by Chris Lynch
“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.
“Yes!” I insist.
“Maybe!” Pauly insists.
Adam breaks off in the middle of what he’s doing and comes rushing toward the front. I hold the ticket out in front of him, as if Adam’s coming by on his carousel horse to grab the brass ring.
But he doesn’t. He sweeps right on by and heads to the counter, to the phone. Picks up and dials madly.
“So exciting, so exciting,” Adam Everly buzzes.
“So exciting,” I repeat, not to mock Adam, but because Adam’s fever is contagious.
Pauly is immune, though. “I’ll be outside,” he says in a hard-boiled bored voice.
“Ya, Dad,” Adam shouts into the phone. “I sold it. I sold it to him last night. First one first one I ever—” Adam stops talking, starts nodding at the phone. “How much?” he then asks me.
“Fifty.”
“Fifty, Dad. Ya.” Pause. “Well it is much. I think it’s much.”
“I think it’s much,” I say, loudly, leaning toward fiber-optic Asa Everly.
“He thinks it’s much. Oakley thinks it’s much. You know how much that is? At fifty cents a pound, I gotta do …”
I rush in to shore up Adam’s momentum dip. “A hundred pounds.”
“A hundred pounds of people’s laundry, Dad. That’s like a million pairs of underwear I gotta fold. And touch. Sweaty and stained and … even after they come out of the washer, Daddy …”
I no longer want to be here for this.
“Dad? …Yes, I know what time it is. I thought you would want to …”
The moment when Asa hangs up on Adam registers clearly on the son’s face. He holds the receiver to his ear a few seconds longer. “Okay. Okay, I’ll talk to you later then,” he says while watching me.
We stand there staring at each other. Adam, red-faced, pops open the cash register and starts counting out the cash.
“I woke him up,” Adam says to the money drawer. He is apologizing to his father and to me at the same time. “He wasn’t awake yet, and the phone … our phone has a real screechy ring … he’s not feeling well either….”
Then he looks up from the counting.
“I d-d-d-don’t have enough,” he says. “M-m-m-money in the till …” It seems very likely that Adam Everly is going to cry. “Th-th-this afternoon, I s-s-s-swear …”
I hold my ground, which is exactly what I do not wish to do. I want to fly, to evaporate, to leave Adam Everly in peace, or as close to peace as he can get.
>
“You can bring it to King’s,” I say calmly, as if this is just one more guy who’s come up a little short when he owes another guy. “Dinner tonight like I promised.”
Hard to buck Adam up. “I think it might be a f-f-f-federal o-f-f-fense, for me not to have your m-money.”
Pauly starts banging on the window, waving me out. I start for the door, point mock-menacingly at Adam. “You’re lucky,” I say. “I’d drop a dime on ya … but you got all five hundred of my dimes.”
Outside, I want a laugh now. “He didn’t have my money.”
Pauly’s eyes bug. “Is that typical, or what? You didn’t win like seventy million … you want me go break his legs?”
I shake my head. “Thanks anyway. But he said he’d get it this afternoon and bring it with him later. The important part though, Paul, is that he’s got it by tonight, because I also get to take Lilly to dinner as well.”
“My Lilly?”
“Yup. Just like Adam, she said if I win I gotta take her to King’s. It’s a matter of principle now.” I start walking a little bit faster, so Pauly has to talk to my back.
“You don’t make me jealous, y’know, Oakley. You might be the only guy in this town—you might be the only guy on earth who doesn’t make me jealous.”
“Damn,” I say. But I already knew that. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. “Two dates for dinner. I’ll be getting all kinds of sex tonight.”
“Well,” Pauly says coolly, “both kinds, anyway.”
Lilly tells me when I call that she can’t make it to King’s tonight. Says she’s got a date.
“The rat,” I say.
She laughs at that.
“He knew I was taking you … so cancel Pauly. Better yet, stand him up.”
“Maybe it’s not with Pauly,” she says mysteriously.
Right. She’s even acting like him. “Fine. Your loss.”
“Good luck,” she says, chuckles, then hangs up.
When I walk into King’s I am further thrown. Adam Everly is there, fretting himself into a puddle. And sitting with him is Pauly.
“Don’t you have a date?” I say to Paul as I sit down across from him. I hand my napkin immediately to Adam. He mops his brow.
“No, I don’t have a date,” Paul says.
“You have a date with Lilly, don’t you?”
“No, I thought you had a date with Lilly.”
“All right now, what’s going—”
“She’s baby-sitting,” Pauly says. “She stood you up. Get used to it.”
“I d-d-don’t have your money,” Adam blurts.
“Oh, friggin’ spoil it, why don’tcha,” Pauly maps.
I sigh. “I’m not eating tonight, am I, guys?”
“See,” Pauly says, pointing at me. “See, Oakley, there it is right there. Your constant negativity. You have no faith, no optimism. That’s why you need me.”
“You’re the reason I’m so negative. What did you do to me now?”
“You’re going to hurt my feelings any minute now, Oakley.”
“He m-m-made me do it, Oakley.”
“Where’s my money?”
Pauly smiles. Sometimes I get the feeling my primary function is to play into his hands. “It’s right in here,” he says, pointing to a canvas bag at his feet. The bag is wiggling.
Chellie King comes over to serve us. She’s a bit of a relief. Chellie King is an endlessly optimistic person, nearly positive spirited enough to offset my attitude.
“You guys ready to order?” she asks, pencil poised.
“Go away, Chellie,” I say. “I’m gonna kill somebody.”
“Why is that bag moving?” she asks.
“D-d-don’t kill me, Oakley.”
