The flight is ending, the journey is reaching its logical conclusion.

From several thousand feet up, the promised land looks like a dull, gray patchwork quilt of suburban residential blocks with rare, bright blue buttons of water towers.

While the plane is still catching low rain clouds over JFK with its wings, a sharp desire to touch the ground with my own soles and ground myself in this new reality is born, replacing the numbing fatigue.

Lera spent the last hour entertaining pierced Italian teenagers (“—What? The whole summer? Oh, no, we’re just here for a weekend in New York for shopping!”), and now she’s out of sight.

In this new reality, it’s starting to rain and it’s chilly.

We find Lera, nervously joking with each other by the conveyor belt while waiting for our wayward luggage.

Back at the Rome airport, we noticed a fabulously beautiful, impeccably stylish Italian flying on the same flight as us—in the company of his cooing friend. Life, why are you like this? We continue to impolitely admire this phenomenon, a magnificent specimen of the human body and the labors of all the fashion houses of blessed Europe.

An ironic fat man at the temporary immigrant registration desk processes our documents without unnecessary questions. He aims a webcam at my face:

—One photo, young lady,—I hastily pull off my glasses.

A few minutes later, right there at the airport, we have our first encounter with a local monster on clay feet with a lion’s head—an American Russian. An inconspicuous guy in a baseball cap radiates cheerfulness. He methodically calls through our list of motels and finds spots in a student hostel on Amsterdam Avenue.

Rare raindrops fly in through the open sunroof of his terrifying green SUV. I try to breathe deeply and carefully, as if getting used to the atmosphere of an alien planet. There must be some special chemical element in the air by which New York air can be easily recognized, even if brought in a tin can to the other end of the world.

It’s getting dark. The city across the bridge sparkles with skyscrapers. We drive in and start winding through beautiful and completely identical neon streets.

—Two floors in this building belong to Yoko Ono. You know The Beatles, right?—he points to an old brick apartment building with a white convertible parked at the entrance,—it’s the only building that has gas lamps constantly burning on its facade.

—Actually, many celebrities have housing in this neighborhood. They even have a council that decides who is allowed to settle here. Madonna was refused. Reputation, you know.

He offers gum (“imported”). I run all the knockout-drug stories through my head and politely decline.

Contrary to all warnings and our gloomy looks, the nameless native of Lviv safely delivers us to our destination. He explains things to the American woman at the reception, hands us a business card—just a number, no name or surname—and disappears into the twilight behind the glass door.

At the hostel, for $59 a head, we get quite decent beds, three Australian roommates, and a divine, desired, hot shower with singing Spanish women in the neighboring stalls.

We try to figure out the Grey Hound intercity bus system. We are irritated, snapping at each other and the lagging Google Maps. Lera is sleeping with her eyes open, leaving behind an autopilot charged with generic affirmative phrases and vague humming.

I feel like an unhappy, lost child, and I am one.

The Australians form a remarkably well-coordinated trio with their snoring of varying volume and timbre. Our first night in America—and, to be honest, we are not thrilled.