The Man on the Washing Machine

by Susan Cox

  Derek snorted. “Those meetings make me nervous. Besides, everyone else goes; they don’t need me. Nat’s going. Right, big guy?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.” Nat was telling the literal truth. He thoroughly enjoyed them.

  “Tonight’s meeting is making me nervous, too,” I said. “I know Haruto is planning to complain about dogs in the compost pile again—”

  “That boy needs a hobby,” Nat interjected.

  “—he’s got a hobby, that’s the trouble,” I said.

  “And everyone wonders why I’m not going!” Derek said. “Compost. Ugh.”

  “Apparently it’s black gold. I also heard this morning that the group home is already moving into number twenty-three—”

  A small crash came from the floor at Derek’s feet. “Damn!” Derek said. “I’m sorry, Theo.” There was a small gash in his hand from the broken mirror and blood welled in it. “It broke in my hands,” he said. “Hell—”

  “Cover it, quick!” I said hastily to Derek, who tried to hide his bleeding hand, but not quickly enough.

  “Urgh,” Nat said. I looked over at him anxiously. His eyes rolled back in his head in slow-motion and he dropped like a stone into the rack of kimonos.

  “Nat!” Derek yelped.

  “Cover the blood!”

  Derek patted Nat urgently on the cheek. Nat moaned faintly.

  “Great,” Derek said as he wrapped the paper towels I handed him around his damaged hand. “Maybe you should call an ambulance to have us both hauled away.” There was an edge of fright in his voice.

  I tried to reassure him, but I understood. All six feet of Nat in a dead faint was something I’d never forgotten since the first time I saw it happen. “All he needs is some rest. The kimonos broke his fall.” I looked at the tangled mess. “Take him home. He’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure? He told me about the blood thing, but he never said it was so bad he fainted—he doesn’t need a doctor or anything?” He tried to wrap his undamaged arm around Nat’s shoulders as Nat slowly sat up and gave a convincing, if sheepish, portrait of recovery. I patched up Derek’s hand in the office, out of Nat’s sight, and they left holding hands. It all reminded me how long it had been since someone cared when I was hurting.

  It was midday by then, and fog was starting to fly overhead and block out the sun. Davie came in to work and we were busy all day, but I still had time to wonder whether broken mirrors meant bad luck for seven years—and for which one of us?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The neighborhood association meeting was controlled chaos. No, check that; it was just chaos.

  We meet monthly at the president’s home, which is decorated with some of her family antiques—carved tables; silk rugs and rosewood chairs with no cushions; and souvenirs of her husband’s African travels—Masai warrior spears, vicious-looking clubs carved to look like fists, and odd little stools. It’s difficult to find somewhere comfortable to sit. If it weren’t Fabian Gardens tradition to meet in the home of the president, I think we’d all welcome a change.

  After the meetings, the secretary—me this year—sends notes to people telling them when they’ve been assigned in absentia to a committee. For that reason alone, I’ve always felt, the meetings are pretty well attended. It’s easier to fight off the nominations in person. Anyone who lives or works in Fabian Gardens is a de facto member of the association, so we’re an interesting mix of well-to-do property owners, professional people, merchants, and the waifs and strays who tend to inhabit the tiny studio apartments.

  I arrived as we were called to order, so I had no chance to talk to anyone before things got lively. Nat was perched on an African milking stool in the bay window with his arms clasped around one knee, watching everyone with an engaged and interested expression. He winked at me and I rolled my eyes. Part of the meeting’s entertainment value was the bare-knuckle jockeying between the president and her vice president. Both women were forced to make polite noises to each other in public while bitterly complaining later, and in deepest confidence, to their cronies who of course spread it all over the place. Nat loved every moment of every meeting and forwarded the latest e-mails to me with vulgar comments appended.

  The first item on the agenda was Sunday’s Open Garden, our annual show for the neighborhood. People bring their mothers in from Benicia and Concord to see the little townie miracle as if they didn’t have gardens out in the country. I allowed myself to hope that it would occupy us all evening.

