Richardson looked at me very seriously. "I had no idea that even on such an exceptional block with its own security it was still dangerous," and he shook his head.

The bitch Linda, who doesn't have to live in the house, said soothingly, however, "You're exaggerating the danger, Edward. You could be hit by a car on the street, and the statistics prove indisputably that a lot more people are killed in automobile accidents than by murderers. And anyway, you shouldn't be permitted to get your hands on a machine gun; you'd slaughter us all. Crazy Russian!"

Laughing, she said to Richardson, "Steven even suggested we put up a sign on the front door reading, 'Beware! Mad Russian housekeeper! "

I laughed too. Linda had no idea that an excellent semiautomatic rifle with a scope has been standing in my room since last summer. In the closet, carefully hidden behind my coats and jackets. Carefully hidden in case somebody should come into my room, but there if I need it. I didn't send to Noxville, Tennessee, for it, however. A friend of mine brought it quietly from Texas in the trunk of his car. I had intended to register it with the police, citing the recent robberies of our neighbors and the fact that I live by myself, but then after thinking it over I decided that as a former Soviet citizen I wouldn't be allowed to keep it.

"It would be even better to keep a tank on the terrace," I said. "Just in case."

We all started laughing and roaring again, each trying to drown out the others. At that instant Steven came into the kitchen and looked at us in amazement. We shut up at once. Linda went back up to her office, back to her desk and the salt mines, I started clearing up the dishes, and Steven took Richardson out to the garden to introduce him to the Rolls-Royceans. I had been right; they did go out into the garden.

I cleaned up while a breeze blew through the kitchen — one of its windows and the door to the garden in the dining room were both open. It was the end of September, with a quiet chill in the air, and I thought about the fact that it was already a full year since I had worked in the country by the Hudson River, and that in the meantime I had gotten a lot stronger and more energetic and livelier, since I'd managed to give both Linda and even Richardson a really good scare.

Peering through the grating in the kitchen window was the smiling black face of Christopher, the cook from the baronial mansion next door. He had brought me a cake, as it turned out, an apple cake. Linda won't let Christopher in the house unless I'm in the kitchen. She doesn't have the patience to wait while Christopher gathers together the few English words he knows and explains what he needs. She unceremoniously sends him packing. "Later, come back later!" she says. The fact is that Christopher's from Martinique and speaks French, not English. Our acquaintance began with his knocking on my door one day in the middle of winter. I opened it and found a black man dressed in slippers, sailcloth pants, and a white T-shirt and hunched over from the cold. The man was mumbling something. I remember a little French from school, a couple of dozen words, and so I succeeded relatively quickly in establishing that he was the cook from next door, and that he had stepped out for a moment and the door had slammed shut behind him. And that there wasn't anybody home at his house, that there was food cooking on their gas range, and that if he didn't get back inside in the next few minutes, there would be a fire. He asked me to let him go through the garden so he could break one of the windows in their door and get back into the house. The windows facing the street in their house are, like our own, covered with heavy gratings.

Naturally I let him into the garden and even went with him to help break out the window. I still had a few window-breaking skills left from my youth. About ten minutes later the black man came back to thank me, and from his confused account I learned that he had knocked on several other doors before mine, but that all the other neighbors had been afraid to let him into the garden. "You are a very good man!" Christopher said to me. I explained that it wasn't that I was a good man — I insisted on that — but that our neighbors were cowardly to a pathological degree.

Whatever, after that episode Christopher became my friend. He's a real cook — not like me. I'm a fraud. Christopher's cakes are delicate and delicious. I don't much like sweets, and so my favorite is the apple, since it's tart.

I poured Christopher a whiskey on the rocks and sat and chatted with him awhile in a garbled mixture of French and English. While we were talking, the doorbell rang — Steven's suits had come back from the cleaner's, brought by another friend of mine, a forty-year-old Puerto Rican named Victor who looks between twenty-five and twenty-eight. I sat him down in the kitchen too and gave him a portion of the yellow elixir. We sat and talked. Steven wasn't likely to come into the kitchen before six, and even if he had come in, he wouldn't have said anything. I have my own responsibilities as housekeeper, and dozens of service people come by the house daily. At Christmas, we give them all gifts so they'll serve us better.

Linda came down to the kitchen and upon seeing my Internationale seated on white chairs, immediately started choking with laughter. I can't stand it when she comes downstairs to the kitchen to rinse her teeth, which she does noisily and at length several times a day, each time using a clean glass.

"Edward," she said maliciously after rinsing her jaws, "aren't you planning to go to Bloomingdale's? I hope you remember that Steven asked you to get him two dozen pairs of underpants; he's leaving tomorrow morning, you know."

Linda loves to spoil my fun. Actually, though, I didn't mind going to Bloomingdale's, especially since I planned to use the occasion to buy several pairs of underpants for myself and stick Linda with the bill. If I got away with it and she didn't notice the quantity but only the amount of the charge, I'd get free underpants.

I left the house with Christopher and the Puerto Rican and set off to Bloomingdale's in the cool autumn sunshine to buy my employer underwear. Linda used to do it before, and not Jenny, as I had assumed. Jenny, it turns out, didn't understand anything about Steven's rags. Now that duty has fallen to me.

Bloomingdale's smelled of expensive perfume and was filled with rich people strolling around with packages of the things they'd bought. In the men's department decency and severity prevailed. I took a long time making my selection, walking around very importantly and looking and sniffing. Shopping is a sacred affair, and must never be hurried. Obviously, I spent less time on his underpants than I did on choosing the nine pairs I got for myself. I even picked out some white ones for myself, and there were dark blue and black ones too. They were of an excellent shape, elegant and not too large. They should never be large — that's vulgar. Expensive underpants, obviously, and pure cotton. Mine were a size smaller than Steven's. I paid and walked away, happily pressing my purchases to my chest.

Coming out of the entrance to Bloomingdale's, the servant felt on top of the world and in command of his life, and he gazed haughtily and invitingly at the sleek, manicured girls and ladies he met. Step aside! Here comes a master of life! And I had only nine pairs of underpants. Three pairs per cylinder.

Admiring the fall, I walked back to the millionaire's house and thought about how much I love my New York and its perpetual nervous activity, and about how I've gotten used to living here, so that I hardly remember Russia anymore — a sweet childhood dream. And as I breathed in the dear autumn air, I thought too that if I had been born to wealth, I would have been a completely different kind of writer, maybe of the Oscar Wilde type, although my spirit would probably have been just as restless as it is now. The leaves were falling and an already very fresh breeze was blowing. The Rolls-Royce was gone when I got home, and I breathed a sigh of relief.