Page 10 of A Ballad of Betrayal and Beauty

My eyes widen, and I drop the sodden pile of laundry to the floor with a splat. “A week?”

He shrugs. “Says they’re super busy, and since we still have water to the rest of the house, it’s not classified as an emergency.”

“What do we do now?”

Key claps me on the shoulder. “Well, considering you managed to get every single piece of laundry soaked, it needs to get washed before it starts to smell like asscrack.”

“That’s very helpful.”

“There’s a laundromat a few blocks away,” he says.

I hang my head. “A laundromat? Seriously?”

Key rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, you used laundromats for years.”

“Yeah,” I counter. “But that was before I was making shit tons of money playing bass.”

“Come on, I’ll help you load this mess into the car.”

He picks up one of the baskets and starts toward the door. I follow along behind, muttering to myself. It’s not like I loved doing laundry in the first place, and now I’ll have to sit for hours with a bunch of strangers so our shit doesn’t get stolen.

“You could come with me,” I say.

Key grins. “Yeah, no way, man. You lost. Time to pay up.”

He shuts the trunk and drops the keys into my hand. I roll my eyes. “I really wonder why I ever bother with you.”

“Aww, you love me,” he says, ruffling the top of my hair as I try to bat him away.

“I think you’re confusing love with my wanting to smother you with a pillow.”

“Nah, sounds about the same to me.”

I shove him in the shoulder before getting in the car and slamming the door, ignoring his mocking wave through the window. I make sure to flip him off one last time for good measure as I back out of the driveway, and head toward the laundromat.

* * *

“Great,just great. Great, great, fuckinggreat.”

This is the second laundromat that’s closed for repairs. For fuck’s sake, it’s 1988. Are there no working laundry machines in San Francisco? I’m seriously starting to consider whether clothes are that necessary to my life. As the sun begins to set, I spot a neon blue and red sign in the distance that readsThe Sudsy Dream. I scoff. Lame, much? Might as well come right out and call itThe Wet Dream. But it looks open, with the handful of people I see inside and the rotating dryer drums. Perfect.

I pull up curbside and peer around. I’ve never been to this area of town before but it’s pretty rundown. Looking up at the sign, I notice now that there are missing bricks at the corners of the building and most of the awnings are torn and rusted. There’s a cat sitting in the smudged window of the second floor, which must be an apartment.

I blow out a breath. Well, as long as their machines are in service, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I open the trunk and struggle to get the four waterlogged bags of clothes inside the front door. A bell jingles overhead, and the sudden smell of laundry detergent and bleach overwhelms my senses, my eyes watering and throat stinging. The few people sitting on chairs in front of the window glance up at me, then return to their books and crosswords, but they don’t seem to give me a second thought.

There’s an older woman smoking behind a counter with a register, and I set down the bags by the door before heading over. She doesn’t even glance up as I approach and I find myself standing awkwardly right in front of her. I clear my throat, but still she continues to read her magazine.

Finally, my patience wears thin after the day I’ve had, and I tap the bell on the counter by her arm. She looks up at me and raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“Change?” she asks in a voice more akin to Oscar the Grouch than a woman in a furry green cardigan and grey-streaked black hair.

“Huh?”

She tilts her head at the machines. “You need quarters for the machines.”

Oh shit, right. “Yeah, sorry, can you change a ten?”

Reaching forward with alligator green–tipped nails, she snatches the ten-dollar bill from my fingers, then hands me a cup of quarters. I don’t even know if she counted them.

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