It was probably a week before I saw Jenny again. She responded to my calls by saying that she was busy since Steven's sister was still there, and that she didn't feel well. I suspiciously thought she wasn't telling the truth, and lay in my hotel. Going to the park would have been silly anyway; the muggy spring rains had started. Even the sheets were unpleasantly damp, and I lay naked on the bed and gave myself up to despair, as only I, the psychopath Edward Limonov, am capable of doing. I even started crying. And from idleness, I also had a tremendous desire to fuck, and a dull feeling in my head. I even remember once howling quietly and mournfully for a whole evening, while I tossed and turned in bed and recalled Jenny's large legs, her long neck, her soft breasts, and her rather fat belly, which I had held in my hands. But I couldn't allow myself to masturbate; I don't know exactly why, but I couldn't. It was as if I felt some obligation to Jenny or to myself. I wanted to be a man, and not a pitiful masturbator.

Finally after the week had passed, Jenny called me herself. We had been talking about ten minutes, when she suddenly surprised me by saying, "Edward, I want to say something important to you."

Put on my guard, I answered, "Yes, of course, Jenny. What is it?"

"I have to tell you, Edward, that you're a very good, very educated, and very sensitive person, but I haven't 'fallen in love' with you." She was silent for a moment. I was silent too. "I like you," she resumed, "but I'm selfish. Very selfish. Very. If you want to be my friend, that's fine. But not love."

I had the presence of mind to agree with her. I said: "All right, we'll be friends. Can I come over in half an hour? We'll have a drink."

"Come over," she consented. "I have some company, Debby and her boyfriend, and some girlfriends of mine, if they won't bother you."

"No, they won't bother me," I said.

I left the hotel and set off through Central Park to the East Side, bitterly thinking to myself about her and about me and about how I would obviously never have any luck in life and about how foolish it was of her to reject me. Central Park after the week's rain was deserted, luxuriant, utterly beautiful, fresh-smelling, and without end, the way it is in May. It had just stopped raining, and I walked through that verdant paradise completely alone with the trees and plants; New York's tireless bicyclists still hadn't come out, nor had the drug pushers taken up their usual places.

By the time I emerged from the park on the East Side, I had already calmed down. Well, all right, what does it matter? I thought brightly. I'll find another way out, I'll still climb out of this shit. I'll still find a way out of it, even if Jenny won't be my springboard. There'll be other chances. Cheer up, Officer Limonov, I told myself, and even walked more energetically, firmly striking my heels on the pavement. Ah, what a fool Jenny is not to want to try somebody as unique as me.

Thus I walked along reasoning to myself, and when I had almost gotten to her house, I suddenly thought, Listen, Limonov, she's only twenty years old. Don't take what she says too seriously. Let her say whatever she wants to, and you try to change it. Have you actually forgotten Catullus? Remember the lines, "What a woman says to her ardent lover/should be written in wind and running water…" That's exactly the sort of thing she said over the phone to you, and you came unglued.

Catullus cheered me up immediately, and when Jenny opened the door dressed in a belly dancer's costume — in a bra embroidered in bugles and shiny thread that had originally been made for Debby, as I later found out, and in very wide Moslem pants set low on her hips, I said, "Hi, Jen," and merrily kissed her. She looked suspiciously at me, sniffed my breath, and asked, "Have you been drinking, Edward?" I said I hadn't.

They were all sitting out on the terrace in the garden when the officer Limonov came in. Besides Debby and her Japanese boyfriend, Michael, there was a tall, slim Irish girl named Bridget, with auburn hair, as befits Irish girls, and unbelievably fair skin, as also befits Irish girls. After answering my «Hi» with her own, the first thing Bridget asked me was, "Do you have any grass?" I didn't have any with me; I knew Jenny had just given it up. She was allegedly suffering from back pain which she attributed to smoking marijuana since she was eleven. It wasn't her idea; she'd gotten it from her Indian homeopath, Dr. Krishna. And maybe the doctor was right. During the period in question Jenny was fascinated with homeopathy and went to Dr. Krishna regularly not only as his patient but as his disciple.

I later calculated that Jenny changed enthusiasms about every six months. During the year and a half we were together, homeopathy was replaced by jogging — onward to health! — and jogging by the health food fad. Jenny, like tens of millions of other Americans, took up whatever was foisted on her by America's popular culture and its advertising machinery, eagerly exchanging enthusiasms as the popular culture dictated and, like every other victim, readily believing that they were her own. The roller skating epidemic fortunately took over the United States after we had split up, or I would certainly have been in on her smashed knees and broken arms.

I had to disappoint Bridget; I didn't have any grass. She kept her head, however, and very quickly got drunk.

When I arrived they were engaged in sporadic searching for the little bronze finger cymbals used in belly dancing. Jenny called them "zilts," or something. She had put her costume on and was all set to start dancing — the stereo was already scattering clouds of Middle Eastern music through the house — when the cymbals had suddenly disappeared and there wasn't anything to mark the rhythm with. Jenny got mad and started whining, while the rest of us looked in the drawers and moved the books on the shelves and finally found them, thank God.

Jenny danced several numbers, first wrapping herself up in a piece of Indian cloth I assume Dr. Krishna had given her, then unwrapping herself. I suspected then that the handsome, graying, seventy-two-year-old Dr. Krishna was sleeping with her, but he wasn't. I wasn't very far from the truth, however. Although Krishna wasn't sleeping with Jenny, he was sleeping with another of his patients and disciples, with that same girlfriend of Jenny's I had met on my first evening in the millionaire's house — with Jennifer. And she was only nineteen.

We know these doctors, I thought. Covered with the unearned glory of the hermits and gurus of old India, they come to the United States and put together whole fortunes, the swindlers, by relying on the naïveté of young Americans and their natural attraction to everything astonishing and unusual. At the same time, they don't forget to fuck the prettier and younger of their admirers and disciples, if such be at hand.

Jenny wrapped herself up in the cloth and then unwrapped herself, but I never did find out whether Krishna had given it to her. She danced very well, I thought; she had just the fat belly needed for that Arabo-Turko-Persian show. It moved exactly the way it was supposed to, twitching like a jackhammer. I tried it later on, but I couldn't do it; that kind of automatic abruptness of movement is possible only after years of training, and then only if you have the gift.

I only thought Jenny was a bit big for belly dancing. Those Eastern women with their fat bottoms and bellies who regale the eyes of Eastern men immediately after the hot mutton has been devoured are small, intentionally small. Jenny would probably seem awkward and clumsy to some Eastern men. Her other shortcoming was her chestnut hair. A belly dancer's hair should be jet black, as should her cunt hair. I noticed long ago, by the way, that cunts with black hair are always red, that is, of vivid hue. The cunts of blondes, on the other hand, are paler in color, pastel, so to speak. The black-haired cunt should be more appealing to Eastern men; it's red like the mutton they've just eaten.