  Someone meekly proposed that we delay the Open Garden this year because of Tim Callahan’s death.

  “Why?” Kurt snapped. “He had nothing to do with us.”

  Maybe doctors develop a shell to protect themselves from emotional involvement, but Kurt was overdoing it. Several people agreed with him and two or three others lined up on the side of a postponement. They were voted down and we determined that the Open Garden would go ahead. However, in a sop to our finer feelings, we decided to print the information about Tim’s funeral in our e-newsletter so anyone who wanted to could go to pay their respects. Haruto, resident compost fanatic, made a hot-tempered remark about dogs digging up the compost pile. A dog-owning resident took exception and they nearly came to blows. Haruto and his champions threw out random remarks about leash laws, while the pet owners muttered darkly about Nazis.

  I swallowed hard and told them that the women’s group home was a fait accompli. Suddenly the factions united—Fabian Gardens was Poland and the shelter was a Panzer Division. I’m surprised a single soul in the room had any vocal cords left at the end of an exhausting and ultimately pointless shouting match. Our vice president tossed her stiff blond ponytail and said we should hire her cousin the attorney to put the fear of God into the owner of the building and the shelter people. Somebody mentioned that the Catholic Church was backing the shelter. “Screw the Catholic Church,” she snarled. “We need to do something; if it isn’t already too late,” she added with a toothy smile. Her cousin charged $600 an hour, she said, but he was worth every penny.

  It was clear from the immediate lack of eye contact around the room that, while no one wanted to admit to putting their personal finances ahead of the association’s best interests, no one was rushing to pick up that particular torch, either. In the pause that followed, Kurt suddenly said: “I have some records stored in that attic and the police have been preventing me from retrieving them.”

  I wondered what kind of records he could be storing in an unsecured attic. Not medical records, surely? Everyone supported his complaint with enormous relief. “I’ve got stuff in the building, too,” someone said. “No one told me the place was leased for this shelter. The property manager said my mother’s furniture would be safe.”

  The grumbling and yelling went on until it sounded as if everyone at Fabian Gardens had junk stored at number twenty-three.

  I told them the police had freed up the attic and they had to move their belongings by Saturday. Then I started a sign-up sheet for Inspector Lichlyter. That gave them all something else to get steamed up about. I felt as if I were drowning. I looked over at Nat. His lips were twitching and he avoided catching my eye.

  I opened a note addressed to the association which I hadn’t had time to read earlier. As secretary I get a lot of random mail and it’s usually uncontroversial. I hoped it would give everyone a breather and calm them down a little. Thank God I glanced at it first. It was from the director of the new group home. At first it sounded harmless enough. It said polite things about hoping to be a credit to the neighborhood he’d heard so much about. I read the signature and realized for the first time that my nonsmoker, no-pets, works-for-a-nonprofit, moving-in-today, old friend-of-a-friend of Nicole’s, new tenant Bramwell Turlough was also the shelter director. Telling them I’d allowed the Trojan horse within the gates would have been like dropping an ice cube into boiling oil—it would have frothed up and covered me before I could catch a breath. I cravenly stuffed his note back in its envelope, grabbed my
jacket, and fled as soon as the meeting broke up.

  If I’d gone straight home, three indignant people would have overtaken me before I got there, so I avoided my usual route across the darkened garden and took the street route, ducking into Coconut Harry’s to give the meeting attendees time to drift away. Harry’s is the kind of neighborhood bar strangers aren’t inclined to walk into but we all use it pretty much as our personal clubhouse. It has red Christmas tree lights hanging from the ceiling and a general air of having been last painted in 1947. The strong smell of very old cigarette smoke and beer is tinged with the faint aroma of disinfectant. No one is permitted to smoke in San Francisco bars nowadays, but that doesn’t stop a few of Harry’s older patrons. I sat at the bar, nodded to Joe the bartender, and ordered a gin and tonic. Each booth has a bamboo-and-rattan sign with the name of a tropical island. I sipped my drink and mindlessly read them backward in the gold-veined mirror behind the bar, and accidentally caught the eye of the man in Haiti. What a choice, when there was Bora Bora, not to mention Fiji. I looked away, but not without noticing powerful shoulders in a black leather jacket, a rough profile, and a gold earring. In San Francisco, the earring and the leather could mean literally anything—Hell’s Angel; gay; leather fetishist; or I suppose even gay Hell’s Angel leather fetishist. I wasn’t in the mood to translate. I stared up at the reflection of the Christmas lights in the gold-veined mirror but I could still see him. He looked me over in a too-explicit way as he picked up his glass and brought it over to the bar. I straightened my back and projected mental images of third-degree black belts.

