California enters the narrative as the destination of a summer trip with Jenny, but the vacation turns into a test of Limonov’s dependence on her and his impatience with middle-class sociability. Later, it becomes the place Jenny plans to move to, marry, and raise a child—making it the setting of a future from which Limonov is excluded.

The vacation destination

A year after writing his book on the grass in Central Park, Limonov accepts Jenny’s invitation to spend a vacation on the West Coast. His agreement is partly curiosity and partly a reluctance to remain alone at Sutton Place or spend August at the Embassy Hotel. The trip begins with Jenny, her brother, and two friends Limonov already dislikes, travelling in a rented car after landing.

The company, rather than California itself, makes the trip unbearable. Limonov does not dislike the state; instead, he resents what he sees as the friends’ performance of a carefree, alternative life: carrot juice in cheap coffee shops, calculations over how to divide a bill on a paper tablecloth, and conspicuously prolonged laughter. His imagined California is a different one, associated with glamour and romance, not this group’s version of a good time.

Leaving the trip

After three days of sulking and letting Jenny look after him, Limonov decides to return. Jenny does not try to stop him, consistent with her belief that people should do as they wish so long as they do not hurt anyone else. The episode exposes an imbalance in their arrangement: he has accepted the trip partly because he cannot manage Sutton Place without her, yet he cannot tolerate the vacation she has proposed.

Back in New York, Limonov thinks the August heat makes the city like a sauna and briefly regrets not staying on the West Coast. But the decision is irreversible. He resumes writing, this time short prose pieces that will become Diary of a Loser. California thus marks a temporary escape that fails, followed by a return to the city where his next book takes shape.

Jenny’s intended future there

When Jenny returns from her vacation, she tells Limonov that she plans to move to California to be with another man, marry him, and have his children; she is already pregnant. The news reverses Limonov’s expectation that he would be the one to leave. He had not believed himself in love with Jenny, but had taken comfort in the certainty that she loved him and would remain a refuge. Her decision to build a life in California removes that reassurance and leaves him facing what he experiences as the hostile world outside.

California therefore has two linked roles in the episode: first, a destination Limonov abandons because he cannot bear the company, and then the destination of Jenny’s independent future. It is not presented as the cause of their separation. Rather, the place gives that separation a concrete direction, while Limonov’s return to New York leads into renewed writing and, eventually, a period of precarious work on Long Island.