Always take six quarters with you down to the laundry room. Keys in right pocket, six quarters in left, basket on hip, not overflowing with clothes, loafers on and off you go. It's only a buck and a quarter a load, but you always want that extra quarter with you. Never know when one's going to slip out of your hands and wind up under a machine. It happens on the bus all the time and I always say, "You shoulda brought an extra quarter" but I let 'em on anyway.
For the most part, the laundry room is clean, save for the spiders and soggy wood smell. Only two washers and two dryers, so you don't usually run into more than one person at a time, if you see anybody. Laundry machines make people seem like ghosts. You go down to switch your load and you find other clothes have magically jumped from one machine to another. Of course, you assume a person did it...
Mostly there's no conversation, but I've talked to dudes bitching about how other guys have pulled their clothes out and left them on the table and advised teenagers about how laundry sucks but you gotta do it. Make pleasantries with people. Even asked a woman if she "necesita usar la maquina" only to have her begin jib-jabbering away in Spanish to my dumb smiling face.
But there was one guy I met down there once, I never seen him before and I haven't seen him since, was this Romanian guy, round face, snow white hair, eyebrows like black mustaches. Had my basket on my hip and eleven quarters in my pocket and was strolling in when the broad outline of his back caught me in its shadow and stopped me.
When I stepped closer I saw he was staring at the dryer, his white face a damp cherry red.
"You lose a quarter?"
He snorted at me. Seemed constipated. "Damn machine! Stole five quarters!" Looked like he wanted to kick it. "It was all a plan!"
The last comment threw me off. "I've got an extra five quarters on me..." I shouldn't have, they weren't extra. They were the only eleven quarters I had upstairs—I checked—but I already had them in my hand in front of me.
"It might eat them again. It planned it!" He pointed at it like it was a criminal he caught red-handed. Gave me a weird feeling.
"They might have to call maintenance on that dryer. It's fine. I'll give you these five quarters right now and you can use the other dryer. But listen, I need you to go grab some other quarters from upstairs for me because these are my last eleven."
When the number registered it puzzled him. "Why eleven?"
"In case one drops."
He was less confused than stunned by my generosity when I jingled the five quarters into his pudgy hand, like no one had ever done a single thing for him in his life. "You just leave the other ones on the ground behind the washing machine in a neat stack. I'll grab 'em when I come back down."
"Sank you."
I loaded my clothes into the washing machine and left, but he followed me into the elevator. It was unintentional. "Floor?" I asked, but I'd hit five already. Apparently we lived on the same floor. He looked suspiciously at the elevator buttons when the machine's grinding started, but then he just looked down, despair hanging off his face. A face of clay pummeled by the hands of time.
"Weather's hot," I said.
He nodded. "Elevator hot."
"Used to always take the stairs. I'd take ‘em two at a time to be quick, build my thighs up. But it made my wife nervous. Thought it was unsafe. Then one day I slipped and snapped my ankle doing that. She was right."
He hadn't looked up. It made my story sound stupid. I had to finish it. "Don't take the stairs much anymore."
His eyes were large dark orbs. "When older with joint pain is very hard."
We got off and walked in opposite directions, him around the corner and me down the end of the hall. "Sank you," I thought I heard him say again, but the words died halfway down the hallway. I kicked my loafers into my shoe tub and unlocked my door.
We have people on our floor from all over the place so at dinnertime the hallway’s like you threw a hundred rancid peppers in a pot and cooked them till they burned. That night the smell made me want to skip dinner but I forced myself to make it anyway. Fried potatoes and eggs. My apartment has a good cross breeze so it airs out easily. I sat there frying them while wondering if he was going to put the quarters down there for me. I really didn't have any more, and I wasn't sure if he understood me or not. I would seriously have to go to the gas station for change and I was already there that morning for smokes.
I gave him 25 minutes and then I smoked a cigarette in the doorway of the fire escape, so that'd be a half hour total. Didn't see him use the elevator.
