Feeling At Home In Queen Anne

So you want to have the president of Russia over for some apple pie and ice cream.

No problem, if you have a month or so to plan, don't mind several dozen Secret Service agents tramping through the yard and can keep a great secret.

All that will get you 20 minutes.

But it's 20 minutes well spent, judging by the accounts of the gleeful Gruen family of Queen Anne Hill and their Russian exchange student, who played host to Boris and Naina Yeltsin yesterday afternoon.

The Yeltsins are a jovial couple, the Gruens say. Boris and Naina joked and chatted and even invited 12-year-old Deric Gruen to Moscow to play with one of their grandsons.

Boris sat on the front-porch swing, with his left hand resting on a seat at his side. When Naina sat down, Boris jerked back and shook his hand, showing his missing thumb and index finger - lost years ago during an accident with a grenade. He hammed it up, gasping, as if the thumb and finger were underneath Naina.

Everyone chuckled.

"Old joke," one Russian aide said.

Naina was impressed with the clean, two-story house, walking wide-eyed from room to room.

Boris liked the kitchen, although there was no time for the home-baked pies - made from Washington state's finest apples - and dark Russian tea.

Most of all, Boris liked the soft reading chair in the master bedroom.

"I asked him how his visit was," said Rolf Gruen, a 22-year Seattle resident.

"He said, `negotiate, negotiate, negotiate,' and so I offered him the lounge chair, and he plunked into it."

Boris sat five minutes, a pinch of tranquility during a day of high-profile networking, speech-giving and hand-clasping with business leaders and politicians.

Boris and Naina's visit to the Gruens' home was conceived weeks ago, apparently, when the Russian leader said he'd like to visit a "typical" American family in Seattle.

Officials turned to the American-Russian Exchange Committee, which coordinates exchange-student visits, and that led them to the Gruens, who are hosting Olga Makarova, a 16-year-old from Khabarovsk, a town in the Russian Far East.

More than a month ago, the Gruens were told of Boris' wish, and the State Department and Secret Service started coming by to make sure the neighborhood would be locked down and the script would be set when Boris and Naina strolled up the front walk.

After a couple of weeks of lonely anticipation, job counselor Rolf Gruen and his wife, Dawn, shared the big news with their kids and Olga.

Their vow of secrecy - Rolf Gruen told the boss only that he needed the afternoon off to host "a very important Russian guest" - held until midafternoon, when the neighborhood's block-watch captain noticed a few guys in dark suits and sunglasses planted in the Gruens' front yard.

Neighbors poured onto porches as the Yeltsins - in all their tightly secured glory - arrived in quiet Queen Anne.

The Gruens' only complaint - that there wasn't enough time - was offset by the chance to tell Boris something about America.

The Gruens, Rolf Gruen explained to Boris, "are only one type of American family. I don't think there is a `typical' here."