  “Ms. Bogart?”

  I gave Joe a filthy look when he delivered the gin and tonic, assuming he’d spilled the beans. He gave me a wide-eyed shrug, wiped a damp cloth across the bar, and leaned within earshot, pretending to read the Sporting Green.

  Without any encouragement, the stranger went on: “My name is Bramwell Turlough.” He slid onto the stool next to mine. Great. My new tenant. Director of the shelter. My personal Trojan horse.

  I took a mouthful of my gin and tonic. “How did you know who I was?”

  “Someone told me tall, red hair, standoffish expression.”

  Score one for the guy in the black leather jacket. “How do you do, Mr. Turlough,” I said primly. “I hope the studio is satisfactory.”

  “I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “I flew in this morning from D.C. and went straight to the group home.”

  There was a long pause, which surprised me a little. My limited experience of social worker types is a never-ending stream of self-righteous, activist chatter. He drank his beer and I took another uncomfortable sip of my drink, feeling extremely standoffish.

  The bar mirror reflected us both surrounded by the eerie glow of the Christmas lights. I looked tired, which I was. And I needed a haircut or something. He had a small scar over one eyebrow that looked like a built-in frown. He lifted his head suddenly and saw me checking him out. My reflection looked disconcerted. I’ve always been an easy blusher.

  “We want to be a good neighbor, Ms. Bogart. How did the letter go over?”

  “We didn’t discuss it fully.” No need to expose our skirmishes to a stranger.

  “Maybe I could come to one of your meetings to field questions. Not that there’s anything you all can do; our first resident moved in this morning.”

  I turned to him. “I heard.”

  “And three more this afternoon with their kids. They’re having fun helping to finish the painting—” He paused. “You heard about the accident?”

  I nodded and somehow didn’t say that I had seen Tim fall.

  He shook his head. “At least the kids are having a blast. The women, not so much. One of them grabbed her ten-year-old and ran when her husband wanted to sell him for sex. Another is fresh out of a drug rehab program and wants to stay clean so her kids won’t have to go back to selling drugs for their uncle. You can understand I don’t much care if the people around here are uncomfortable.” He drained his glass and signaled to Joe for another beer. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t inadequate.

  “Thanks for renting me the apartment,” he said, a little less forcefully.

  “It’s okay,” I said. I could take credit for it, even if I had no idea at the time that’s what I was doing. Besides, I’d told all my neighbors I was in favor of the group home; maybe they’d see my blunder as putting my money where my mouth was.

  “Considering how your neighbors probably feel, it was a brave thing to do. Can I buy you a drink?” I shook my head. “By the way—” He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a wallet, and slid a ten-dollar bill toward Joe.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s some boxes and furniture the property managers say belongs to people renting storage space. No one’s paid anything for some time, and the stuff’s in the way, so—”

  “They’ve been told to get it out by Saturday.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “There is one thing,” I said, and he paused. “I don’t know much about how to run a women’s shelter, but aren’t the locations usually secret?”

  “It’s more like a transitional group home, although we inevitably have women there who need a safe haven. The guy who rented us the building thought he was helping us by enlisting the locals on our side. You can see how well that idea worked out. First our cover’s blown, then our painter falls out a window. What was the name of the captain of the Titanic?” He rubbed one hand over his jaw. “I guess I shouldn’t make light of it. I ought to get in touch with the painter’s family. Do you know him?”

