Laundromat Man
A sweaty hole in the middle of a short, half-abandoned shopping strip whose day was past—invisible now, as though the best place to hide is in plain sight in another time. It was not a healthy, maybe not even a safe, place to be in the daytime, and triple that after dark. Dank and sweltering with a fungal smell on a summer night, flies everywhere, which means something’s rotten somewhere, moths fluttering around the dim yellow lights. Rarely anybody there at a late hour, and then only people like me, who would rather not put their solitude on display.
As I slipped into a parking place out front, I saw that someone was in there, and almost backed out and left—but my underwear was on its third round, probably cultivating a fungal smell of its own. I couldn’t smell anything, but as Daddy used to say: once you smell yourself everybody else has been smelling you for three days—and I knew I could well be in that zone. And as Mama used to say, never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
All of that meant something at one time, but I’m not sure any of it matters anymore.
I had brought my work, of course. It was so important I couldn’t even spare a couple of hours, right? Only people who are alone need to look like they’re not.
As I lugged in my bag—not really that heavy—you’ve probably guessed I don’t have an extensive wardrobe—the other person was down at the far end of the oblong space, looking at me as he went about wiping all available surfaces with a little hand towel. Of course I observed all of this with only the hastiest sidelong glance, not daring any more as his eyes never left me. I loaded my clothes in the washer, then sat down in one of the three cracked plastic chairs by the front window, and opened my notebook.
Another quick glance. Still looking at me, wiping.
No, I wasn’t comfortable. I considered leaving—but with sopping clothes? having invested four quarters?—and I well knew there was nowhere else in this town at this hour. Not to mention the slinking of it. It’s not good in your head after you’ve slunk. Though it was impossible, I tried to focus on my work, with him down there moving around in no hurry, hands busy, eyes locked on me.
Since I knew nothing good could come from eye contact, I kept my head down—“focusing on my work”—building a mental image of the man from stolen glances: nondescript in appearance and age, maybe late middle age, bald on top, white and scraggly on the sides, pudgy, turnip-shaped, in baggy clothes. There was nothing frightening or threatening about him, except for the matter of factness with which there wasn’t.
I’d never seen him before in my life, so why did he look familiar? Not a good feeling—like he’d been haunting the periphery of my field of vision all my life and now, as I saw him at last, it only pretended to be the first time, like a snake you feel before you see. Like I’d been expecting him.
Fortunately, I know the kind of things my brain does, and was well aware that this feverish fancy could be, probably was, one of them.
I did not know him. So what was this lingering feeling that he knew me? Either he did or I thought he did—what’s the difference? But, really, how could he not? I had all the guilty things about myself I wouldn’t want anybody to know swirling around my head for the taking. On sale, Daddy would say.
Except, no more Daddy. No more anybody. Only this character, padding about, wiping, looking at me. I tried harder to concentrate, and even wrote a couple of sentences that had about as much chance of surviving as any two sentences you write just to look like you’re writing. Then—not suddenly—nothing was sudden on this enervated night—more like someone had cut out a piece of film from the middle, then spliced it back together, a shadow fell over my notebook.
“That’s a lot of papers you got there,” he said.
He was standing too close, and I twitched a bit as I looked up.
I saw him now clearly, unknown and familiar, expressionless but for a look that could have been anything from curious to arrogant to malicious. Maybe all.
I nodded. He kept looking at me.
“Fancy papers,” he added.
“Fancy?”
“Sitting there with your fancy papers. What do your fancy papers say?”
“I’m not sure myself.”
“That’s what I thought. Just a lot of fancy.”
“It’s not fancy.”
He just looked at me.
A car passed by on the street outside—one of those people with somewhere to go—maybe wondering for a second about the yellow-windowed, two-character Hopper painting flashing past his side window. More likely not seeing it at all.
How many such forsaken corners must there be in this vast universe? Does anything keep up with them?
“I bet you’re sitting there thinking we’re like characters in a story,” he went on, “who wake up in a strange place. So what’s the not-strange place? You never thought about that.”
I met his glance for a second. “I guess not,” I said.
“You ever gone out the back door here?” he asked, nodding toward the rear of the building.
“I didn’t know there was a back door.”
“Oh, you knew. You ever gone out there?”
“No, I never have.”
“You sure?”
I had to stop and think? Had it come to this? “Yes.”
He savored my hesitation. “You act like you don’t know what’s back there.”
“I don’t.”
He just looked at me.
The washing machine went into its final spin, rocking the floor. He started away, then stopped and turned back.
“Your area is not very clean,” he said, then returned to his place and resumed his wiping, still looking at me.
My area?
That was all. As my clothes dried, I didn’t accomplish anything in my notebook—nothing surprising there—and I would like to say I got lost in my thoughts as I folded and packed my clothes and left, but I never got lost in my thoughts. I just stand to the side, watching them.
A feeling like never getting a good night’s sleep.
Never connecting.
August 21, 2023