Lucy's Launderette (21 page)

You get to know a few things about a person by sorting through their laundry. For example, whether they have nice taste in home furnishings, whether they wear briefs or boxer shorts. I recalled that Sam's bathroom towels were red and black and very new. A lot of the other things, under the stains, had been quite tasteful.

I added, “She must have used big-time Italian restaurant refuse. There were some pretty messy tomato-y stains in there.”

“Sure,” said Sam, “A mafioso restaurant. She must have a contract out on me. Going to trash whatever she can of my life…” The words were severe but his tone was light. He really did have a wonderful voice. It was so persuasive, so intelligent, so delicious. Too bad it was trapped inside that dubious body. Maybe it was only a tiny little image problem, just a temporary thing. Maybe he was telling the truth and only had occasional lapses into plaid pants and greasy hair. Maybe it was the company he was keeping on the job. Maybe he was trying too hard to blend in with the manic depressives.

I said, “Now listen, Sam. I know more about stains than a lot of people, having to remove paint from everything. And what I don't know my friend Sky does. She works in a used clothing boutique. You wouldn't believe how creative people can be when it comes to leaving their mark on expensive clothing, and in the most conspicuous places. And listen, what we don't know, our friend Mr. Yee at the Busy Bee Cleaners does. The man is a genius with spot remover. Sky already owes him her first- and second-born children for all the items he's rescued for the boutique. Don't despair yet.”

“Yeah, well, listen…I better go. This place is still in a terrible state. I'll be cleaning up for the next month. Just wanted to set things straight and let you know that we're still on the lookout for Dirk. He's a devious one, isn't he?”

Truer words were never spoken.

E
arly Sunday morning, not more than forty-eight hours after Connie had said please to Bob, there was a knock at her front door.

Connie was already awake and downstairs by then. She was only sleeping a couple of hours at a time but was so energetic it gave me the creeps. I could hear her at night, restless, thumping about, skittering around. She'd begun to make plans for the house, taking inventory of all the things she was going to tear out or throw out. Only the day before, she had gone into a small room at the end of the hallway on the second floor, a room that had been used to store junk, and emptied it out, excited to find that behind the junk was a small gabled window with a window seat. With her bare hands, she'd begun to tear off the wallpaper—a stained and faded pattern of roses and cupids.

“This is going to be the kid's room,” she announced, “and
I'm going to paint it white and strip down the floor.” Most of the house had floorboards that could have been beautiful, but were badly in need of sanding and varnishing.

She said, “A kid needs a room their own size. A little kid needs a little room. When my grandmother died and they put me in temporary care, the dorm we slept in was so big I felt like a tiny insect. I can't have my kid feeling like an insect.”

Later, I'd mentioned to Bob that I didn't think Connie should be pushing herself. Or working with paints and varnishes.

So that was why, on Sunday morning, the gang started coming.

Connie was already lumbering around the kitchen, making herself a mammoth breakfast. There was the knock at the door. Connie looked up, surprised, and I said I would go and see who it was. Through the bevelled glass, I could make out Snake, Brewbelly and two more gang members I didn't know well. I opened the door.

Snake grinned. His gold front tooth glinted. “Hiya, Luce.”

“Hey, Snake. Brew. You guys are up early. C'mon in.”

We all went into the kitchen. It was a big kitchen, but it seemed full. These guys took up more space than other people.

They all said hello to Connie, a little shyly, as if they were apologizing for something.

Then Snake said, “Hear ya finally fixin' the launderette up. Jeremy said he wanted to do somethin' to it, but I guess he just ran outa steam.” Snake pulled something out of his pocket. It was a stack of color cards, the samples I'd given to Bob. It hadn't occurred to me that a guy like Snake, a guy with an auto body shop, might be just the person I needed.

He said, “Think we can give you a hand with this. Done a lotta time with pink, eh? Used to get a few of them Mary
Kay Cosmetics babes with them pink Cadillacs. Kinda slacked off in that area. Babies' ear, I called it, that color. Okay. Bob's given me the rundown. Figure if we start with yer babies' ear—I still got some old tins a that lyin' around—we add a splash of yer carmine rose, and yer dark cherry, a splash of cadmium yellow, that's how we get yer flamingo, eh? Now fer the black. Ya got about twenty kindsa that. I like yer anthracite. Got a little purple undertone. Gives it a gleam. Then ya want them few little bits a red to be deep an' clear an' go right to yer heart, eh? Like a hooker's lips. Yeah. No problem. We got the paint and spray guns out in the truck. Can start right now if ya like?”

The other gang members nodded.

