The Laundromat

The coins fell into the tray in loud clinks. Ten dollars worth. The prices had gone up recently. What used to cost five dollars for two loads of laundry now costs seven. It was relatively empty, save for a man reading a hardcover book and a short Asian lady folding her clothes in the rear. He is middle-aged, white, with short hair and a pale mustache. Covering his eyes are a pair of reflective aviator sunglasses, the kind a cop or a highway patrolman might wear. Who reads a book while wearing sunglasses indoors? It's true, he is sitting in front of a large set of windows, and it is sunny. Where I am standing, at the change machine, I can see down the length of the laundromat. To my back is the exit and, beside me, on the right, are a set of white plastic chairs. The kind that are one solid piece, like life-size versions of the little white tables that come in pizza delivery boxes. What do those little tables do, anyway? Prevent the center of the pizza from being crushed should a substantial weight fall upon the box? Maybe it's where the cheese hides for safety in case of an earthquake. Probably not.

Back to the chairs. There are four of them, and they're filthy. They look like they've been drawn on with number-two pencils but then couldn't be completely erased. The chairs are held together by a wooden 2x4 running along the backside, so they move as one unit. Presumably this is to prevent them from being stolen and repurposed as lawn chairs at the nearby trailer park. On the left side of me, there are a line of washing machines, probably twenty-five of them. Larger ones - there are three of them - are in the front, nearest the windows, and the standard-sized ones run the rest of the length of the wall. In between the door and the wall, on that side, directly in front of the windows, are another four chairs held together by a wooden plank. That's the side the man reading the book is sitting on. Maybe about three meters across from the standard-sized washers, are all the dryers. They stack one on top of the other, for a total height of two, and they run the length of the wall on the right side. In that three meter gap between the walls, lengthwise, are three tables to fold clothes on. Pretty bare bones.

The Asian lady is in the back, at the furthest table. She has a lot of laundry. There are two giant bags, one on each side of her, and one on the table in front of her. She's stuffing clothes into the sack. It's so full it looks about to burst. Imagery of swelling water-balloons and clown-cars dance in my head. When I say the bags are enormous, I mean they're gargantuan. Or is it that she's small? The bags easily eclipse her. It's going to be interesting to see how she gets all that laundry out of here. If she's smart, she's got a small, two-wheeled dolly with her to roll them out on. We'll see. I scoop the coins into my hand, trying carefully not to let any quarters escape and go rolling madly around onto the floor. Have you ever noticed how a dropped quarter always reaches the furthest corner of the room, if you can find it at all? As soon as a quarter hits the floor there's a 50/50 chance of it ricocheting off into another dimension.

"You missed one," the seated man says as I step away from the coin machine.

"What?"

"A quarter, you missed one," he continues.

My first thought is that he must be joking. How could he know that, sitting all the way over there? I'd been blocking his view the entire time. And even if I hadn't been, even with a direct line of sight there was no way he could see into the tray from that angle.

"You don't believe me?" he asks.

I don't say anything and I glance at the tray. I can't see it from where I'm standing and I'm almost directly in front of it.

"It's there, I promise," the man tells me, with smug self-assurance.

"Yeah," I say quizzically, "you can see that from there?"

"No, never said I saw it. I can't see. Just said that there's one there," he says.

What kind of game is this guy playing, I wonder. What if he's only saying that so he can see whether he can get me to go over and check?

"Thanks. I'll get it in a second," I tell him. Clever. This way, I'll get my laundry started and then check for the coin. It'll be more causal, and on my terms instead of his.

"Suit yourself."

The washer shuts with a clang! One by one I insert the change until I've paid the $3.50. I set it for cold wash, normal. The twenty-eight minute countdown begins.

"You gonna check for that quarter before someone else gets it first," the man asks without looking up.

I'll be damned. I was about to. But now he just changed the power dynamic on me. If I go look for it now, he's basically commanding me. If I wait, I might lose the chance to find out and prove him wrong. He can't know that there's a quarter there. He can't. How would I have missed it? It's possible, sure. The Asian lady is nearly done stuffing her bag in the back. I glance at her but she's absent-mindedly humming a song and isn't paying us any mind.

