Spin Cycle

by Sue Margolis

  “That does it,” Rachel declared, seeing her friend’s contorted face. “I’m getting you to the hospital. Braxton Hicks contractions don’t hurt like that. You, my friend, are in labor.”

  “Rachel,” Shelley cried out in exasperation. “Will you stop this? I’m not in labor. The pains are only lasting a moment or two. See, it’s gone again.” Her face broke into a grin. “Anyway,” she went on, “I categorically refuse to drop this baby until I’ve met the gorgeous Tractor. I can’t believe he’s Matt’s flatmate.”

  “Shelley, for Chrissake, what are you like? Here you are, probably in the first stages of labor, and all you can think about is going on the make.”

  “Look, for the last time, I am not in labor. These are just practice contractions—OK?”

  “Fine. If you say so,” she said.

  * * * * *

  The traffic was so bad that it took them another half hour to get to Muswell Hill. On the way, Shelley had two more “practice contractions.” She had another as they stood outside Matt’s block waiting for him to answer the intercom. Rachel said nothing this time, deciding there was no point arguing. If the pains really were nothing more than Braxton Hicks contractions, they would stop eventually. If Shelley was in real labor, she’d know soon enough.

  “It’s us,” Rachel said, once Matt had answered the intercom.

  “Hi. Tractor’s not with you by any chance, is he?”

  “No, haven’t seen him.”

  “Oh, it’s just that he should have been back here an hour ago, that’s all.”

  The buzzer rang, Shelley pushed open the door and they stepped into the lobby. Then, just as the door clicked shut behind them, they heard a voice outside.

  “Oh, come on, Demi,” the voice pleaded. “Come on, sweetheart. A few more paces, just for me.”

  “That’s Tractor,” Rachel said with a puzzled frown.

  “You sure?” Shelley said, sounding distinctly downcast. “Seems like he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Must be his blind date from last night,” Rachel said. “But I’m sure I heard him say he dumped her.”

  “Look, Demi, don’t give me a hard time. Come on, how’s about some Liquorice Allsorts?”

  The two women exchanged bewildered glances.

  Suddenly there was a clip-clopping sound.

  “Good girl, Demi. That’s a good girl.”

  Clip, clop. Clip, clop.

  “Rachel,” Shelley said, “is it just me, or do you hear hooves?”

  Shaking her head with puzzlement, Rachel opened the door.

  Tractor was heading up the path toward them. He was pulling on a rope. The rope was attached to an exceedingly moth-eaten, elderly donkey.

  “Oh my God,” Rachel muttered. “What is that?”

  “It’s a donkey,” Shelley tittered.

  “I can see it’s a donkey,” Rachel said. “I mean what’s it for? In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not a lot of call for beasts of burden in Muswell Hill.”

  Shelley ignored the remark. She was too busy eyeing Tractor’s brown velvet suit with its very fitted, very wide lapeled jacket and flared trousers.

  “God,” Shelley whispered. “You were right about his pale skin. Is he gorgeous or is he gorgeous?”

  Rachel rolled her eyes.

  A moment later Tractor and the mangy Demi were standing in front of them.

  “Hi, Tractor,” Rachel said. “Nice donkey.”

  “Yeah, Demi belongs to my aunty Pam. She runs a sanctuary in Kent. I’ve just been to collect her.”

  He began stroking the animal’s nose.

  “Must have caused a stir, a donkey on the bus.”

  “Very funny. I borrowed Van Morrison and hired a horse trailer.”

  By now he had noticed Shelley.

  “So, Rachel,” he said, smiling, “you haven’t introduced me to your friend.”

  “Oh right. Sorry. This is Shelley. She lives downstairs from me. But I still don’t fully understand. What are you doing bringing a donkey into a block of flats?”

  He ignored her. “Hi, Shelley,” he said. “I’m Dave, but my friends call me Tractor.”

  “Oh, why’s that, then?”

  “Shelley,” Rachel muttered testily, “you know why it is . . . I’ve told you.”

  Shelley stamped hard on Rachel’s foot.

  “Well,” Tractor said, unaware of the muttering and foot stamping. “David Brown—that’s my full name—is the biggest-selling make of tractor in Cornwall. I was born down there and as soon as I went to school everybody started calling me Tractor. Then when I was nine, we moved up to Liverpool, but by then all my family called me Tractor too. I guess the name just stuck. . . . So when’s the baby due?”

