Breakfast at the Laundromat
by Smoky Trudeau Zeidel
He stared.
The machine was a confusion of buttons: warm wash/warm rinse, warm wash/cold rinse, cold wash/cold rinse, hot wash/warm rinse, hot wash/cold rinse. Water level: low, medium, high. Then there were the little cups where the detergent, bleach, and fabric softener were supposed to go, but the illustration on the machine’s lid didn’t look a thing like the cups on the machine itself. Did it matter if the detergent went in the fabric softener cup? Would it work if he didn’t use bleach?
The machine in his condo was old, but at least he knew how to use it. The buttons were labeled darks, whites, colors. He had no idea what temperature the water was for each setting, but his clothes always came out clean. But washing his living room curtains had been a bad idea, because they got all tangled up in the agitator and broke it, and getting Sears to come out to repair it had been one frustration after another. He called the service number on their Website and got a call center in Mumbai, where a polite young woman who said her name was Elaine—as if anyone in Mumbai was really named Elaine—requested his Zip code so she could direct him to the correct service representative, then informed him that according to their records, there was no such Zip code, so she was unable to help him. He’d called three different times and gotten three different Elaines before giving up and calling a local independent repairman who said his name, ironically enough, was Narhari, even though he sounded a whole lot more American than Elaine from Mumbai. Narhari said he could come out a week from next Thursday to fix the machine. So here he was, standing in the Duds ′n Suds Laundromat, a roll of quarters clutched in his fist and a bewildered expression on his face, wondering if he looked as idiotic as he felt.
“You want warm/cold, high water for your jeans.” A slender arm reached around him; a slightly arthritic-looking finger with chipped hot pink nail polish pushed the buttons on the washer. “You pour the detergent in the cup on the left. The fabric softener cup doesn’t work on this particular machine, so you’ll want to watch for the rinse-cycle light to come on before adding it.”
She stepped around from behind him and in front of the washer where he’d put his whites. “This one, you want hot wash/cold rinse. It’s only half full, so set it to medium. And your colored shirts here in this one, you want warm/cold again.”
Again, he stared. His guardian angel of the laundry looked about his age, early fifties maybe, but at the same time, she looked like she’d just stepped out of the 1960s. Her hair, streaked with gray, hung halfway down her back. Lime green flip-flops on darkly tanned feet peeked out from beneath her tie-dyed floor-length skirt, and as she bent over the machines and pushed buttons, her scoop-necked tank top gaped just enough to give him a whisper of a glimpse of what curved beneath. She smelled of vanilla and nutmeg. Like a Snickerdoodle cookie, he thought.
She turned to him and smiled. “They won’t bite you. Really. They’re just machines.” She pointed to the coin slot on a machine. “You put in a buck and a quarter, then shut the lid. It’ll start automatically.”
More... Passionate Hearts: An Anthology of Love, Passion, and Romance
Smoky Trudeau is the author of two novels, Redeeming Grace and The Cabin, and two nonfiction books especially for writers: Front-Word, Back-Word, Insight Out: Lessons on Writing the Novel Lurking Inside You From Start to Finish; and Left Brained, Write Brained: 366 Writing Prompts and Exercises to Free Your Creative Spirit, Awaken Your Muse, And Challenge Your Skills Every Day of the Year, all from Vanilla Heart Publishing. She has published short stories and poetry in literary journals such as CALYX and online e-zines such as Smashed Ink, and was a 2003 Pushcart Prize nominee.
An ardent outdoorswoman with a deep reverence for nature, Smoky’s newly released book, Observations of an Earth Mage, is a collection of prose, poetry, and photography celebrating the fragile beauty of our planet. She is also nearing completion of her third novel, The Storyteller’s Bracelet.
Smoky spent many years teaching writing workshops at several community colleges throughout her former home state of
Finally succumbing to her bohemian spirit and need to live near the mountains and the ocean, Smoky moved to Southern California in 2008, where she lives with her husband and daughter in a ramshackle cottage in the woods overlooking the
No comments:
Post a Comment