For two weeks they kept coming. The men brought muscle and equipment, the women, coming in posses, young and old biker chicks, with things for Connie, the baby and the house. In those two weeks in June, while the Closed for Renovations sign was up on the launderette door, both the interior of the house and the launderette were practically gutted, repainted, refloored and rewired. New light fixtures and wheelchair accessible bathrooms were our biggest expense at the launderette, but they were important. The bathrooms were regulation and the lights were needed to create mood and show off art. The biggest, messiest jobs were done.

In the meantime, Bob chased down permits.

In the early days, just after his accident and before his long soused phase, he'd been a one-man campaign for wheelchair access. Anywhere the way was blocked, Bob had been there, either chained and padlocked to some railing, or just basically harassing everyone in the vicinity. At city hall and in government offices, he'd made a few enemies and a lot of friends, and when votes had been needed from a part of the population that cared more about helical gears and chrome
than politics, Bob had been useful PR for the local candidates.

The permits came through right on schedule, at the end of the second week, no questions asked. I wondered what Bob had said to his high-powered connections. What promises or threats he'd made.

 

The launderette was taking shape. It now had a new floor of black-and-white diamond tiles punctuated with a tiny bloodred diamond tile every six feet. The walls, wherever my mural wasn't wreaking havoc, were ice white. Although they were a couple of years old, the machines looked brand-new with their fresh coats of auto paint, in rows of alternating pink flamingo and black. One scarlet machine gleamed at the center of each of the rows, like a prize, a jackpot. There were twenty-four washers and dryers in all. We were able to limp along, keeping the launderette section open and closing off the other areas as we fixed things up.

In the weeks that followed, it was Max who found us, first the couches, and then the rest of the furnishings. He got the couches from a club that went bankrupt almost as soon as it opened. They were used, but in excellent condition. Black Naugahyde. Real man-eaters. The kind you sink into and never want to rise from again. We put some of them in the reading corner and others, we used for mothers' seating surrounding the children's play area. Needless to say, again it was Max who found the toys and furniture for that space. Children's play equipment had to be regulation, and it wasn't easy to find secondhand. He also found us the tables, chairs and the espresso machine and cash register on lease for the coffee bar area.

I was beginning to see what Sky saw in him.

Max was very enthusiastic and energetic. He popped in
and out every two days to check on progress. Sky was even more ecstatic about the launderette because it kept Max in town and thus close to her.

We turned the utility room into an office, with dusty-rose wall-to-wall carpet, a hidden bar, black couches, a decent desk and black walls (Paul Bleeker had his own womb, why couldn't I?). Jeremy's ashes were installed on the desk so that I could talk to them whenever I felt like it. I invited Connie to talk to them, too, but she said it wasn't her style. I put a few fresh flowers next to the urn. It was like a proper little shrine.

And Sky gave me a gift—a red cell phone of my own.

 

I used the red phone to call Jacques.

“Lucy. I've been thinking about you.”

“I've been thinking about you, too,” I lied. “I need to ask you a big favor, Jacques. A paying favor.”

“Oh, okay. Shoot.”

“I need a couple of computers. It's okay if they're used, but they should look like new and have enough memory for Net surfing and some of the basic stuff. Then I need someone expert to install them. Cable, I figure. Jacques, I'm a complete techno-idiot, so you'll have to help me out on this one.”

“Be my pleasure, Lucy,” he said, “but there's something I want you to do for me.”

“What's that?”

“Let me take you to lunch. And leave that Nadine Thorpe at home. She's a really scary customer.”

“I don't work for Nadine anymore.”

“You don't?”

“Starting yesterday, I'm sort of the manager of a business.”

“Right on. What kind of business?”

“Er…a Laundromat.”

“You mean like those places to wash 'n' dry your clothes?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“I didn't think those kind of places needed much managing. That's funny.”

“I know. It sounds funny, but you have to see it. When you see it for yourself, you'll know how serious I am.”

“Just tell me where and when, and I'll be there.”

I told him how to get to the launderette and we agreed on a day when he could come and see. Then I asked, “How's Madeline?”

Jacques' voice became gloomy. “She's in Los Angeles with a new show.”

And probably having quite a romp without you, I wanted to say.

 

I hadn't been back to my apartment in weeks. I'd phoned Anna several times to ask if there was any mail and to let her know that I was still alive and hadn't gone into a convent. Neither had she, by the sounds of it. Whenever I called, she had that breathless irritated voice, the voice you have when someone is slightly squashing your windpipe. The phone had a long cord. She must have moved it into her bedroom.