  “Four weeks,” Shelley simpered, running her hands over the tight purple-and-emerald striped sweater encasing her belly.

  “What do you want? A boy or a girl?”

  “Don’t mind.”

  “I love babies.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s because I used to be one.”

  Rachel stared in disbelief as Shelley burst out laughing.

  “Course, I was dead ugly when I was born. In fact, the police have still got an arrest warrant out for the stork.”

  Shelley laughed a second time.

  “So what brings you to London?” she asked through her giggles.

  “Oh, I’ve lived here off and on for years. Spent the last few months in the States though—pursuing various business interests. Now I’m back, I’m thinking about diversifying. Right now I’m in negotiation with one of the major food conglomerates. They’ve put several significant offers on the table, but I’m still considering my options.”

  “Several significant offers, my arse,” Rachel muttered.

  Shelley dug her in the ribs. “Well, if you ask me,” Shelley said, “the only really expanding market food-wise is organic produce and health foods.”

  “I dunno about that. Health foods killed my grandfather, you know.”

  “Killed him?” Shelley said in astonishment. “Good God. How?”

  “They were in the lorry that ran him over.”

  Shelley laughed so hard she started snorting.

  “Look,” Rachel butted in, “when the two of you have quite finished guffawing, can we please establish what this donkey is doing here?”

  Tractor turned to Rachel. “Didn’t Matt tell you?”

  “Er, no.”

  “Well,” he said, patting Demi’s flank, “this washing machine of his is designed for use in villages in the Third World—where there’s no electricity, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So if it can’t run on electric, then it’s got to be powered somehow, right?”

  “Dunno—s’pose.”

  “Take my word for it. It has. Well, a washing machine drum full of water’s far too heavy for a human being to turn, but not for your average beast of burden—like Demi here. She’s going to test it out.”

  “What?” Rachel gasped. “You’re actually going to take her up to the flat? What about the smell?”

  “Don’t worry, she’ll get used to it.”

  Ignoring Rachel’s gobsmacked silence, Tractor gave Demi’s rope another tug. She reared her head, let out a couple of loud braying noises and finally moved forward a couple of paces. Tractor had just maneuvered her into the doorway when a Parcel Force deliveryman trotted up to the door, carrying four shoebox-sized packages wrapped in brown paper.

  “Delivery for number forty,” he announced, hovering behind Demi. “Don’t think I can quite squeeze . . .”

  “Oh right,” Tractor said. “That’ll be for Polly, the aromatherapist who lives in the flat opposite me and Matt. Don’t worry, mate. I’ll take them.”

  Seeing Tractor had only one hand free, because the other was still holding the rope, Rachel reached across Demi and took the packages.

  “A donkey,” the Parcel Force man chortled, patting Demi’s rear. “If I’d have tho
ught, I’d have got one for the wife for Christmas. She’s always nagging me to get her some help round the house.”

  No sooner had he disappeared than the decorator arrived. Rachel recognized him because he was wearing a turban. He’d brought his two sons with him—twins, Rachel suspected—aged about twelve, also in turbans.

  “Hi, I’m Sadu Singh. I’m looking for Mr. Clapton’s flat.”

  “He lives at thirty-eight,” Rachel said, smiling at Mr. Singh. “But don’t worry, we’re all headed up there—once we can get the donkey through the door.”

  “Perhaps I can be of some assistance?” Mr. Singh said with the kind of polite smile that suggested he came across donkeys blocking doorways every day of the week.

  Rachel was about to explain the animal’s presence when Demi, braying loudly, took several paces back onto the outside path and dropped a steamy, heady payload onto the flowerbed.

  “Yuck, gross!” the twins shouted in unison.

  Mr. Singh was whispering to them to be quiet when Rachel saw Matt coming down the stairs. He trotted over to them, kissed Rachel briefly on the cheek and said hi to Shelley.

  “Ah,” he said, seeing Tractor tugging at Demi’s rope, to no avail. “I was wondering where everybody had gone. Now I get it. Look, we have to get her into the lift and upstairs to the flat or else the neighbors will see and have a fit. Mr. Singh, I know you probably think we’re completely mad, but I’ll explain everything as soon as we get upstairs.”

