5/29/06

The younger one, her dirty blonde hair bound into a knot, complained about the washers, which seemed to fail when she used them. “I hate this laundromat,” she said. “Nothing works.” Although the windows were open, the heat was as ferociously as the hottest summer day. The door beside the dryer wasn’t open to disperse the heat each roaring dryer gave off. A few wives from the neighborhood were doing their laundry at once. One middle-aged man wearing a t-shirt for some racing tournament and a tractor cap complained about the malfunction of the soap dispensers. The handle was jammed. I tried to jimmy it, but didn’t get my money back.

I sprayed the bodily stains on the underwear and the bedsheets as if they would stain the world if I didn’t spray them—the kosher mustard on the beige chamois shirt, along with other signs of uncleanliness. Spots of bleach had turned the sandy chinos the color of mustard I was attempting to spray out of existence on the shirt. Elsewhere the salty discolorations on the underwear, the oilspots on the button-down shirts required repeated treatments. I didn’t want to expose my secrets to the mother and daughter or to the rail-thin man with the tractor cap who was about to leave in a garish bright red muscle-car.