The Man on the Washing Machine

by Susan Cox

  “Collie!” I spluttered. “You can’t!”

  He snickered. “I met her comin’ out of 450 Sutter the other day. That temple to the medical profession—full of fashionable quacks. I took her to the Redwood Room for a drink afterward—Perrier for two, twenty-one dollars, honey—and she confessed and swore me to secrecy.” He twinkled at me.

  “She’ll kill you if she finds out you’ve told anyone.”

  “I haven’t told ‘anyone.’ I’ve told you. Do you seriously think she’ll get violent? All that black leather—” He shivered happily. “No one tells me things they expect to keep quiet anyway. Ask Derek. Although he did make a point of askin’ me again to keep quiet about the hair thing. He’ll probably never share anythin’ ever again. Besides, you know you love it; you need someone like me to keep you up-to-date on the important things.” He yawned suddenly.

  I was stricken. “You fainted this morning. I shouldn’t have kept you out drinking, and then dragged you out of bed.”

  “The danger in being hemophobic—as opposed, always, to homophobic—is that people don’t often arrange soft surfaces for me to keel over on; the kimonos were a nice touch.” He yawned again and shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m going to be a wreck tomorrow. What time is it anyway?”

  “It’s past one. Go home, Nat. I’m okay. Truly.” He ignored me and began to unpack another of my cabinets. I took some of the dishes and began piling them in the cabinet he indicated.

  “Come on, Nat. Enough is enough. I’m fine.”

  Still with his back to me, he said in a completely different tone: “Can I ask you somethin’?”

  “Anything.”

  “Do you think Nicole is having an affair with Derek?” His voice cracked and I looked at his back, horrified and disbelieving.

  “What! No, I don’t, Nat. Derek is head over heels for you.”

  He turned around. “They go way back to art school, and she was with Derek for the umpteenth time when I got home tonight and I lost it, Theo. I bitch-slapped her and threw her out of the flat. What the hell was I thinkin’?” He groaned and put his face in his hands. “Then Derek and I had this gigantic fight.”

  “What did Derek say?”

  “He said I was out of my mind, that he loved me, then he put me to bed in the guest room with an ice pack and a sleepin’ pill. In the guest room, Theo!”

  “Honey, I saw him today when you passed out in the kimonos. Believe me, the man loves you. Was the guest room his idea?”

  Nat looked a little shamefaced. “I told him I wanted to sleep there. But he could have talked me out of it! You don’t think he and Nicole…”

  “Definitely, definitely not,” I said firmly. “Besides—”

  Nat raised a hand. “I know what you’re going to say, but Derek is bi—he’s told me about a couple of other women.”

  “Even so. Definitely, definitely not.”

  “Okay then. I guess I owe both of them an apology,” he said gloomily. “That’s goin’ to go well.” He ran fresh water onto the sponge and pulled the sweater away from his chest to look at it with dismay. “If I soak it in cold water, do you think it will keep the stain from settin’?”

  I smiled. “I bet it will. Thanks for coming, Nat. There’s nothing wrong with being a little in love with your best friend, is there?”

  “Nope. I love you, too. And I must, because I’m going to sleep here and I’ll have to share that damn mattress with you and Lucy.”

  “No. You’re not staying.”

  “I am.”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “I know that look. I’m not winnin’ this one, am I?” He didn’t sound happy, but the last thing I wanted was to make too much of a minor incident. Or to rely too much on anyone, even Nat.

  He insisted on washing up the mugs, then going around with me to all the windows and doors, and checking the closets and the bathrooms, to make sure the flat was empty of uninvited visitors. He did it before I asked, without making me feel ridiculous for wanting him to do it. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and another hug before he reluctantly started to leave.

  I said: “Seriously, Nat. There’s no chance that Derek is cheating on you with anyone.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, okay. I trust your judgment, Theo. Thanks, sweetie.”

