It was force of habit alone that allowed me to move and not drop off to sleep or start vomiting. I decided I needed to move around and find somebody to drag off to bed. Even if my condition wasn't the most ideal for lofty philosophical discourse and was even doubtful for normal articulate conversation in any language, including the Russian language, gentlemen, it was for the bedroom quite appropriate and even desirable. And I went downstairs, making the rounds like a night watchman and housekeeper and checking every room along the way.

Everywhere were couples, paired-off teenagers in various stages of intimacy. True, there was only one instance where an indisputable sexual act was in progress, and that in the sanctum sanctorum, Steven's office, where one of the leather-jacketed beanpoles — I've always thought they're the most gallant — turned his flushed face toward me and grinned. Sticking out from under his arms and hanging on either side of his crew-cut head were the smooth legs of a maiden in high heel spikes. I couldn't see the young creature's head, since it had been shoved by the rascal's prick well into the corner of Gatsby's green couch, and only a piece of her rumpled skirt and a terribly indecent, very naked maidenly thigh was visible.

My turn around the rooms depressed me even more. It would have been better if I hadn't made it and had stayed by the hookah with the boy in black stockings who was now fucked up to the point of complete befuddlement, and smoked until I collapsed. More than half the kids had disappeared, and those that remained were energetically abandoning themselves to sin, or were well on the way to doing so, while I shuffled like a foolishly grinning old uncle among the young couples — as I clearly remember seeing myself at the time. Besides, I hadn't seen any unattached girls, in fact not even one female figure by herself. I'd let the moment slip by and hadn't used my device for outwitting my own cowardice — hadn't gone to anyone first. After all, there were a lot of good-looking girls among the children, I swore to myself. Why are you such a blockhead, servant Edward, why didn't you find yourself a nice little pussy, young and warm? They were friendly enough with you and didn't treat you like a servant, did they? It was obvious Henry had boasted to his friends that they even had a housekeeper who was a writer. What the fuck were you wasting your time for? I reflected. You're a weak little soul. A feeble little jerk, and you call yourself an opportunist! I insulted myself mercilessly.

To top it all, as I was about to take the elevator from the first floor back up to the living room, it passed me on its way down to the basement, and to my horror I saw in the elevator's round little window my stranger and somebody else in a white jacket. My heart sank. They're on their way down to the basement, I said to myself and then was lost in thought for a few moments, struggling to understand what was happening. Why would a man and a woman go down to the basement? Occasionally for the sake of something exotic, I had fucked a few of my girls in the stuffy warmth of the basement. I had in fact fucked them in all the different parts of the house, in my boss's bathroom, on the stairs, and once in the TV room while watching late-night horror films on our huge screen. But that's me. It's all right for me, I thought. My attitude toward my own sexual activity is easygoing. But it was extremely painful to me for some reason that my stranger — and I considered her mine, my young grace, my girl in chinchilla — was going down to the basement to fuck with the white jacket. I imagined that spectacle as something obscene and awful, which is why I stood pondering a while by the elevator, urgently trying to find a way out of the situation. There wasn't any, as it turned out; I couldn't ward off the terrible thing that was about to happen. And what could I have done, anyway? I couldn't have followed them down to the basement, and even if I had, what could I have said? I imagined how that scene would look, and if they were fucking, then what? He obviously would turn his head toward me and grin the same way the leather jacket in Steven's office had, and she would do the opposite — she would turn away… No, it would be even worse — that provocative young whore would undoubtedly turn her face toward me and gaze at me in an ironically mocking way while the white-jacketed guy fucked her.

At that instant the elevator passed me again on its way up, and immersed in my thoughts as I was, I didn't notice whether they, my stranger and the white jacket, were in it, or whether somebody had called the elevator from one of the upper floors and it had gone up empty. Attempting to introduce some clarity into my world, I plodded upstairs and went into the living room, but the only people there were a few remaining Sangria drinkers and the stubborn boy in stockings who was still sucking like a leech on the hookah and lost in smoke. The distraught and angry housekeeper tossed off a couple of glasses of sangria one after the other and sat down with the boy. Exactly, they're in the basement, I thought, where else could they be? The only hope that the stranger wasn't down there was provided by the fact that when I went up to the third floor, the elevator wasn't there anymore. They had either proceeded up or had taken it back down, so that it was possible to think, say, that they had taken it up to the fifth floor and had gone out on the roof. They are standing romantically on the roof holding hands and looking at the stars, I consoled myself. But through the hashish smoke the devil gloatingly whispered to me, "Holding hands, little Russian fool, little Ivan Shitson? They tumbled onto the old mattress in the basement a long time ago, the one you yourself put in the farthest corner by the window behind the old ironing machine next to the hot water pipe, and the white jacket is fucking her dog-style with his robust prick, and if the children do lack sensitivity sometimes, they aren't without vigor — adolescents can always get it up…"

Ugh, how stupid! I suddenly thought, coming to my senses. I, a cultivated person who only last night was working by the sweat of my brow on a new book and who is usually possessed of bright, clear thoughts, am sitting here like a suffering piece of meat with some young nymphomaniac on my mind. How fucked up, I thought, losing my temper, and rousing myself once again, I drank some more Sangria and resolved to talk to die boy in black stockings.

I had overestimated myself, gentlemen. I was already in a state of utter weightlessness, and even though I was thinking more or less clearly, albeit not what I should have been thinking about, I was speaking the most complacent rubbish, which I realized at the time, although there wasn't anything I could do about it. I attempted to present myself to the boy in stockings as someone very important. I told him in confidence that I was not only a housekeeper but… but the bodyguard of Gatsby himself and tonight of Henry as well. It was an invention so extreme that I myself grimaced at its tastelessness, while telling it to the boy in stockings as we dully sat shoulder to shoulder on the floor. But the boy in stockings was in no better condition that I was, thank God, and merely said, "###," and then fell silent, continuing to suck on his pipe. For all I knew, he was at that moment crossing the desert with Lawrence of Arabia.

"Wealthy people in our time can't manage without bodyguards," I continued, talking more to myself than to the boy in stockings. "The many instances of kidnapping that have occurred on the territory of the United States have forced Steven Grey to hire me," I said, and then to my own surprise added, "I received special training when I was in the Soviet Union," thereby giving a certain piquancy to my own biography. The boy in stockings could take my words any way he wished — that I had perhaps been a dissident back home in Russia, or perhaps an even more alluring prospect opened before him — that I had graduated from a school for spies…