While I smoked I thought about the story I'd told him. My wife always liked correcting me on things like that: taking the stairs two at a time, closing the bathroom door all the way, smoking. It made me think of the few times I really blew up at her, that time I shattered the coffee pot, that time I stormed off for the night, that stuff I said during the divorce.
Makes me wonder what deserve means. The more I look at it deserve is just a way of using self-pity to label your life. Sometimes, on nights after long days of driving, when I'm trying to fall asleep to the city's nightsounds, I hear the cracking rattle of the coffeepot's shards, I hear the scream, I hear her voice. "Why did you break that? Why did you break that? Why did you break that?" Repeating like a bad song. Doesn't matter if I deserve it. It's what I have now. What is just is.
When I went back down to the laundry room he was nowhere to be found. After a deep breath, I peered behind the washing machine and saw three quarters laying there among the dust, not stacked, one heads and two tails. Did he leave them for me? I only had the other quarter, making me two bits light on my dryer charge.
So I found myself on my hands and knees, on the nasty painted gray concrete, looking for one under the machines. He was right. It didn't feel good on the joints, and as many decades as I am he was plenty older than me. I shuddered at what my joints would be like at his age.
The only quarter I found was under the dryer his clothes were in. I hesitated, but didn’t want to go to the gas station, so I stuffed my fingers under and scraped with the tips till I grabbed it.
I already had my buck and a quarter in the other dryer when I heard footsteps and he appeared in the door, counting quarters in his hand.
"I already got it," I said, starting the dryer. I’d forgotten it hadn’t worked for him, but it worked fine for me. When I turned, he was just looking down at them in his hand, and then he started to look up at me but I was already walking past him. I nodded, but I didn't look at him. I know his big dark eyes were looking at me.
They were not his quarters I found behind the machine, I realized in the elevator, and when its big old engine kicked on to haul me to the fifth floor, a despair filled me as well. I was wishing I had looked at him as I left, that my eyes had met his, had wished I was there for what he wanted to say to me.
I wished I had because that's how I want to tell this story to my daughter. When I drive out to see her every weekend, she and I go for pancakes and talk about how school is going, what games she plays at recess, what stories she's reading when she falls asleep. When we watch movies in our motel room I tell her stories from the bus, people helping other people, children acting up, people getting into fights. But I've never told her this story about the laundry room.
Her mom and her mom's husband have her in a great school, but it isn't anywhere near me. I don't bring her back here, but if I did I know she'd like the cross breeze in my place and the way you can see the rooftops from the fifth floor. She'd leave her little shoes in the shoe tub outside and we'd watch monster movies and play board games.
And I could teach her to do laundry. The laundry room's not that dirty. Show her how much detergent to use, how much a load is. And I'd make sure she'd always have six quarters for a load. I'd say, "Always make sure you have a little extra. You can't ever be sure that a little bit won't slip away, and that little bit might always be just less than you need."
But what little girl wants to come to a smelly rotten tooth of an apartment where you can find shell casings in the alley every week and people at the bus stop begging for a quarter with smiling gums? The drunk dregs who're always climbing on the bus, slouching in the corner, stinking the place up. People who shriveled up long ago. Like damp clumps of lint clinging to whatever they can. Nothing for a little girl to see.
My heart wrings inside me when I think that I never looked that man in the laundry room in the face because the next morning all the shoes in the shoe tub outside my door were neatly arranged, the laces tucked in, my work shoes polished to a shine. It was all I thought about as I drove the bus the next week, and the more I thought about it the gesture of it made me wonder if the man had, at some point in his life, actually done something bad, terribly bad, worse than anything I've done, and my mind would wander to stories you hear about eastern European war criminals hiding in America their whole lives, and I wanted to go knock on all the doors on that end of the hall to find him and say to him, "I know regret. You can’t run from yourself. But beneath everything we’ve said or done, everything we hate about the people we’ve been there’s something else, deeper. Something that doesn’t need judgment. Something that can always live free."
Because I think it's really true. For him, for me, for the meth-heads at the bus stop, for the bureaucrats and the bankers, for the divorce lawyers and their children.
