He stood in front of a wall of small rusted lockers and listlessly handed out keys held together by rotted out rubber bands. Just behind him, a woman in a loud silk animal shirt and puffed up lips above mounds of gold moved with a ferocity, as if to imbue the essence of her leopard blouse. She worked quickly, if compared to his laconic pace, but also with an exhaustion and fear that might make an antelope print more appropriate. As they worked behind the laminated check-in counter, a carcinogen fog filled the room as one of the Americans exited the steam area to their right. An American exits, a key is returned and a locker emptied. This was his rhythm for years before and years to come.

“Diminishing returns,” he said to the woman behind him.

“Why do you keep saying that, Sergie?”

“It’s true.”

“I don’t even know what that means to be honest with you.” she took the keys from his hand and hung them against the respective lockers.

“Me neither.” he replied. He really didn’t know what it meant, though after hearing it in a cheap American movie about two mafia men in a failed business, he decided that he would use it to describe their situation. 

“If you really feel like that, go back to Russia, okay? Or better yet, go back to Russia as a woman! Also, I don’t want to speak to any customers today. My English is terrible right now.” she yelled through her red lips that hung suspended by some miracle underneath thin strands of starched yellow bangs. Yellow and red, she looked like the national flag of Spain and with her pace, moved as if hung to a tall pole.

“You need to read a paper.”

“What’s that?”

“Read a newspaper for your English.”

She rolled her eyes in dismissal and began sweeping the room with a still broom. Another wave of elegiac fog entered the room, this time nearly covering the small television set that played the afternoon’s scrambled futbol match. Four men sitting like fixtures at plastic-lined tables waved their hands in the air to clear the steam.

“We need to do something to enhance this place.” Sergie said, standing still behind the counter as she scoured the floor.

“So do something. Every week I hear you talk about enhancement and the ‘next best thing’, but you never do anything about it. When you gonna do something about it?” she replied.

“We need a new class of people in here. It’s the same American kids stealing the culture and smoking on our roof. I miss the way it used to be.” he said, his head down and picking at his nails.

She rolled her eyes and moved around the desk to the tables full of men and began furiously cleaning the scattered beer bottles and snack debris.

“You want more of this?” she exclaimed. “This is exactly how it used to be. At least the Americans are giving us business, not just sitting around betting on the same damn futbol match every day, drinking the same beer and eating the our snacks.”

“They pay for those beers.” he defended half-heartedly.

“This is a spa, Sergie. Why we having beers in the first place? We should be serving nuts or fruits. I don’t know. Something. Use your head.” she finished as she threw the bottles into garbage bags.

An American exits the steam room. The fog enters.

“Do I pay here?” he asks Sergie.

“Fifteen dollars.” Sergie replies with a thick and intimidating accent. Sergie then points to a sign bluntly indicating the preferred mode of payment as cash.

As the American searches for the money, the woman in leopard returns to the area behind the counter. The two of them watch, propped up on the crate allowing them to be higher than their patrons, as the young American grows more anxious with time, presumably feeling their collective gaze.

“Do you not have it?” Sergie asks.

“No, I definitely should.” he replies.

Sergie turns to the woman and begins speaking in Russian.

“You see. This is exactly what I’m talking about. All of this, for what? For fifteen dollars. And we have to stand here and watch so he doesn’t try to escape. These fucking Americans. And then he’ll go home after this and turn on the news and it’ll be all about how evil we are. And here, he cant find fifteen dollars after staying in our fucking sauna for three hours.”

“Here you go. Sorry about that. Here’s an extra five as well, because I had a nice time.” the American says.

Sergie hands him a receipt.

“Thanks.”

“So, where are you guys from?”
“Ukraine.”

The woman slaps Sergie on the arm.

“We’re Russian.”

Sergie watches as American leaves through the front door, clumsily sliding past the fixtures watching sport at the tables, nervously down the narrow hallway with the red paint and finally through the glass door, tinted for privacy.

“Why did you say Ukraine?” she asks.

“Because I thought he would feel badly and tip more. You’re not allowed to be Russian in this country. You have to learn, Americans love victims!”

“No, Americans love enemies.” she replied while swatting at a bug near her neck.

