On his 35th  birthday, Misha Bobitch, lover of chess and unavailable women, left Russia for a new life in the New World. After a flight punctuated by generous helpings of (reheated) pelmeni, more or less doable Vodka and three stopovers in equally overcrowded and under-heated airport terminals, he spotted a cab parked right outside the front door of the arrivals terminal of JFK airport; its driver having facial features remarkably Slavic  but slightly less wintry and Soviet (maybe Czech or Polish) than his own. During the first leg of the ride into Manhattan, through the not-mean streets of quasi-suburban Queens, Misha paid little attention to that mix of slush and sunlessness which which is common to midwinter New York. His view was, instead, inward, his mind filled with snippets of Moscow on the Hudson and a blur of scenes from the Cagney-Bogart shoot-em-ups that he’d watched in the well-stocked film library of a friend who worked in the KGB’s media department.

Guessing that his passenger was near numb from having just completed the multi-stop odyssey that is so often the fate of his fellow cast-offs of the Great Social Experiment who flew “coach” from points East, the driver chose to spend the time listening to a stream of soft jazz piano music from a local FM station rather than try to engage his passenger in conversation. By and by, on approaching the East River and that magnificent view of The City, the sound of a suddenly shifting body came from the back seat. “Can you recommend a good place to stay? I don’t have much money and I don’t need anything luxurious!” Having made his often unhappy wife of 12 years happy with a state-of-the-art television paid for with tips from umpteen plus fellow Ost Europeans who were grateful for his recommendation of a relatively cheap hostelry in this epicenter of greed and Darwinian capitalism, the driver nodded his head and continued on the last leg of the journey into Manhattan. After a quick check-in and recital of the rules and regulations – receipt in hand for two prepaid weeks at the midtown Manhattan “Y”, Misha was able to pry from the young desk clerk the name and address of the nearest all-night café. This proved to be a fairly easy task for him once the young (and by the look of his ketchup-stained clip-on tie and Payless footwear) not-altogether-hip law student at New York University gave ample proof that he was more than happy to be distracted from his studies by Misha’s entreaty.

Now all-night cafe equals chess in certain parts of Manhattan, and hunting up a chess game on a bitterly cold January evening certainly would not make a cultured Muscovite feel any less at home on his first night out on foreign shores. The ritual of checking into a humbly priced Manhattan hostelry got out of the way, his mind was now occupied by the promise of hot tea and chess that was held out by the post-it note — just given to him by the desk clerk—that bore the name and address of a nearby coffee house. He entered his room, and after quickly arranging his toiletries on the few glass shelves under the medicine cabinet mirror and shoving his suitcase under the bed, he headed down to the lobby and out the ”Y’s” front door—noticing, while passing the reception area, that the desk clerk/ law student had resumed his assault on his cardboard tub of Egg Foo Yong and his study guide to the New York State bar exam.

The first step of his new life finally in motion, Misha was neither happy nor sad. After all, his decision to leave Moscow was a decision based on neither the whim of the born adventurer nor a deeply felt dissatisfaction with life in the Motherland. For (ex) Comrade Bobitch, truth be told, was not a terribly deep man. He had no real idea what his life was about, and certainly no idea of what it was about to become.