[ For all of her grousing, she seems to have paid attention to what he was saying. She's working more efficiently now. That's progress, even if he's not trying for progress—a few weeks ago she probably would have just started flinging more aggressively.

He shrugs at the question; it's the first relatively benign inquiry as to life in Russia, or anything where his national and ethnic background are concerned, that hasn't been an insult. ]

It is not cold all the year. Most of the year. Summer isn't hot—our summer is American spring.

I am from St. Petersburg. It is a ocean city, so it is mild most of the year. Our summer is in twenties— [ Wait, right, she doesn't know celsius. Even with a rudimentary understanding of what equates what by now, he still thinks of temperatures in his own native measure, just as he thinks in Russian even while speaking English.

Vasiliy glances at the plastic thermometer decoration on the exterior of the house, with bars in Fahrenheit on one side of the meter and Celsius on the other. ] That is seventies for you. American spring.

[ He misses it. His first summer in Chicago, in a cheap apartment with a window fan and no air conditioning, had been suffocating. ]