striding into the laundromat, bold as you please, kinetic and American, golden limbs flashing, blonde ponytail bouncing, big plastic basket of shadowy, mysterious unspeakables under one well-toned arm. It's like an ad for something. We observe her together, eyes in synchrony, me and the old townie on the other side of the drone-filled room. The local university's crest is on her tank top. She starts sorting clothes, filmy things slipping through her fingers into two different washers. Me, I force my attention back to my book. But him, he's still staring, thin lips parted, eyes blinking, mesmerized. When I pass him on the way out, a bulging Hefty bag of damp jeans and T-shirts hanging pendulously from each hand, I for some reason make eye contact. What am I thinking. How long until I learn. Needless to say he follows me into the parking lot, keeping five feet behind me. It's sunny and hazy, half hot already. As I'm opening the car door, thinking maybe I'm gonna get away clean after all, he starts in.
"You know how you got here, don't ya?" he wants to know, his voice unexpectedly loud. He's sixty-five easy, Amish-looking, wispy white chin beard and all. Like an old Thoreau. I gradually discern "here" to be the laundromat: a woman's place. I get three or four minutes, furious at myself for standing there and taking it, about how the goddamn feminists have wrecked this country, about how his wife always knew her place was at home like he knew his was at the Steel. This is how they raised their two boys -- the one even went to college. He concludes, predictably, with a denunciation of that fuckin' idiot in the White House (it's 1997), then, suddenly embarrassed, like he didn't want to spew this shit at me but couldn't help himself, turns back to the laundromat and leaves me behind, walking weirdly briskly, a farmer making tracks over his acres. I'm embarrassed too. He's told me he hates women. He's told me he's got no one, not even his two good boys, to talk to. Why do I even go out. Throwing the Hefty bags into the front seat, I drop my keys on the blacktop, then accidentally kick them under the car.
