I worked beside my grandfather, Orik Tellov, in his cramped laundromat — a patchwork of humming washers, a forever-warm radiator, and a flickering fluorescent that made everyone's faces look tired. Orik was all stories and cigarette smoke: thin, relentless, always telling me about the “Good ol’ days” and how my generation “had it easy.” He’d shove his hands into his pockets, chin up, and speak like he was lecturing the whole world.

That afternoon an Amerikan came in — pale, awkward, carrying a sagging bag of clothes and barely any cash. He walked up to the counter, voice cracking as he tried to speak Russian: “P-privet… uh… I… n-need t-to stirat’ odezhdu…?” He stuttered through the words like a child. I felt a hot, automatic annoyance—shameful, petty—because he sounded foolish and out of place in our small, foreign corner of the city. I told him to use the first washer and took his few coins, clinking them into the register.

Orik shuffled out, grunted, and added the coins himself with a practiced motion, then retreated into the worn armchair in the back room like it was his throne. I went to the employee lounge to cool off, palms still tingling from the embarrassment. The laundromat smelled of detergent and steam; through the glass I could see the world go on — indifferent, bright.

Then I heard Orik speak to the Amerikan in that broken, gravelly English he saved for strangers: “You stay here, okey? Until you get passport.” The words thudded against me. It wasn’t a translation; it was a verdict. There was something small and poisonous in his tone — not a warning, but contempt.

I watched the Amerikan ease down on the sofa and, for a moment, he looked so small and ordinary that an unexpected fury rose in me. The Amerikan, eyes wide and trembling, said something — a plea, maybe, a confused “Please” — and the Amerikan only curled his lips and closed his eyes.

I did something I can’t forgive myself for. I grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge — the glass cold and heavy in my hand — and before I could think I raised it and brought it down across his skull. The sound the bottle made was obscene, like a fist hitting a buried bell. Wine and glass sprayed, a hot, metallic scent filling the room. The Amerikans head lolled; his body sagged against the sofa. I remember the way his eyes opened, surprised, then sharp with pain. My hands found his face, and then the punches came out of me — each one a small, animal thing — and he began to cry out, not in Russian but in a raw, terrified sound that called for help.

“Orik!” the Amerikan screamed — his voice cracking into something close to panic. The shout yanked Orik’s reflexes into full drive. He lunged toward us, the old man’s strength suddenly there, older but not gone. He shoved me down, hard, my back slamming into the cold tile. For a dizzy second I tasted copper. Orik moved like a man who had practiced this motion all his life: he shut the door to his office behind him and locked it, then looked at me with an expression I had never seen — not the lecturing grandfather, not the bitter relic, but a man who had been betrayed by blood.

I lay on the floor and watched the fluorescent light stutter. The laundromat hummed on, indifferent again, but everything inside me had shifted — shame, fury, and something like grief folded together. Orik’s breathing filled the room, ragged. The Amerikan sat on the far side of the washer, shaking, the bag of clothes at his feet. My hands were sticky with wine and dust. I had meant to defend dignity; I had only made a scene of violence and ruin.

Outside, life moved forward: a coin dropped in a machine, a spin cycle starting, the radiator ticking. Inside, the silence that followed the struggle felt worse than any shouting — a cavern where the things we say and the things we do echo until you learn how to live with them.