Who’s not afraid? he said, and tickled Marina’s toes with the venik’s leaves. Her knees flew up. Propped onto her elbows, she peered at him.
Turn over, he said. I’ll give you a steam.
Marina looked at Frida, who interpreted the look as, Please help. But it must’ve had a different meaning, since Marina asked, For free?
The man grinned. For a kiss.
Frida got another sideways glance.
Just kidding. Kiss optional. Like tip. Now turn.
Marina rolled onto her stomach, wriggled about, spread her breasts to either side, and lay still. The man stood over her, cracking his knuckles dramatically.
Your sister? he said, pointing at the splotchy flesh on the low bench.
Daughter. Marina giggled.
I’ll do her next, he said magnanimously.
The man’s calves, smooth and hairless, flexed in preparation. Heels lifted. The venik, glistening with painful flashes of veiny branch, slammed down on Marina with great urgency, as if her shoulder blades had just gone up in smoke. Then it stayed there. He pressed down using his entire torso (which actually wasn’t so large — he had a neat, petite frame). When the venik was peeled off, her back was gushing color, flecked with leaf scraps. But there wasn’t a peep to be heard. She simply exhaled.
That’s all I get? he said. I must be going too easy on you.
The venik hopped up and down her back like a prima ballerina light on her toes, making good use of the stage, working up the crowd before she really got going. Then it landed with maximal power on the soft underside of Marina’s knees. With a noted delay, she uttered a tiny groan, clearly out of sheer politeness. The man bent over to look at her face. Just checking you’re alive, he said.
Quite, said Marina, as if she’d taken a sip of tea.
The man was working for squeals, moans, pleas for mercy, and here was Marina half asleep. It wasn’t much fun this way. He tried harder and harder to draw them out of her, twisting limbs, beating down manically, to no avail. That Frida was making the necessary sounds, the man failed to notice. His heart was no longer in it. He had to stop and catch his breath, while Frida prayed that a snore didn’t emanate from her mother’s direction. When he resumed, it was with the efforts of a demoralized man. A few limp swats later, it was all over. The offer to take Frida next wasn’t renewed.
Didn’t that hurt? Frida asked as they found the only free table in the lounge area, under the flat-screen broadcasting a soccer match, the soccer match, some undoubtedly pivotal soccer match on which all eyes were glued. At the surrounding tables, steamed and scrubbed-down Slavs were feasting. Their presence reassured. Frida wanted to thank them for their predictability, but they didn’t even acknowledge her existence. They weren’t being insulting; it was just that in her place they saw a continuation of atmosphere.
Give me a break, said Marina. The boy had no clue what he was doing.
Marina grabbed the passing busboy holding a stack of dirty dishes up to his chin. He nodded gravely, or maybe just dutifully, to her extensive and improvised list of fruits and vegetables to be squeezed into juices and hurried to the kitchen, situated centrally at the core of the lounge area, itself at the center of the banya, with the various saunas, steam rooms, and massage nooks built along the lounge’s perimeter. The staff that went into and came out of the kitchen included everyone from the bowed cleaning ladies who spoke not a single known language to the presumed new banya owner, with a deep subterranean tan brought about by vigorous, overstimulated blood flow, as he clearly spent his days making full use of his own amenities. The kitchen was more brightly lit than the lounge, which in turn was brighter than the dim saunas, creating a light-filtering effect, and the kitchen doors were kept thrown open (hard to say why they were not simply open), so the surrounding air appeared to glow. Marina and Frida, unsure whether it was acceptable to stare into the kitchen, alternately snuck glances, as it was impossible not to look, first because the peculiar layout forced your eyes there and second because a long time had elapsed since Marina had ordered and they were beginning to suspect that the busboy had forgotten to relay their request to whoever was in charge of the juicing. It was odd: One moment the kitchen was full of people urgently chopping a single carrot, the next moment the chopped carrot lay on the cutting board with no one to attend to it, and that moment lasted a long time, until the carrot seemed to go limp with indifference, whereas before it had given a distinctly alert impression. The effect of the layout was that the people sitting in the lounge were made uncomfortable (in a not entirely unpleasant way) by basically being forced into overseeing the goings-on of the kitchen, an otherwise private space, but the discomfort actually stemmed from the kitchen’s overseeing them. They were in the kitchen, and the people in the kitchen were outside the kitchen. And where, incidentally, was their juice?
It’s right over there, said Marina. It’s just standing there, all squeezed out, and nobody’s bringing it to us.
I hear it loses antioxidants quickly, said Frida. Her head inched back as she stole a glimpse and confirmed.
I’m going to get it, Marina said, and stood, expecting to be stopped. But Frida bit her cheek, and her mother was impelled to action. This she did very slowly, swaying as if slightly drunk. Mere seconds before reaching the kitchen, she was intercepted by a man with blue tattoos across his saggy arms and stooped shoulders and a few on his chest and back, who’d been watching the game so intensely it was a surprise he noticed anything outside the frame. He put one hand tentatively on the outside of Marina’s elbow. Marina flashed her American smile and pointed to the juice standing in plain sight on the kitchen counter several feet away. The man’s gaze did not follow her finger. He nodded and looked deep into Marina’s eyes, said something, and then they separated. The man, whose tattoos were faded and vacant like old stains, sat down and returned to staring at the TV, whereas Marina walked quickly back to the table.
It’s coming, she said, plopping into her chair with relief. The waiting resumed. No longer the least bit uncomfortable, they fixed the kitchen with a death stare, until hearing a singsong Here-you-go and turning to find a robe-clad woman, just as relaxed, pore-opened, and glowing as they were, with a tray. She set down a large glass of juice the shade of a young boy’s freckles and a large plate of shrimp of roughly the same color. If Marina had been intending to raise hell about the wait, this plate of shrimp confused her into silence. The waitress left, and behind her stood another woman. Frida didn’t notice the switch and said, We didn’t order the shrimp. The woman nodded absently at Frida, then put her hand on Marina’s shoulder and said, Marina!
Oh, said Marina, Milka!
They embraced warmly and naturally, with genuine affection, as if they were old friends. But Frida had never met this woman. Or had she? Milka wasn’t exactly a one of a kind; the world wasn’t suffering from a dearth. In every train car sat at least one Milka, not realizing just how loudly she was talking on her cell phone as the tabloid she’d been leafing through slid down her stocking-slippery thigh and plopped onto the icky subway floor. The nail salons of Brooklyn were glutted with Milkas. How did those Italian boutiques with abominably overpriced and nonsensical skirt-pants and sweater-jumpers stay open? Thanks to the Milkas. Whose husband had just left her for a not-even-younger woman? Milka’s! Who had sued the living daylights out of her ex-husband, ending up with a house on a coveted tree-lined street of Manhattan Beach and two cars in the garage, neither of which she knew how to drive? That, too, would be Milka. So Frida may very well have met Milka before, not once and not a dozen times, and if you took into account how many stories she’d heard about her, Milka was practically family.