“Okay.” She doesn’t sound interested; she looks down at the table. I wonder if she is Danny’s girlfriend. I did not know he had a girlfriend. I wonder, not for the first time, why a woman friend is called a girlfriend and not a womanfriend.
Danny says, “Come on in, Lou, while I get my keys.” I do not want to come in, but I do not want to seem unfriendly, either. The clashing colors and patterns make my eyes tired. I step in. Danny says, “Lyn, this is Lou from upstairs — he borrowed my spare yesterday.”
“Hi,” she says, glancing up and then down.
“Hi,” I say. I watch Danny as he walks over to a desk and picks up his keys. The desk is very neat on top, a blotter and a telephone.
We go downstairs and out to the parking lot. I unlock my trunk and Danny swings the spare tire out. He opens his trunk and puts it in, then slams his trunk. It makes a different sound than mine does.
“Thank you for your help,” I say.
“No problemo,” Danny says. “Glad to be of service. And thanks for getting my spare back to me so quickly.”
“You’re welcome,” I say. It does not feel right to say “you’re welcome” when he did more to help me, but I do not know what else to say.
He stands there, looking at me. He does not say anything for a moment; then he says, “Well, be seeing you,” and turns away. Of course he will be seeing me; we live in the same building. I think this means he does not want to walk back inside with me. I do not know why he could not just say that, if that is what he means. I turn to my car and wait until I hear the front door open and close.
If I took the treatment, would I understand this? Is it because of the woman in his apartment? If I had Marjory visiting me, would I not want Danny to walk back inside with me? I do not know. Sometimes it seems obvious why normal people do things and other times I cannot understand it at all.
Finally I go inside and up to my apartment. I put on quieting music, Chopin preludes. I put two cups of water in the small saucepan and open a packet of noodles and vegetables. As the water boils, I watch the bubbles rise. I can see the pattern of the burner below by the location of the first bubbles, but when the water really boils, it forms several cells of fast-bubbling water. I keep thinking there is something important about that, something more than just a rolling boil, but I haven’t figured the whole pattern out yet. I drop the noodles and vegetables in and stir, as the directions say to do. I like to watch the vegetables churn in the boiling water.
And sometimes I am bored by the silly dancing vegetables.
CHAPTER NINE
On Fridays I do my laundry, so that I have the weekend free. I have two laundry baskets, one for light and one for dark. I take the sheets off the bed and the pillowcase off the pillow and put them in the light basket. The towels go in the dark basket. My mother used two pale-blue plastic baskets for sorted clothes; she called one dark and one light, and that bothered me. I found a dark-green wicker basket and use it for dark clothes; my basket for light clothes is plain wicker, a sort of honey color. I like the woven pattern of the wicker, and I like the word wicker. The strands go out around the uprights like the wih sound of wicker and then comes the sharp k, like the stick the strands bend around, and the soft er sound as they bend back into the shadow.
I take the exact right change out of my change box, plus one extra coin in case one of them won’t work in the machines. It used to make me angry when a perfectly round coin would not make the machine go. My mother taught me to take an extra coin. She said it is not good to stay angry. Sometimes a coin will work in the soft drink machine when it does not work in the washing machine or dryer, and sometimes one that will not work in the soft drink machine will work in the washing machine. This does not make sense, but it is how the world is.
I put the coins in my pocket, tuck the packet of detergent in the light basket, and set the light basket on top of the dark one. Light should go on top of dark. That balances.
I can just see over them to walk down the hall. I fix the Chopin prelude in my mind and head for the laundry room. As usual on Friday nights, only Miss Kimberly is there. She is old, with fuzzy gray hair, but not as old as Miss Watson. I wonder if she thinks about the life extension treatments or if she is too old. Miss Kimberly is wearing light-green knit slacks and a flowered top. She usually wears this on Fridays when it is warm. I think about what she wears instead of the smell in the laundry room. It is a harsh, sharp smell that I do not like.
“Good evening, Lou,” she says now. She has already done her wash and is putting her things into the left-hand dryer. She always uses the left-hand dryer.
“Good evening, Miss Kimberly,” I say. I do not look at her washing; it is rude to look at women’s washing because it may have underwear in it. Some women do not want men looking at their underwear. Some do and that makes it confusing, but Miss Kimberly is old and I do not think she wants me to see the pink puckery things in among the sheets and towels. I do not want to see them anyway.
“Did you have a good week?” she asks. She always asks this. I do not think she really cares whether I had a good week or not.
“My tires were slashed,” I say.
She stops putting things in the dryer and looks at me. “Someone slashed your tires? Here? Or at work?”
I do not know why that makes a difference. “Here,” I say. “I came out Thursday morning and they were all flat.”
She looks upset. “Right here in this parking lot? I thought it was safe here!”
“It was very inconvenient,” I say. “I was late to work.”
“But… vandals! Here!” Her face makes a shape I have never seen on it before. It is something like fear and something like disgust. Then she looks angry, staring right at me as if I had done something wrong. I look away. “I’ll have to move,” she says.
I do not understand: why does she have to move because my tires were slashed? No one could slash her tires, because she has no tires. She does not have a car.
“Did you see who did it?” she asks. She has left part of her wash hanging over the edge of the machine; it looks very messy and unpleasant, like food hanging over the edge of a plate.
“No,” I say. I take the light things out of the light basket and put them in the right-hand washing machine. I add the detergent, measuring carefully because it is wasteful to use too much and things will not be clean if I do not use enough. I put the coins in the slot, close the door, set the machine for warm wash, cool rinse, regular cycle, and push the START button. Inside the machine, something goes thunk and water hisses through the valves.
“It’s terrible,” Miss Kimberly says. She is scooping the rest of her wash into the dryer, the movements of her hands jerky. Something puckery and pink falls to the floor; I turn away and lift clothes out of the dark basket. I put them into the middle washer. “It’s all right for people like you,” she says.
“What is all right for people like me?” I ask. She has never talked this way before.
“You’re young,” she says. “And a man. You don’t have to worry.”
I do not understand. I am not young, according to Mr. Crenshaw. I am old enough to know better. I am a man, but I do not see why this means it is all right for my tires to be slashed.
“I did not want my tires slashed,” I say, speaking slowly because I do not know what she will do.
“Well, of course you didn’t,” she says, all in a rush. Usually her skin looks pale and yellowish in the lights of the laundry room, but now peach-colored patches glow on her cheeks. “But you don’t have to worry about people jumping on you. Men.”