"Hey, lady," the man yells out suddenly. "Watch that bag on the floor, the machine is leaking."

The woman looks down to her side and lets out an exasperated little sound as she discovers what must be a slow moving body of water traveling toward her bag. She leans down and yanks the bag away from the newly forming lake and drags it over nearest the other one, on her right side.

"Oh, thanka you," she says, smiling. She goes on humming and folding her clothes.

Something strange was happening. What are the odds that he was able to spot a small pool of clear liquid all the way at the back of the room. Me, two tables, and the woman were all in the way. While it's no super-human feat, by any means, the guy never looked up. He was sitting there with his head buried in his book. Granted, he has sunglasses on, so it's possible his eyes weren't pointed where his head was, but it didn't seem that way. The spin cycle of the washer started with a kick and the force of it made the whole room feel as though it were wobbling. It was the only thing I could hear. The empty chairs near the change machine seemed to ever-so-slightly wiggle with the sound. Now I needed to check that change tray. If he was right about the spill maybe he was right about the change.

As if reading my mind: "You gonna let that old quarter get lonely in there, boy, aren't you," the man asked with a wry smile.

"No, I was about to go get it," I say.

"You don't believe me that it's in there, do you," he asked, closing his book. He sat there expressionless with his hands folded over the cover. I couldn't make out what it said.

"I mean, I don't know," I say to fill the silence. "You've got a good eye if it's there, I'll say that much."

"Two," he says.

"What?"

"I got two good eyes."

"Ah," I say and then laugh.

He doesn't.

I walk towards the change machine and then stop.

"What's a matter?" he asks.

I'm beginning to notice he has a bit of an accent. A kind of drawl. It was subtle at first, but it's become more pronounced the more I hear him speak.

"I don't know. I'm just really curious how you could know there's a coin in there without having seen it."

"So you think I'm telling lies?"

"No, not saying you're telling lies. I just think it's strange, that's all."

"We could place a wager."

"A wager?"

"A wager."

"I'll bet you a dollar you'll find a coin there," he declares.

"And if I don't?"

"You will."

"But if I don't, what do I get?"

"Listen doc, if I say it's there, it's there. There ain't gonna be no other option."

The way he said doc strikes me as peculiar. Maybe it's because of the text messages from earlier, but the phrase is odd and out of place. Unless you're Bugs Bunny. Yeah, something about this was definitely rubbing me the wrong way. Come to think of it, this whole conversation was highly unusual. Everything about it. The washer is really going at it now. It's thrashing in place. There's no doubt about it, the floor is shaking. Suddenly I get the sense someone is coming up behind me, and I turn to see the little Asian lady like a locomotive lugging her bags toward me. I step out of her way and she smiles a big smile as she passes.

"Well, what are you waiting for," the man says.

"Yeah, I was about to," I say.

"Well, git," he spits.

Who says git? What does he think, he's from the south?

"We're in Northern California, buddy. We don't say git around here," I tell him.

"Ha! That's what you'll git, then. If there's no quarter in there I'll never use the word git, again."

"Okay, why not. Deal."

I walk up to the machine, reach my hand in, and pull out a quarter. The man starts a hoarse fit of laughter that turns into coughing.

"Best damn dollar I ever made!" he says.

"How did you..."

He continues laughing. The floor is still vibrating, stronger now. The chairs beside me at the change machine have a Parkinson's shake. I feel sick. The man continues to laugh and cough sickeningly. My knees get rubbery and I'm starting to feel dizzy. He throws his head back and his Adam's apple bounces madly up and down as he howls. His laughter knocks the book off his lap and it hits the floor with a loud bang just as the washer stops. The silence fills the whole emptiness of the laundromat. I feel disoriented. The quarter is digging painfully into my clenched hand. After a moment, the uneasiness wears off and I step closer to pick up his book and hand it to him.

That's when I notice it's in braille.