Another wave of fog and an American exits. She approaches the counter with her head down and dark glasses on, her heavy layers of winter clothes in a mess around her. Sergie begins his rote practice of retrieving the key in exchange for payment, until his recognition of this woman interrupts his routine.

“Is that you?” he exclaimed.

“Oh yeah, Sergie. How’s it going, babe?”

“With me?” he yells in a broken English.

“Well who else matters, am I right?” the woman offered with a playful New York lyricism.

“That’s true.”

“How much I owe you, Serg?” she asked.

“For you? Nothing. Don’t worried about it.”

“No way, babe. I don’t wanna owe you one. I know how you Russian are.”

“No, seriously. For you is free. Just come back next time you can pay.”

“Next time it’ll be the other guy working the desk and he won’t remember. He’ll think I have a tab again. So, I got the money, why don’t you let me pay, babe?” she pleaded with him.

“Okay, okay. Ten dollars. I’ll give you a discount.”

She searched her backpack for the cash, taking out single bills in hopes they would amass to the correct total. Sergie studied her intently as the woman behind him organized more keys.

“You know I love you, right Denise?”

She looked up from the innards of her backpack.

“You don’t have enough money to love me, Serg. But I like your spa and I think I’ll come back.” she laughed.

“Trust me. I have nice things. Did you know that about me?”

“No, I didn’t Serg.”

“Things money can’t buy.”

“Oh, well that’s great.”

Another wave of fog, this time as serval American exits the spa area. Denise looks up to see a line beginning to form on the far side of the counter. The woman in the leopard begins calling the crowd over to begin checking them out.

“You know what that is?” he asks Denise.

“What what is?”

“What it is that I have that money can’t buy?”

Denise finds the ten dollars and places it on the counter. She fumbles with her backpack and feels the cold that washes in behind her from an opened door.

“No, Serg, I don’t. But I really gotta get—”

“It’s love.” he interrupts. “I got so much love for you it’s crazy.” he says, staring into her eyes with a deep neglect for the unruly line behind them.

“That’s great, Serg. Here’s your money.”

“Keep it, baby. Like I said. I got love for you, don’t you realize that?”

“Yeah, you said that.” Denise offered, looking to the woman in the leopard for support. Sergie pushed the ten dollars back toward Denise’s side of the counter and grabbed her forearm.

“I’m making changes around here, Denise. Big changes. A whole new class of people. And I need someone to be with me while I make them. I need you.”

“All that sounds great, Serg, but don’t you want to find a nice Russian girl to marry?”

“Denise, if you were on the other side of the Earth, I would quit everything and start walking. I’d walk so far. I’d walk until my shoes had the holes.”

The American crowd behind was growing irritable, signaled by the moans and sighs familiar to impatient consumers.

Sergie continued, “I’d kill myself and let you spit on my grave if it meant you’d be close to me for another moment. And as the worms consume my body, so too would they consume your saliva. And we’d both grow inside those worms, together. That’s right, baby, we’d be worms. Or better yet, we’d be crows. We’d be the crows that eat the worms that ate parts of us.You know why? You know why that’s better? Crows never fly alone. If you ever see a crow somewhere by himself, you know a woman broke his heart.” He took a small pause to collect his breath. “I’m making real changes around here, Denise. You’re our best customer and you’re different from all the other Americans I know. Let’s be crows together, baby.”

She removed her glasses and for the first time, looked squarely into Sergie’s eyes. She saw all his solitude and the five years it took him to emigrate here. She saw all the jobs he’d had before landing this one and even the first time he arrived in JFK. She saw the longing for a different life and purpose behind all his caustic sarcasm. She broke the gaze to look back toward the cantankerous denizens, idly postering among themselves. She thought some of them may have been waiting for her reply, not so that they can pay and leave, but so that they can witness impetuous love. Not gameshow love or something else as contrived, but real honest connection.

She shouldered her backpack and returned the glasses to her face and after another long pause, broke out in a hearty laughter. One that reverberated into the marrow of Sergie’s bones. And then she left, bouldering through the fixtures at the plastic tables watching futbol, down the red hallway and out the door. The Americans left behind in the wake of her cold air grew louder and the hum of their impatience began to ring loudly in the Sergie’s head until it stopped altogether and he received the next locker key and waited for the next American. A wave of fog entered.