Only once, in the company of Diane, who swayed like a sleep-walker and had painted her fingernails with black lacquer and was wearing a short coat just as black from under which her skinny legs stuck down like two sticks, did I take the subway back to my place to water my plants. For some reason we preferred fucking at her place, to the roar of the Hell's Angels' motorcycles while lying under a huge portrait of a headless half-man, half-woman. Diane had for a long time been the girlfriend of a certain punk rock star who was either insane or merely pretended to be, and although she was only twenty-five, she was ready for the scrap heap.

After two weeks, having sufficiently recovered my self-esteem, I summoned my strength, and leaving Diane alone with her headless portrait, I returned to a normal life. I called Jenny to inquire about the state of affairs at the millionaire's house and to find out if I still had my job as cleaning man, even though I'd missed two days of work.

"Of course you have, Edward. Don't worry about it, everything's fine," said the decent Jenny over the phone. "You haven't lost your job, and you'll still get your eighty dollars for those two Saturdays. I told Linda you did the cleaning, and anyway, she only notices the rug in her office, which Olga vacuumed."

Jenny also said that Madame Margarita had been looking for me. But she didn't ask me where I'd been for the last two weeks, not wanting to pry into my private affairs.

I called Madame Margarita and heard her perpetually cheerful voice say: "Limonchik! I'm glad you called me. I've got masses of work for you to do. Only I'll tell you beforehand that the work is very hard — you've got to dig in the ground and do a lot of other kinds of construction things. I've just started remodeling my house in the country, and I've hired a contractor who has his own local workers, but then I remembered you and that I had promised you some work," Madame Margarita said, very proud of herself, "and the contractor has agreed to take you on. I'm going up there tomorrow. It's in upstate New York, and if you like I can take you along with me."

It turned out later that she hadn't just happened to remember me. It was simply that one of the hired workers had made off with a goddamn antique clock of hers, and she'd hired me to replace him. But everybody likes to seem like a benefactor. When after living in America for five years, I finally obtained a green card, four people immediately told me that it was because of their efforts that I got it.

I packed my bag and went. They promised forty hours a week at four dollars an hour. One hundred sixty dollars. I went — I didn't have any other work.

I spent two months in a town near the Hudson River working as a common laborer and bricklayer and returned to New York at the end of November, there being no more work for me to do in the country.

The whole month of December I spent doing clothing alterations for rich ladies on Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue — skirts and pants. I charged them five dollars an hour for the sewing and cheated a little on the time, so that I started to pick up some money — at least, I was able to make my rent and live after a fashion, but I was bored. I was alone once more.

Once after sewing all day, I was sitting and eating and mechanically watching television, trying various stations, and irritably thinking, How long will I have to keep doing alterations on all their old shit? I'd spent the whole day repairing a torn coat with a fur lining of the sort that any bum would wear, although it belonged to a lady who lived next door to the Guggenheim Museum. Who would have believed that these rich ladies would be so cheap and have their old coats altered or have me patch their husbands' old trousers? I thought. And then on one of the programs I suddenly saw the sweet little face of Lodyzhnikov, so that instead of switching stations, I lingered for a moment, whereupon I was afforded the opportunity of beholding Drosselmeier himself — my former lover Leshka Kranets. Tall and imperious, Leshka strode about the stage in a huge black batlike cloak. The lead. Leshka was a drunk with a heart of gold. He not only slept with you, but worried about whether you were satisfied, or drunk enough, or whether you needed something to wear. As brief as our romance was, he still managed to give me some gold cuff links and to send me money in beautiful envelopes with the tenderest of inscriptions and anticipations and apologies, lest I be offended by the money, which was intended as a gift. But my prick takes me to those who don't love me, which of course is why I remained neither with Jenny nor with Leshka or Sarah, nor with any of the other, by no means bad people, with whom a generous fate has brought me into contact.

At that moment, Leshka happened to be tying a scarf around the neck of the nutcracker. You remember the part where the head comes off? I started smiling and then burst out laughing. Leshka had always been a healer and a doctor, and it had been my lot from time to time to feel the benefit of his healing organ in the days when I still considered myself bisexual.

But who will heal me now? I thought. Jenny was leaving on the fifth of January and already had her ticket. The millionaire's little house had provided me with a great deal of healing, and now I wouldn't be seeing it anymore. And then it suddenly occurred to me, why in fact shouldn't I see it again? Why shouldn't I offer to take Jenny's place? She had tried to find somebody, but hadn't been able to. I would have my favorite garden again, and the house with the children's room where I could take refuge from calamity, and a reliable income — every week. Let's look into it, I thought. I still wasn't ready then to live on my own.

And turning off the television, I erased Leshka from the screen and called up Jenny.

Chapter Seven

You can reproach Steven Gatsby with probably just about anything you like, including the lack of a sense of humor, but he does enjoy showing off, and his snobbery is something you won't take away from him. Therefore, when Jenny arranged an interview for me with Gatsby in the same long-suffering solarium three days before she left, she was certain he wouldn't take me, but I understood her boss better than she did. We looked each other over, chatted for ten minutes, and I knew I could work for him as long as I wanted to. A housekeeper-writer was something he required the same way he required bread, and I believe that my sojourn in his house will in time inevitably take its place in his family chronicle.

Jenny finally rolled out of the house on the fifth of January, 1979, taking with her a heap of cardboard boxes and other assorted trash, and accompanied by virtually the whole Jackson clan, by the timid Martha, who hadn't left for Los Angeles yet, by Bridget and the weeping Linda, and by numerous other tertiary figures — friends and acquaintances of Jenny's — as well as by the shrieking of children and an otherwise indescribable bustle. Jenny's friends also managed to pilfer a number of other absolute essentials, including a fair quantity of alcohol, which she let them haul out of the basement and stick in among the clothing and furniture that did in fact belong to her. I didn't intercede on behalf of «our» alcohol at the time; I didn't want to ruin her leave-taking.

I was genuinely happy that she was going. She was actually moving only her body to Los Angeles; her mind and thoughts had already been there for a long time with the proprietor of the printing shop. She was an appalling sight the last days before she left, her pregnancy having made her even more animal-like and bovine. Like any real American girl raised on mass culture, Jenny, as you already know, firmly believed that everything natural was healthy, and behaved accordingly, burping, letting out mooing sounds, and unfortunately even smelling bad. I'm ashamed even to pronounce the word, but, yes, she did that too, although it's true she first gave a warning, saying, "I'm going to fart," although the warning didn't in fact change anything. In short, she really let herself go after she got pregnant.