  “He didn’t have any family,” I said. “I can ask everyone to keep the group home secret.”

  He shook his head once in a decided negative. “It never works. There’s always someone who can’t resist mentioning it at work or over dinner. We have a couple of weeks at most to find a more secure location for our most critical cases. Some of these women are in fear for their lives. They’re all from other cities in California, but homicidal husbands can be very determined.”

  I felt myself go very still. It’s odd how often things come up that remind me of that fact.

  He looked a question at me, and when I didn’t respond he finished the rest of his beer in one swallow. I was saved from further conversation by Nat’s appearance. He was still on a high from the entertainment value of the association meeting.

  “Figured I’d find you here,” he said with a smile. He reached out a hand and untucked the hair from behind one of my ears and fluffed it up gently. “That’s better. Have another to keep me company.”

  “I need one,” I said truthfully, tucking the hair back behind my ear.

  Turlough watched the byplay and I was about to introduce the two men when he said good night to me and left. Nat raised one eyebrow at me. “Good-lookin’ guy,” he remarked.

  “You think so?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “Short, don’t you think?”

  “Not especially, you giraffe. He’s my height. Well-built,” he added appreciatively. “The guy seemed interested. Hair’s a real turn-on for straight men; would it kill you to let it loose? You know him?”

  “Interested? No, he’s my new tenant. I found out tonight he’s the one putting together the group home or whatever it is in number twenty-three.”

  “Theo, no!” Nat hooted with laughter.

  “All right for you,” I said rudely. “But they’re going to skin me. Ah, what am I worried about? By the time they finish with that property manager—”

  When we left Coconut Harry’s nearly an hour later I was the worse for three gin and tonics on an empty stomach. Determinedly not hearing the slight roaring in my head, I said good-bye to Nat and headed in the direction of Mr. Choy’s grocery store on the corner. By this time it was nearly eleven. Mr. Choy was reading his newspaper with his glasses propped on his forehead.

  “Ah? Good evening. Can I help you?” he said to me, the same as always.


  “Milk-Bones,” I said, already halfway there.

  “Aisle three, next to baby formula,” Mr. Choy said automatically, and returned to his paper. He announces the locations because nothing in the store makes any sense. He occasionally mentions his fortune-teller, and I think this fortune-teller is the marketing whiz who tells him to put tins of sardines and laundry detergent on the same shelf. His cash desk faces away from the door because the fortune-teller told him it was the most auspicious direction when he opened the store eighteen years ago. He sits on a stool surrounded by hanging displays of lightbulbs and huge tins of canned peaches. The rest of the canned fruit is next to the toilet paper and the Hamburger Helper. In among the baby formula, brass polish, and Pepto-Bismol he has Chinese patent medicines with dragons and peach blossoms on the packets. The patent medicines reminded me of Derek’s mission to grow his hair. I went to the counter with my box of Milk-Bones. “Do you know much about traditional Chinese medicine, Mr. Choy?”

  He put down his paper and reached for the cash register. “My late father used to deal in Chinese medicines from his pharmacy in Chinatown. Four employees. Very successful. I studied, but some things I didn’t want to sell, so I go into Milk-Bone business instead,” he said as he handed me my change.

  “Sexual things?” I hazarded, otherwise at a loss to explain his embarrassment.

  “Sometimes,” he said, and wouldn’t be pressed further, all of which heightened my interest in Chinese medicine.

  I went home to take Lucy out for her bedtime walk in the garden. I wasn’t sure why, but for the first time in a very long time, I was sorry to be going home alone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The street was shiny with mist, the streetlights haloed. The foghorns on the bridge moaned softly and an occasional car swished past but otherwise everything was quiet. I shifted the box of dog biscuits under my arm and shivered a little inside my jacket as I automatically put a little more effort into my stride coming up the hill. The city is like a gigantic, undulating staircase, following the hills to the ocean in one direction and San Francisco Bay in the other. I sometimes wonder what it will be like to be old, pulling a wheeled shopping basket behind me up these slopes. By the time they’re seventy, the old ladies around here must have legs like marathon runners.