Whitechurch (13 page)

only ever wanted

one.

And I watch,

across the street and three doors left,

as the big plate glass window of the

Laundromat

bows, twists, distorts,

tries to pop itself

out of its frame

onto the street.

But I’m not watching that,

even if it is entertaining.

I’m watching the Red-Headed Stranger,

who is doing his laundry

because it is Wednesday evening,

and as Whitechurch knows

he does his laundry on

Wednesdays.

Tell the truth though, I’m not even watching

that.

Of course I’m watching it, that is,

the same way I’m watching

the whirligig

and the trees

and the window.

Satellite visions they are,

pulling my eye closer

to the source.

The Red-Headed Stranger struggling

to light a cigarette

with his rain-slicker hood

pulled tight around his face

and his hands cupped against the wind

is
close
to the center,

but not
it
.

It
is Lilly.

Lilly watching the Stranger.

I am watching Lilly

watching the Stranger.

And then, there is Pauly.

Pauly watching Lilly

watching the Stranger

light a cigarette

in the light of the ’mat.

I’m watching that.

I am the only one watching that.

Because none of the other players

even knows yet

that Pauly is there,

skulking

in the doorway of Chuck’s International Auto

Parts,

watching Lilly

watching the RHS.

Pauly named him that.

After the guy had been in town

a few days

and been the subject

of a few thousand

conversations.

Came out of nowhere

our own red menace,

remains nowhere

even as we

watch.

The only redhead in town,

Lilly observes.

And isn’t that queer,

we don’t have one

of our own

and we never

noticed before.

We do now.

We notice.

Which is why Lilly is there,

inside the Laundromat

looking out at RHS,

and Pauly is outside

looking at her,

with the rain coming down sideways

in the wind,

a little hail mixed in,

bouncing right off Pauly’s unmoving face

in the doorway of Chuck’s International Auto

Parts

across the street

one flight down

and three doors over

from my window.

I
GRAB UP MY
orange mackintosh from the hook on the back of the closet door, and go down to the shiny street.

It’s just getting dark, and the blue-white fluorescence pours out of the place and highlights Adam Everly, the ’mat’s manager, son of Asa Everly, the ’mat’s owner. He stands on his stepladder trying to clutch the top rung and at the same time to apply a giant X of tape to the window to keep it from shattering. He’s already Xed the inside, but that isn’t enough for Adam, who is a good son, a conscientious Laundromat manager, and who is thirty-five years old and otherwise unemployable.

“Hey Adam,” I say to our man Adam, who is somehow still more of a kid to the locals.

“Hey,” Adam says, but not in a friendly way or even a dead-middle-zone way like I said it, but in an aggressive way.

“It’s not my fault you’re all wrapped up in tape, Adam.”

Adam has been struggling to escape the roll of nylon-reinforced plastic tape, going from the methodical peeling and stretching method to the flailing, growling, thrashing method that only makes tangled tape worse.

“No,” Adam says, going limp like a person surrendering to quicksand. “It’s not your fault.”

The hail, now the size of pencil erasers, is bouncing off my rubberized coat like it is all a planned assault on me alone. It is just the coat for these storms. I stand with my hands in the pockets and nothing on my face as far as I can feel. Just as if I’m still watching the weather from my warm chair—which would be the smart thing—rather than standing in it. I look toward Chuck’s International Auto Parts, then past Adam into his dad’s business which will be Adam’s business once the drink finishes its work on Asa’s organs, then back to Chuck’s again. Chuck’s is a more stable Whitechurch business, as Chuck drinks less than Asa does except when they’re together.

“The window’s not going anyplace, Adam.”

Adam looks up at it, the window, for an answer. “No?”

“No. You did great. I was watching you. The building will fall down, but the window will still be hanging. Sell me a Lotto.”

That is the other thing that happens in the Laundromat. Lotto tickets. Asa is diversifying the business. Providing for the kid, who nobody figures stands much of a chance anyway.

“I got the winner tonight,” Adam says. “I’ll sell it to you. But when you win you gotta buy me dinner at King’s. I can feel it. This night’s a winner.”

He says that every time he sells a ticket.