Chellie King peeks into the bag. “Ugh! Pauly, you are so freaking weird. That is a health code violation.” She grabs Pauly by the shirt and pulls him out of his chair. “You and your bag of rats get the hell out of here.”
“I’m sorry,” Adam Everly pleads. “I’m sorry, Chellie. I’m sorry, Oakley.”
Pauly is laughing.
I speak with exaggerated calm, the way you do when you’re going insane. “You spent my fifty bucks on a bag of rats?”
This only makes him laugh harder. “It’s not rats. It’s only one rat.”
Chellie King is shoving him with both hands, out the door.
Adam Everly and I follow him. The only possible explanation is morbid curiosity.
“You’re going to thank me for this eventually,” Paul says, backing away from me.
I am not going to thank him. “Ever wonder what it would feel like to have a fifty-dollar rat up your ass?”
“Been there, done that,” he says just before I snag the bag.
I am staring into it. “It is. It’s an actual rat.”
“Not just any rat,” Pauly says. “A thoroughbred.”
“Ya, Oakley,” Adam Everly says.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” Pauly explains as I stick the bag back in his hands. He scoops the little creature out and cradles it. It is not all that little actually. It is big, and white. It is fat. It has a big rear end. “He’s a racing rat.”
I turn and start walking away.
Pauly grabs me. “Listen. I knew a guy … he was cash strapped, and he had this rat. They race them on the circuit, you know, all through the six counties. Anyway, this is the famous White Rabbit.”
He’s looking at me like he’s just introduced me to Babe Ruth.
“I’ll d-d-do your laundry for free, Oakley, or, like, a year. I’m sorry….”
“Sure you’ve heard of the White Rabbit. Son of the Galloping Ghost and the Silver Fox?”
I am staring at him as hard as I can, but if anyone was ever immune to the power of staring, it’s Pauly. “Fifty bucks,” I say. “For a racing rat. For a fat racing rat.”
“Don’t be a dope, Oakley. For bloodlines like he’s got? Plus your license … he’s got papers, you know … and his colors….” Pauly holds up some tiny emerald-colored racing silks with the number thirteen on them. “It was a steal, really.”
“Good word there, Paul. How much of my money is left?”
“You owe me fifteen.”
My mouth drops open. I look to Adam Everly.
“K-k-kicked in fifteen myself.”
Pauly’s beaming as he tucks our little athlete and all his gear back into the bag. “Fine, you don’t have to pay me back. We’re all investors. We’re a syndicate.”
Morbid curiosity. Again. How much of my life has been driven by nothing more than morbid curiosity? Before I know it, we are at … the track. It is a barn about twenty-five miles north, off Route 95. There are grizzled old Yankee types scattered all over the place, putting their little investments through their paces. Rodents running wind sprints all over the place.
“The buzz of this joint,” Pauly says. “Don’t you love sports?”
“Why, Pauly? Please, why are you doing this to me?”
“Because, Oakley, because I am the only person who really cares about you. See, you were going to take that fifty bucks and do what? You were going to eat some crap food, have some boring conversation just like every conversation you try to have without me, then you’d finish up by having sex with my girlfriend and Adam Everly.”
“What?” Adam says. “What?” He is having trouble prioritizing. Should he be more freaked about all the rats all over the floor, or about having sex with me?
“But,” says Pauly, “instead you have Pauly. Thinking-about-you-all-the-time Pauly. And I know all about your disturbing lack of ambition, and I am determined not to let you rot in your own inertia. You need a catapult, something to propel you into bigger and better things.”
“Bigger and better?”
“Hey, listen. I tried to get you a racehorse, but none of the available fifty-dollar stallions seemed likely to win much. With White Rabbit, though, you can make your money back tonight, and go on to earn lots more. Stop laughing, Oakley, I’m serio
us.”
You know, he is. He is deadly serious.
“Ahh,” Adam yelps, running a quick small circle. “A damn rat just ran over my f-f-foot.”
“So what,” Pauly says. “These are all clean celebrity rats.”
“This was not a racing rat.”
“Ah, well, probably just a groupie then.”
It is getting so that I am having to work hard at remaining angry. “How often do they do this stupidity?”
“Three nights a week, and what, are you afraid this stupidity is going to cut into your going to the Laundromat to watch strangers fold their undies?”
“I suppose you may have a point in there someplace.”
“Now you’re thinking. And remember this—when his racing days are over, there’s still serious money to be made in stud fees.”
I have to laugh. This, finally, is what I am aspiring to. “Ah, my ticket to the bigs. Pimping for rats.” And the laugh feels good. The laugh alone may have been worth the fifty bucks. “Not that I’m gonna take this seriously,” I say, “but just for the laugh, how much can we win?”
“Five bucks to enter, twelve rats, winner take all. Sixty clams per race.”
“Th-th-that’s why I did it, Oakley,” Adam Everly says. “The upside … the upside, it’s really high. We could, you know, really do well … show people, show people we can do something, we can win something, we can make, like, s-s-s-something….”
Poor Adam Everly is getting all frothy. Poor Adam Everly wants to show his dad he can manage a champion rat racer.
A small portable stereo plays the silly bugle call that they do at the beginning of horse races. This is soooo stupid. I am relieved that nobody I know can see me here. Then I look over to my syndicate-mates, pep-talking White Rabbit. I’m glad no sane people I know can see me.
But as he lines up in lane three, I have butterflies in my stomach.
What the hell am I doing with butterflies in my stomach?
“I got butterflies,” Adam Everly says.
“I got flippin’ butterfuckinflies in my stomach,” Pauly says.
And why not? Why couldn’t we make something out of this? It is better than watching laundry tumble. Just because it is a patently Pauly idea doesn’t mean it can’t bear fruit.