  With that he began pulling on Demi’s harness, while Tractor carried on tugging at the rope. They pulled as hard as they could, but Demi steadfastly refused to move.

  “Look,” Rachel said eventually, “how’s about I take the other side of the harness?”

  “OK,” Tractor said.

  She handed a parcel each to Mr. Singh and the twins. The fourth she put down on the floor. But the moment Rachel touched the donkey’s harness, it began braying louder than ever. There was still no sign whatsoever of her putting one hoof in front of another. It was only when Tractor suggested Matt and Rachel move away and he try to cajole her on his own that she ambled through the doorway and into the lobby. At least then the Singhs could come in out of the biting cold.

  “Good girl. Good girl,” Tractor smiled, holding out a palmful of Liquorice Allsorts. Demi licked them up eagerly.

  “Right. Just a few more feet, my darling. Just a few more feet.”

  Demi looked at him, farted and refused point blank to go any farther.

  Everybody was so taken up with getting Demi into the lift that no one heard old Mrs. Liebowitz, who lived on the first floor with Mr. Liebowitz, creep down the stairs to see what all the commotion was about.

  Anybody else seeing the pregnant woman, the man tugging at the donkey and the three men in turbans carrying parcels might well have assumed that being Christmas Eve, somebody in the block was holding a children’s Christmas party and that the people gathered in the lobby were the hired entertainment, who were about to perform a particularly lifelike nativity play but were having trouble convincing the most lifelike element to take part. Not Mrs. Liebowitz.

  As a consequence of her having spent most of the morning with her Catholic neighbor Mrs. O’Rourke, stuffing her face with mince pies and—more to the point—knocking back half a dozen large schooners of Harveys Bristol Cream, Mrs. Liebowitz—who never usually drank, apart from a glass or two of Israeli dessert wine at Passover—reached a different conclusion. A very different conclusion.

  As she peeked over the banister and surveyed the scene in the lobby, she gasped, let out a couple of omigods and gasped again.

  The excitement, not to mention the sudden palpitations in her chest, were too much for her to bear. She rummaged in her cardigan pocket for the spare angina pill she always kept wrapped in a piece of toilet paper. Her clumsy arthritic fingers going as fast as they could, she eventually managed to unfold the paper and place the pill under her tongue.

  Dry-mouthed and breathless, she climbed back upstairs as fast as her heart and short, varicosed legs would allow.

  “Harry, Harry,” she shrieked as she stood panting in the kitchen doorway, “come quick. You’ll never believe what’s going on downstairs in the lobby.”

  Mr. Liebowitz, who was sitting at the blue Formica kitchen table and who had, until that moment, been reading the Evening Standard and peeling a Satsuma, didn’t look up.

  “What now?” he sighed wearily, breaking off a Satsuma segment and popping it into his mouth. “What is it I won’t believe?”

  “Look, if I tell you, you won’t believe it. You have to come and see. Harry, for God’s sake put down that orange. You have to come. Please.”

  Harry Liebowitz broke off a second segment and stared at his wife over his glasses. “Ada, you look flushed. How many glasses of sherry did that Maggie O’Rourke give you?”

  “A few, but I feel fine, honestly. Please. I’m begging you. Put that orange down and come with me.”

  “You still haven’t told me what’s going on.”

  “OK, wait for it . . .” She paused for dramatic effect. “Downstairs in the lobby there’s a pregnant woman, a man pulling a donkey—I think he might be one of those nice boys from upstairs, but I couldn’t make him out properly because I forgot my glasses. And three men in turbans. Carrying gifts.”

  “Really,” he said flatly. “You’ll be telling me next, they couldn’t find room at the Holiday Inn.” He guffawed at the cleverness of his own joke. “Ada, you had too much to drink, you fell asleep in the chair and you’ve been dreaming.”

  He went back to his newspaper. “Oh, for crying out loud,” he moaned. “Look at this—Christmas Day—films: The Great Escape. Every bloody year, it’s the same. What’s the matter with these TV people? Don’t they watch television?”

  “Harry, please, you have to believe me. There’s a donkey. They’re trying to get a donkey in the lift.”

  “Ach, why would anybody put a donkey in a lift?”

