The Laundromat

Coins clanked down into the metal tray as Marty hurried to scoop them up before they hit bottom. Silken poison dripped into the plastic dispensing trays, bleach and detergents, color-safe, unscented, swirling down the shiny aluminum pores of the machine, deeper into the plumbs of Sherry township at Only Elegance Laundromat. The machines ranged from mid-grade to oversized but most of them were broken down with a yellow post-it note over the coin-slot reading “out of order”. An old pinball machine stood off-center with a wobbly leg in the “lounge” area with a TV that blared propaganda, bad weather, and occasionally amateur gospel performances littered with painful key-misses that would make Marty cringe or giggle depending on the mood. Lint wandered the tile floor like tumbleweed in this, the wild west of metro Detroit, as Ato, the friendly Ghanaian owner folded dry cleaning orders and smiled up at passersby. But as friendly as Ato was, the narrow walkways between machine rows, laundry cart landmines and busy moms washing a family of five and bathroom floor mats made Marty feel better waiting in the car. From the parking lot Marty could see a woman like a hippopotamus smoking in the alley way as overgrown icicles melted and crashed into the sidewalk below. A thirty-minute cycle was really only 26, so she scrolled on her phone watching YouTube until it had passed and pulled aside a prime laundry cart with the tilt edge for proper tipping and dumping into dryers and strolled over to her washer. Brown slush slopped around her favorite sweater sopping wet as she lifted it heavy with disgust.

“Excuse me, I think this washer’s broken” Marty waved up with a limp had towards Ato who sat contentedly behind his desk. “This one?”, Ato asked, as he moved quite quickly with screwdriver in hand, “Oh this one, oh no, it seems like the filter is clogged, all this ice in the machine, we bring you over to this one instead” and a few clicks later, a little more detergent and bleach down the drain, Marty tried again. Which would have been fine except now she was going to be late, her work uniform dirty in the center of the machine, tangled arm and leg in all the dirt of the week. Who works on Saturday anyway? But she shouldn’t have put it off this late anyhow, as the yellow post it notes on other machines foretold of this possibility. The mounted TV announced news about the superbowl, the halftime show, Bad Bunny, Willin Colon, and the climate paradox in Sao Paolo, hundreds of gallons of dirty water flooding into the Amazon. Marty envied the heat, remembered her relative luck in the scheme of things, and dreamed of the last day she would ever use the laundromat.