an unexpected meeting on the street, say. Although stupefied with boredom, the models pass in front of the camera with happy expressions. Like it or not, their faces must depict, for one, surprise and envy at the new dress of her friend, and for the other, pride in that dress — all this the creative discovery of the photographer or the hoarse lesbian. The male models irritate me: they're always bull-like, boorish types who seem a bit stupid and uncouth. Actually, I haven't had that much contact with them, so maybe I'm wrong.

In addition to the limousines and fashion buses, there are always at least a couple of vans parked on our street. We're always being repaired and renovated and painted — at least it's a rare day that there isn't some van on the street belonging to Royal Plumbers or Green Air Conditioners or Sherlock Holmes Security Installations or some other very important representative of business on a smaller scale. Our house is serviced by a black man named Andy whose business is called King's Air Conditioners — the same style, as you see, as the other representatives of private enterprise. Andy frequently gives me a hand in critical situations. I call him, for example, whenever a pipe bursts in the basement or a water spot appears on the ceiling in one of our rooms, such unpleasantness usually occurring in early spring. Andy respects me, and I respect him, although we're both very different. Andy neither smokes nor drinks, and he has a wife and two children. I both smoke and drink, and I don't have a family. Andy wants to educate his children and go for a long visit to Africa someday; he's very interested in the land of his ancestors. I dumped the land of my own ancestors, and it's unlikely I'll ever go back. Yet for all our differences, we get along very well, and when we both have time, we have some coffee in the kitchen and talk. As I don't try to extend my life to all the other rooms, I spend the larger part of it in the kitchen, as is appropriate for a servant.