Yuri had been robbed once. It had happened only months after renting the house. He’d come home around nine o’clock in the evening to find the place trashed. The burglars, apparently irritated at not finding anything of value, vented their frustration on Yuri’s meager furniture.

Pausing to listen, Yuri could hear the television in Connie’s bedroom. It was then that he noticed his wife’s purse sitting in the middle of the Formica kitchen table along with the telltale wrappings from one of the neighborhood’s fast-food joints.

Yuri had been married for almost four years. He’d met his wife, Connie, when he’d first started working for the taxi company as a radio car driver and before he had his own vehicle. At the time he’d been rather desperate. His visa was about to run out. Marriage to a U.S. citizen seemed his only option.

Connie was an African-American woman in her twenties who’d seemed bored with her life and had been happy to flirt with the newly arrived Russian. She went out of her way to be nice to him and, using her position as a dispatcher, made sure he got choice runs.

Yuri had initially been attracted to Connie separately from his necessity to obtain a green card. As a youth in the Soviet Union, he’d loved jazz, which he associated with American blacks. Becoming acquainted with one socially was exciting. He’d known no Negroes as he’d grown up in Sverdlovsk but had seen them on television, particularly in sporting events, and was duly impressed.

Connie’s attentions were even more welcome in light of Yuri’s loneliness. The mostly Russian Jewish community in Brighton Beach where he’d been advised to move ignored him. The couple began to date and frequented jazz clubs both in Manhattan, where Connie lived, and in Brooklyn near Yuri’s apartment. At the same time Yuri began to learn about American racism, which initially confused him, since he’d assumed African-Americans would be held in high esteem for their cultural contributions. He’d never heard the term “nigger” until he and Connie were accosted on the street on several occasions. He was also surprised to learn that Connie’s family, particularly her brother Flash and his friends, did not think highly of him. They called him a “honky,” which he learned was as derogatory a term as “nigger.”

For Yuri marriage solved both the green card and the loneliness issues, at least initially. Unfortunately, Yuri soon learned that Connie had no intention of being the wife that Yuri expected from his Russian heritage. She had no interest in domestic duties and anticipated eating out every night as they’d done during their brief courtship. As Yuri’s climb up the economic ladder reached an impasse with the realization that he would not be able to use his microbiological background without expensive retraining and that he could not afford to stop driving a cab, his tolerance for Connie’s lifestyle dwindled. If it wasn’t for the fear of losing his green card, he would have kicked her out.