I buy one anyway. Stand there in my dopey, dripping mac, hand a dollar to Adam, and send him behind his small Formica counter to punch up the numbers machine and make it
buzz-tik-ik-tik-tik-buzzzz
. “You’re right,” I say as Adam Everly hands over the ticket, “that definitely sounded like a winner.”

“So, you gonna take me to King’s for dinner when you win?” Lilly says, banging her shoulder into mine. The two of us then lean, side by side, on our elbows and watch Adam do the other thing he does behind the counter. Fold other people’s underwear.

Me and Lilly are the same height, five foot ten, and of similar square and gristly build. We could be brother and sister, and people have often said stuff to that effect. Pauly is taller than us by two inches.

“King’s is gonna be crowded that night,” I say. King’s is the best restaurant in town, with a sign in he window to prove it that says BEST RESTAURANT IN TOWN that nobody takes issue with. Except for the food. It’s a very nice
place
, just that the food is kind of putrid-tasting. I’m happy enough o have company at my celebratory dinner there, so that when I have to push my plate away after three bites of canned-salmon pie, somebody will be there to help me out. Because the waitresses quiz you when you leave food at King’s.

“Hey, Adam,” Lilly calls.

Suspiciously, Adam turns his eyes up from the folding. He isn’t all that used to being chatted up by most people. Certainly not by the town’s Major Young Woman. He makes a nice pleat, Asa says of his boy, but he could bore the fuzz off a peach. “Hey, Lilly,” he says back.

“You want me to help you with that? Me and Oakley, we can help you with that, can’t we, Oak?”

“No, we can’t.”

“No, you can’t,” Adam Everly says, getting busy busy in the whites. The colors sit in a knot behind him. He is diligent about separating. “Nobody’s supposed to be touching anybody else’s things. ’Specially their underthings,” he says super-seriously. “That’s one of the sacreds of the business.”

“Sacreds, huh?” Lilly says. “You know, you never figure there are sacreds in some businesses. Guess they can pop up anywhere, huh?”

He listens without looking at her. “Yes,” Adam Everly says, “I think they can.”

Lilly is not convinced. “So let us help anyway. How sacred is sacred?”

Adam Everly is mortified. “Sacred,” Adam says. “Sacred is very sacred. This might not be much to you, it might not look like anyth-th-th-thing to you.” He starts stuttering. Adam Everly went to a special school for years to fix his stutter, and Lilly is bringing it back by wanting to handle Whitechurch’s underthings. “B-b-b-but something has to mean something to a person. It’s imp-p-p-portant to
some
body … Lilly,” he says, then returns to folding.

She stops grinning, looks to me. I point at her like she’s a bad girl, which nobody believes. Not even wounded Adam Everly believes it. Bad girl, Lil.

“I like the way you say my name,” she says to him. He does not look at her. “L-l-l-lilly. It doesn’t even sound wrong when you stutter it. Sounds pretty. Sounds singsongy.”

He looks up at her with narrowed eyes and a seedling of a smile. “Your boyfriend. He’s always wanting to hold everybody’s things too. You’re a pair. The two of you,” Adam says.

“Hey, lemme fold,” Pauly says as he bursts through the door, propelled, as if the storm threw him up. “If these guys get to fold, you gotta let me.”

“No,” Adam Everly says.

“Adam,” Lilly says softly. “Sorry about the underwear thing. You’re right, it is important. You’re a gent.”

“What’s the red menace doing here?” Pauly asks, prompting everyone to look. “Is he ever gonna leave?”

“L-l-l-lilly,” Adam Everly croons.

Lilly looks away from the Stranger. Opens a sweet grateful sad smile on Adam. “Thank you,” she says to him.

Pauly fixes a stare on Adam now. A simple stare. Profoundly simple. There is no one Pauly can’t be jealous of.

“L-l-l-lilly,” Adam says.

“Don’t wear it out, Adam,” I say, to be helpful. I like him anyway, but I seem to like him less when I’m with Lilly.

“Sell me a Lotto,” Pauly says.

Adam Everly acts as if he hasn’t heard this. He curls the last pair of sweat socks up together, even though they look yellow and crusty, as if they were in the In pile rather than the Out.