I was feeling nostalgic about my apartment, remembering my elation over it in the early days when I'd just moved in, when I first got my job at the gallery, before Frank, before crow's feet, before I'd figured out that aliens inhabited Nadine's body. Now the interest in Nadine was purely scientific, in the same way that an anthropologist finds a lost tribe of pygmy cannibals fascinating.

I remembered the sense of excitement in that first year in my own place, that mix of freedom and fear. That sense of getting closer to where I wanted to be. I was finally living in
the heart of the city. To me, that cluster of high-rises was a miniature Manhattan.

Maybe I was just being maudlin, but I missed those days. I missed the parties with the friends I'd made at university, the fencing matches with uncooked spaghetti, and everyone dancing in the empty apartment, then sprawling out on the floor as the evening wore on—I couldn't afford furniture yet. Boozy philosophizing lasted until four in the morning, with everybody sleeping over right on the spot where they'd sat all night.

I missed all the meeting places, drinks at the Sylvia, and brunch with Sky on Robson Street or Granville Island. I missed the hive of activity of all those buildings, especially in the summer. I missed those floors of people flowing out into the warm streets. I missed the crowded walks through Stanley Park and along the sea wall, the popcorn vendors' machines glittering in the hot dusk, the freighters out on the glassy blue horizon, and the carnival atmosphere in general.

 

I took the three bus rides to my apartment. Apart from the Anna factor, I was looking forward to the day when I could move back in again full-time. As I walked down the main hallway, the manageress, whose doorway faced mine on the opposite side of the hall, stuck her head out.

“Hi, Lucy. Haven't seen you in ages.”

“Hi, Sue. I've been living somewhere else.”

“Listen. There's been a problem with your apartment. I mean, there still is a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“I think I'll just show you myself. Follow me.”

Sue and I went downstairs into the basement and the locker area. She pointed to the ceiling.

“Look at that. What you see there is directly under your apartment,” she said.

There was a massive water stain on the ceiling and under it, in the locker area, I could see that the floor was damp and there had been water damage to the contents of several lockers. Against one wall was a pile of discarded soggy cardboard boxes. My locker had been drenched as well, and because Anna hadn't mentioned it to me, nobody had bothered trying to salvage the contents. My paintings would be soaked if not ruined.

“Oh Jesus,” I said. “What happened?”

“Well, your roommate tried to make me think that a pipe had burst in the bathroom, but the damage was in the wrong area for the bathroom. I mean, these apartments are all the same, right? I'm not so stupid that I don't know the layout by now. The damage started in one of the bedrooms.”

“Shit. Anna's waterbed.”

“Yeah, right, she was supposed to have the safety frame, eh? The one that keeps the water from leaking everywhere,” said Sue.

“She does. I mean I thought she did.”

Sue shook her head.

“She didn't?”

“No,” said Sue.

“I'm really sorry. She lied to me. It's been a bonkfest since she moved in. High tide, stormy seas, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I get your drift. But I gotta tell you, the hardwood floors in that room are now history. They're driftwood. Listen, Lucy, you've been a good tenant. And I'm really going to miss those parties you used to throw. I loved them. But the owner's really ticked off over this. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to give you your notice. Your name's the one on the contract, which means you're the legally responsible one and the one I've got to kick out. You're gonna lose your damage deposit, too. It's a real bummer but there it is.”

“Shit. Double shit.”

“I know. It sucks.”

“I didn't have anything to do with it though.”

“I know. I tried explaining it to the owner. That it wasn't your fault, that you weren't even here when it happened. But he's a lawyer, a real old fart in a pinstripe suit, starchy shirt and tie. When it comes to the regulations, he's a stickler.”

I turned away. I didn't want Sue to see the tears welling up in my eyes.

With my back to Sue, I said, “Listen, I better stay down here and sort through my locker. It looks like everything got soaked.”

“I'm really sorry, Lucy. I hope you won't hold it against me. It's my job.”

“It's okay, Sue. I'd never hold it against you. It's Anna I want to kill.”

“Yeah. Well. Okay. I'll leave you to it. And I'm really sorry.”

Maybe serving time for homicide would be worth it after all.

First, I sorted through my paintings. The pieces I had done using the
carta intelata
technique were ruined, because the base was paper which was then glued to a stretched canvas. For the most part, they'd disintegrated. Some of the wooden stretchers had warped, but those pieces that had been done in acrylic or oil could be remounted. The pieces in tempera were only fit for the garbage pile. Most of my sketches were destroyed, soggy and blurred. Only a few drawings were salvageable. And I added to the damage by blubbering all over my ruined belongings.