I have to believe it's true. It’s all I’ve got. Anything extra I lost when I didn’t look in that man's eyes that night. If I had I might’ve learned something faster, and I might be proud of this story, and I could maybe tell it with the courage of a father. But that would take more than I have.
For the most part, the laundry room is clean, save for the spiders and soggy wood smell. Only two washers and two dryers, so you don't usually run into more than one person at a time, if you see anybody. Laundry machines make people seem like ghosts. You go down to switch your load and you find other clothes have magically jumped from one machine to another. Of course, you assume a person did it...
Mostly there's no conversation, but I've talked to dudes bitching about how other guys have pulled their clothes out and left them on the table and advised teenagers about how laundry sucks but you gotta do it. Make pleasantries with people. Even asked a woman if she "necesita usar la maquina" only to have her begin jib-jabbering away in Spanish to my dumb smiling face.
But there was one guy I met down there once, I never seen him before and I haven't seen him since, was this Romanian guy, round face, snow white hair, eyebrows like black mustaches. Had my basket on my hip and eleven quarters in my pocket and was strolling in when the broad outline of his back caught me in its shadow and stopped me.
When I stepped closer I saw he was staring at the dryer, his white face a damp cherry red.
"You lose a quarter?"
He snorted at me. Seemed constipated. "Damn machine! Stole five quarters!" Looked like he wanted to kick it. "It was all a plan!"
The last comment threw me off. "I've got an extra five quarters on me..." I shouldn't have, they weren't extra. They were the only eleven quarters I had upstairs—I checked—but I already had them in my hand in front of me.
"It might eat them again. It planned it!" He pointed at it like it was a criminal he caught red-handed. Gave me a weird feeling.
"They might have to call maintenance on that dryer. It's fine. I'll give you these five quarters right now and you can use the other dryer. But listen, I need you to go grab some other quarters from upstairs for me because these are my last eleven."
When the number registered it puzzled him. "Why eleven?"
"In case one drops."
He was less confused than stunned by my generosity when I jingled the five quarters into his pudgy hand, like no one had ever done a single thing for him in his life. "You just leave the other ones on the ground behind the washing machine in a neat stack. I'll grab 'em when I come back down."
"Sank you."
I loaded my clothes into the washing machine and left, but he followed me into the elevator. It was unintentional. "Floor?" I asked, but I'd hit five already. Apparently we lived on the same floor. He looked suspiciously at the elevator buttons when the machine's grinding started, but then he just looked down, despair hanging off his face. A face of clay pummeled by the hands of time.
"Weather's hot," I said.
He nodded. "Elevator hot."
"Used to always take the stairs. I'd take ‘em two at a time to be quick, build my thighs up. But it made my wife nervous. Thought it was unsafe. Then one day I slipped and snapped my ankle doing that. She was right."
He hadn't looked up. It made my story sound stupid. I had to finish it. "Don't take the stairs much anymore."
His eyes were large dark orbs. "When older with joint pain is very hard."
We got off and walked in opposite directions, him around the corner and me down the end of the hall. "Sank you," I thought I heard him say again, but the words died halfway down the hallway. I kicked my loafers into my shoe tub and unlocked my door.
We have people on our floor from all over the place so at dinnertime the hallway’s like you threw a hundred rancid peppers in a pot and cooked them till they burned. That night the smell made me want to skip dinner but I forced myself to make it anyway. Fried potatoes and eggs. My apartment has a good cross breeze so it airs out easily. I sat there frying them while wondering if he was going to put the quarters down there for me. I really didn't have any more, and I wasn't sure if he understood me or not. I would seriously have to go to the gas station for change and I was already there that morning for smokes.
I gave him 25 minutes and then I smoked a cigarette in the doorway of the fire escape, so that'd be a half hour total. Didn't see him use the elevator.
While I smoked I thought about the story I'd told him. My wife always liked correcting me on things like that: taking the stairs two at a time, closing the bathroom door all the way, smoking. It made me think of the few times I really blew up at her, that time I shattered the coffee pot, that time I stormed off for the night, that stuff I said during the divorce.