  “I dunno. Maybe it can’t manage the stairs. . . . Do you want to know what I think?”

  “No.”

  “I think . . .” She paused for dramatic effect. “I think the Second Coming’s come.”

  “The Second Coming,” he repeated.

  “Yes, I’m sure of it.”

  “Fine. Whatever,” he said vacantly, running his finger down the list of BBC programs for Boxing Day. “Little and bloody Large,” he muttered to himself. “That’s the best they can come up with.”

  “Harry,” Mrs. Liebowitz implored, “I said I think it could be the Second Coming. Don’t you think that’s at least worth looking up from your paper for?”

  “But you’re saying one of them might be one of the fellas upstairs, only you’re not sure because you didn’t have your glasses? Actually, come to think of it, this could be something, couldn’t it? If you’re right, then you’ll be in the next edition of the Bible. The Gospel according to Ada Who Forgot Her Glasses. The Book of Liebowitz the Tipsy. ‘And there did cometh to the Hill that is Muswell several strangers who the people could not quite make out, for their eyes were dim and they had forgotteneth their bifocals.’ ” He paused to break off yet another Satsuma segment. “Anyway,” he continued with a shrug. “So what if it’s the Second Coming? We’re Jewish. The First Coming meant nothing to our lot. Why should the Second?”

  “But maybe that’s the whole point. Don’t you see? Maybe God was so angry that the Jews ignored the First Coming that he’s sent another one.”

  “To Vayzemere Mansions, Muswell Hill?” Mr. Liebowitz chortled. “Makes perfect sense . . . my God, then there’s Cannon and sodding Ball.”

  “Harry, please. This is no joke.”

  “Who’s laughing?”

  “Oh, please come downstairs, Harry,” Mrs. Liebowitz begged, almost in tears now.

  He let out a long, lung-evacuating sigh. “All right. All right.” Gripping the tabletop, Harry Liebowitz, who was no lightweight, heaved himself slowly off th
e chair.

  “Quick,” she cried urgently. “Quick.”

  The pair creaked down the stairs.

  Then they looked over the banister down to the lobby.

  “See, there’s nobody there,” Mr. Liebowitz declared. “I told you, it’s the drink. Ada, accept it—you fell asleep. You’ve been dreaming.”

  “For the last time, I was not asleep,” Mrs. Liebowitz insisted. “I didn’t dream it.”

  Shrugging, Harry began to trudge back up the stairs. Desperate to find something to prove to her husband she hadn’t been dreaming, Mrs. Liebowitz continued on down. When she reached the bottom, she noticed a brown paper parcel lying in the middle of the lobby. She walked over to it. Realizing it was identical to the parcels carried by the Three Wise Men, she bent down slowly, one hand in the small of her back, and picked it up. Without stopping to see if there was an address or a label to indicate what it might contain, she ripped into the package. Had she stopped to look she would have seen it was meant for Polly, the aromatherapist who lived at number forty. (What with all the clapping and cheering as they’d finally got Demi to walk across the lobby and into the lift, Rachel had forgotten to pick it up.)

  Inside she found two tiny blue glass bottles, wrapped in tissue and packed in polystyrene balls. Mrs. Liebowitz unwrapped one and then the other. Because she wasn’t wearing her glasses, she had to hold them at arm’s length to read the labels. For a moment she simply stood there openmouthed and blinking. She virtually sprinted back up the stairs.

  “Harry,” she screeched as she reached her front door, “I don’t know what to do now. The Three Wise Men, they left their frankincense and myrrh downstairs.”

  “Don’t worry,” Harry’s voice came from the toilet. “They’ll come back for it.”

  * * * * *

  Once inside, Matt led everybody, including the Singhs, who had dropped the remaining boxes of aromatherapy oils off at number forty, along the hallway toward the kitchen. Demi had stopped giving trouble and was clip-clopping along happily behind Tractor and Shelley, who were deep in conversation about babies.

  Soon everybody had piled into the tiny kitchen. The washing machine was standing in the middle, covered by a blanket. Sticking out from underneath it was an enormous, black metal handle bent into a strange configuration that ended in a large U-shape with padding around it. Next to it was a large bucket of water, and next to that, what seemed to be an old, mechanical gym treadmill. A thick green hose led from under the blanket to the sink.