I wrote down my phone number for Paula and then went back outside with her. I had gotten little sexual satisfaction from her, and in fact I don't really understand what sort of idiot you have to be to go to a prostitute for sexual satisfaction. You can get the same kind of satisfaction going to a urologist; he'll touch your prick for you too. But I did get spiritual satisfaction, as we may conventionally call it, from my visit to Paula, in the same way that a little hoodlum, suffering all day from idleness and boredom, is soothed only by doing mischief, by hanging a cat in the garden, say, or swiping his father's revolver from his desk and shooting his sister in the leg… I was pretty sure Paula wouldn't call me — those girls are very cautious — even though I temptingly told her I was very rich and lived in my own house in Manhattan.

I walked back to my house, crossing Broadway and several other streets until I reached Fifth Avenue, where I went up as far as Fifty-seventh Street. Thickly inscribed with a black felt-tip pen on the wall of a bank on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street was the proud invitation, "Rob me!" This is our special form of New York patriotism. Our New York robbers had been going to banks in record numbers those days. They'd robbed more banks than anybody else in the country, and so far that month they'd robbed more banks than they had all last year.

Go to it, guys! I thought. Let's make a real effort! We'll double the number of bank robberies! We'll double and triple it! I wasn't the only fan. Everybody in New York was keeping track; everybody was excited. The press was keeping a count, and we New York patriots were keeping one too. Thirteen bank robberies today, and more tomorrow, God willing, even if it's only fourteen. What excitement! Our bank robbers are the best and the boldest. Some of them are even women.

I walked calmly past the bank. No, I wasn't going to rob it; I've learned to keep my passions under control. Being a writer is much more profitable than being a bandit. I only have to be patient, to wait, and I'll get my piece and do my great deed. I'll be patient, although there's no doubt that inside I'm a bandit — what else? I'm no housekeeper or writer; I'm a bandit! That's my true profession, I thought wickedly.

Chapter Ten

The boss was home. Five people from Kuwait were sitting in the living room. They had been sitting there for three hours.

The five Kuwaitis arrived in a limousine dressed in suits of Western cut and not at all in the Bedouin burnooses I had expected. "The four of them," said the boss's stepbrother and business associate, Mr. Richardson, as he skipped into the kitchen rubbing his hands together, "the four Kuwaitis are worth more than two billion, Edward!" Two billion dollars! That was a figure more appropriate to astronomy. A million I could still comprehend after a fashion, but two billion and even more? Only four of them were worth that, since the fifth, even though he was a Kuwaiti too, was a pauper and wasn't worth anything — he was only an interpreter. The interpreter, as I saw it, was a servant too, and so he didn't particularly interest me, but I was all eyes for the possessors of the two billion, and I tried to go into the living room as often as possible, pretending to be attentive.

When I'm attentive, I frequently overdo it. And I overdid it with the Kuwaitis and blew it. I put out alcohol in the living room, although not on the main table that Steven and his guests were sitting at, the mirrored one with the birds that Gatsby had cut out of a wall in Iran, but on a little table in the corner — some whiskey and rum and a few glasses. Even though I knew theoretically that people from Arab countries don't drink alcoholic beverages since it's forbidden by Muslim law, and that offering them something to drink is a great insult to them, or at least tactless. It was only by accident that I didn't shove the alcohol right under their noses on the mirrored table. There fortunately wasn't any room to do so, since I'd just put out coffee and tea for them. Luckily for me I'd only been able to squeeze in our ridiculous leather ice bucket and in the process had seen Gatsby's face fall right before my eyes. He probably would have lashed out at me at once in the most obnoxious terms, if it hadn't been for the Arabs sitting around the table and for Efimenkov, my guardian angel, whom I think he kept constantly in mind, although only Gatsby himself knows that for certain. I left off what I was doing, naturally, although I didn't immediately realize what the problem was until Mr. Richardson came running in to me from the living room and worriedly informed me of my error. As soon as I got a chance, I took my bottles of alcohol away, and it's possible that not even all the Kuwaitis saw them, since most of them were sitting facing the other way. It occurred to me in the hallway that if I had made a mistake like that two or three hundred years ago, it would have cost me my housekeeper's and butler's life. Three hundred years ago a barbarian lord would have hanged me from the large tree in the garden next to the swings, although afterward he would perhaps have pitied his loyal butler, the victim of his wrath.

The Kuwaitis had been sitting all that time working on a deal with the boss and Mr. Richardson and two other businessmen of lesser rank. True, they took a break, during which they went down to the first floor to the solarium to examine and try out… well, what do you think? A machine for instantly determining the composition of gold alloys. The machine had been brought to the house two days before in a large case carefully packed in quilts, since it was one of only two or three such machines in existence, and our businessmen were very concerned about it. Externally, the machine looked like a small lathe with an electronic control panel from which various wires stuck out and a black box containing a screen and numerous indicators with needles.

After their break was over, and the Arab-American mob had returned to the living room with its Persian carpets and cushions to chat some more and rustle papers, I stole down to the solarium to get a closer look at the machine. Lying on it were about a dozen oblong objects that looked like crudely made pastries. I picked up one of the pastries, and it felt abnormally heavy. Gold. It's gold, real gold! I said to myself while tossing the ingot into the air.

For some reason I was very happy. The weight of the gold was attractively pleasant. I thought for a moment how nice it would be to rake all the ingots into a bag, and I had just the one, and take off for distant lands. But how much gold could there actually be, how much was it worth? I weighed the pile of ingots with a glance. Not enough for me. Too little for me to give up my unpublished books and my agent, Liza, and abandon my struggle halfway. I often go to the bank to get cash for Gatsby, that being one of my duties, sometimes even several thousand dollars at a time, and occasionally the thought flashes through my mind to take off for Hong Kong or Las Vegas. But the difference between the big crook and the petty thief is precisely the fact that you can trust the former with even a hundred thousand. But don't trust him with just a million, Gatsby!

After returning the ingot to its place, I remained standing over the machine for a while shaking my head in amazement. That machine and the Kuwaitis and the house and my boss and the situation that day all reminded me of an episode from the adventures of Agent 007. The Kuwaiti-Gatsbian group looked like something taken from the silver screen, something right out of Goldfinger, and the only thing lacking was James himself. Actually, I could quite easily have played the role of James. Even mama Jenny had found it amusing to imagine I really was a Russian spy, and had suggested I open a Russian restaurant in New York and call it The Spy.