“Hah, that’s Ben Ginty’s laundry. No mistaking those socks,” Pauly says. Triumphant. “Sell me a Lotto.”

Adam Everly. Chivalrous. He scoops up the load of white that may belong to bachelor bricklayer Ben Ginty. Shields the stack with his body and walks it to the rear of the folding area. There he picks up a lump of unfolded colors and brings it to the folding table.

“Sell me a Lotto,” Pauly says.

Adam gets angry. Quietly. He stops folding, places his hands flat on the table and stares across at Pauly. Pauly does not make Adam stutter. “One dollar,” Adam says.

“Ah,” Pauly moans. “I’ll pay you two. Out of the winnings.”

“Oh ya,
there’s
a wise investment,” I snort.

“Dad says cash only,” Adam Everly says robotically.

“You two small-timers need some serious help,” Pauly says. “No guts, no glory boys. Come on Lilly, I wanna go. Let’s go for a walk. The air’s a little
sluggish
in here.”

She looks out the window. “In this? Pauly, you want to go for a walk in
this
?”

“Yes I do.”

She looks again. Smiles. “Kinda cool. Unlike you, though.”

He looks level at her, which one learns quickly on meeting him is something Pauly seldom does. “I know, unlike me.” He’s watching the Stranger. “I’m thinking I might dye my hair too, how ’bout that?”

Lilly zips her jacket up to her chin. She pulls her white baseball cap down almost to her ears and shoves Pauly toward the door.

Nobody says see ya later to me. We are beyond all that.

“See ya later … L-l-l-lilly,” Adam says, as the door fights to close itself against the storm. Adam Everly is not beyond all that.

Nothing in the Laundromat that was interesting is interesting anymore to me. The fizziness is gone. I wrap myself up tight, slap the counter loudly. Adam doesn’t look up, the Red-Headed Stranger does. He and I look at each other. Like two dumb cows across a field. We nod at each other, a greeting, a farewell, an acknowledgment, an agreement, one or more of those things a nod is supposed to mean but I honestly wonder sometimes who the hell knows. But anyway, one nod more than we’d ever exchanged while I had company.

I go back out, and across, and up, and into, down into my chair, at the window and above the coffee-scented spaces in the floorboards, to watch the storm and not participate in it.

“Nah, you didn’t miss much,” I say to my dad, asleep on the sofa.

We are in the doorway of the former coffee shop beneath my apartment. Behind me, stenciled in black script across the glass door, is the name of the place, EXPRESSO, which was supposed to mean that you could get your espresso quickly, but only half of that message got to the people of the town since they all pronounced the drink “expresso” anyway. There were lots of good reasons why the place closed.

“You actually won?” Pauly asks.

I’m standing with one hand in my pocket. The other hand is open flat up, the ticket in my hand. “I actually did. Fifty bucks. Got two of the numbers. Exact order.” I shrug. “Guess I gotta take half the town to King’s now.”

“What, Adam? That doesn’t mean anything. He just says that. I think there’s a law anyway, against the seller of the ticket demanding a kickback.”

I now shove the other hand, the one with the ticket in it, into my pocket. I stand there with my back to the door of Expresso and a window extending out toward the street on either side of me, as if I’m speaking from deep inside a three-walled glass box.

“What the hell, Pauly. Adam didn’t
demand
anything. He’s probably never demanded a single thing in his life. It’s just a line his dad wrote for him so he’d have something to say to the customers.”

With my shoulder blades, I push myself off and start across the street to the Laundromat.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Pauly says.

I have to laugh. I turn around and walk most of the way backward while talking to my buddy.

“Principle, Paul? When your cat died you put it in a
mailbox
.”

“That was grief, made me do that,” Pauly says, though he gets a jolt of nostalgia from the story that causes him to splutter a small laugh. “Anyway, I got her back, didn’t I?”

“Just because you forgot to take her tags off, numbnuts.”

He splutters again as I shove open the door to the ’mat.

“Adam,” I snap.

Adam looks up calmly from feeding coins into the big stainless-steel large-capacity washer that sits at the back of the store.

“Adam, you were right. It was a winner.” hold up the ticket for him to see.

Adam Everly’s nearly-white gray eyes go huge. “No!” he insists.