Makes me wonder what deserve means. The more I look at it deserve is just a way of using self-pity to label your life. Sometimes, on nights after long days of driving, when I'm trying to fall asleep to the city's nightsounds, I hear the cracking rattle of the coffeepot's shards, I hear the scream, I hear her voice. "Why did you break that? Why did you break that? Why did you break that?" Repeating like a bad song. Doesn't matter if I deserve it. It's what I have now. What is just is.
When I went back down to the laundry room he was nowhere to be found. After a deep breath, I peered behind the washing machine and saw three quarters laying there among the dust, not stacked, one heads and two tails. Did he leave them for me? I only had the other quarter, making me two bits light on my dryer charge.
So I found myself on my hands and knees, on the nasty painted gray concrete, looking for one under the machines. He was right. It didn't feel good on the joints, and as many decades as I am he was plenty older than me. I shuddered at what my joints would be like at his age.
The only quarter I found was under the dryer his clothes were in. I hesitated, but didn’t want to go to the gas station, so I stuffed my fingers under and scraped with the tips till I grabbed it.
I already had my buck and a quarter in the other dryer when I heard footsteps and he appeared in the door, counting quarters in his hand.
"I already got it," I said, starting the dryer. I’d forgotten it hadn’t worked for him, but it worked fine for me. When I turned, he was just looking down at them in his hand, and then he started to look up at me but I was already walking past him. I nodded, but I didn't look at him. I know his big dark eyes were looking at me.
They were not his quarters I found behind the machine, I realized in the elevator, and when its big old engine kicked on to haul me to the fifth floor, a despair filled me as well. I was wishing I had looked at him as I left, that my eyes had met his, had wished I was there for what he wanted to say to me.
I wished I had because that's how I want to tell this story to my daughter. When I drive out to see her every weekend, she and I go for pancakes and talk about how school is going, what games she plays at recess, what stories she's reading when she falls asleep. When we watch movies in our motel room I tell her stories from the bus, people helping other people, children acting up, people getting into fights. But I've never told her this story about the laundry room.
Her mom and her mom's husband have her in a great school, but it isn't anywhere near me. I don't bring her back here, but if I did I know she'd like the cross breeze in my place and the way you can see the rooftops from the fifth floor. She'd leave her little shoes in the shoe tub outside and we'd watch monster movies and play board games.
And I could teach her to do laundry. The laundry room's not that dirty. Show her how much detergent to use, how much a load is. And I'd make sure she'd always have six quarters for a load. I'd say, "Always make sure you have a little extra. You can't ever be sure that a little bit won't slip away, and that little bit might always be just less than you need."
But what little girl wants to come to a smelly rotten tooth of an apartment where you can find shell casings in the alley every week and people at the bus stop begging for a quarter with smiling gums? The drunk dregs who're always climbing on the bus, slouching in the corner, stinking the place up. People who shriveled up long ago. Like damp clumps of lint clinging to whatever they can. Nothing for a little girl to see.
My heart wrings inside me when I think that I never looked that man in the laundry room in the face because the next morning all the shoes in the shoe tub outside my door were neatly arranged, the laces tucked in, my work shoes polished to a shine. It was all I thought about as I drove the bus the next week, and the more I thought about it the gesture of it made me wonder if the man had, at some point in his life, actually done something bad, terribly bad, worse than anything I've done, and my mind would wander to stories you hear about eastern European war criminals hiding in America their whole lives, and I wanted to go knock on all the doors on that end of the hall to find him and say to him, "I know regret. You can’t run from yourself. But beneath everything we’ve said or done, everything we hate about the people we’ve been there’s something else, deeper. Something that doesn’t need judgment. Something that can always live free."
Because I think it's really true. For him, for me, for the meth-heads at the bus stop, for the bureaucrats and the bankers, for the divorce lawyers and their children.
I have to believe it's true. It’s all I’ve got. Anything extra I lost when I didn’t look in that man's eyes that night. If I had I might’ve learned something faster, and I might be proud of this story, and I could maybe tell it with the courage of a father. But that would take more than I have.
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