  Lucy and I went to bed, but between the coffee and the excitement, I didn’t sleep much. I decided as dawn broke that the man on the washing machine had done me a favor. For the past year I’d wondered if I’d have the courage to put into practice what the ex-policeman had taught me. Now I knew and I’d won a small victory.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Nicole didn’t come in to work the next morning and Davie showed up with a split lip and a black eye, courtesy of his father. As always, he begged me not to interfere.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” he insisted as I clumsily bathed his mouth in warm water and peroxide and held a cold water compress gently on his eye. “He doesn’t mean it.”

  Fury made my voice shake. “Davie, it isn’t right.”

  “It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt. He needs me,” he said anxiously. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? He’ll be pissed if CPS gets in his face again.”

  The first time Davie showed up with bruises, I flew at Mr. Rillera like a ballistic missile. It was like trying to reason with Jell-O. Hungover and remorseful, he sat with his head in his hands while my rage broke over him like a storm. When I gritted my teeth and called the police, they compared Mr. Rillera’s 130 pounds against Davie’s bulk and checked me off as an overprotective busybody. Child Protective Services did an investigation, but since Davie and his father both denied the abuse they did nothing.

  Davie’s mother opted out by hanging herself when Davie was six years old. A shelter like the one Turlough has opened might have saved the whole family.

  I spent the time between customers fielding calls from friends who grilled me for more details than Nat had given them about my break-in, and who apparently wanted to be prepared in case the man on my washing machine broke into their places and started tap-dancing on their microwave ovens or something.

  Sabina came in to pick up some body lotion and listened to my story without comment. Her hair was its usual tempestuous riot of red ringlets but her expression was sulky. Her black jeans were even tighter than usual, and I wondered how she breathed in them. I glanced furtively at her collagen-enhanced lips, but they looked the same to me.

  “No work today?” I asked her as she wandered around the store running bubble bath beads through her fingers like gold pieces.

  “I was offered an overnight to London. I turned it down. I thought of going to the health club for a workout.”

  “I could use a session in a nice hot whirlpool myself,” I said, easing what felt like a permanent neck ache.

  “Oh, I’ve given that up. Bad for the complexion,” she said. Then she added more warmly: “It’s been a while since we did anything together.”

  “Too long,” I said, surprised that it was true.

  “How about, oh, lunch or something? My schedule’s pretty flexible. I’m thinking of selling the bike and going into some other line of work. I’m tired of racing around the city breathing in other people’s exhaust and spending half my time on airplanes.”

  “How about brunch next Sunday? The shop is closed and … Sabina? Honey, what’s wrong?” I added when she was silent.

  She sniffed and said awkwardly: “Brunch on Sunday would be good. I’m nervous about your prowler, I guess. And Tim Callahan falling off the building. What’s the third thing?”

  “Third thing?”

  “You know—bad luck comes in threes.”

  I didn’t want to think about the possibilities, so I didn’t reply. “Tell your grandparents about the prowler, okay?” I said instead.

  “I’ve bought a beautiful new knife,” she said abruptly. Sabina collected artisan-made knives. I found them disturbing, but I recognized that some were genuinely works of art. “I’ll bring it to show
you.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” I lied.

  I was putting her lotion, at her request, into a recycled paper bag when she said: “You know what, Theo?”

  “What?”

  “He sounds sort of familiar. The suit, and him being bald and everything, and looking like a bookkeeper or something.”

  “Insurance salesman, but you’ve got the idea,” I said. “You think you’ve seen him before?”

  “I caught a glimpse of some guy, you know? And I rolled over and went back to sleep because I thought I was dreaming. I mean it didn’t make sense, right? A guy in a suit, with a gym bag—”

  “A gym bag? What kind of a gym bag?”

  “A kind of nylon barrel bag. Like you might carry workout clothes in. It was last month, remember when I was in bed with that bug? It was sort of early in the evening and I woke up and looked out the window and saw this guy walking around on the roof a few houses down. I fell back asleep so I thought I was dreaming or feverish or something.”

  “A few houses down. Near my place?”

  “It could have been,” she said slowly.

  “What color was the bag?”

  “Red, I think. Or orange. Like I said, I didn’t think much of it. Weird, huh?”

  So weird, I didn’t want to think about it much either. After she left, I made myself a cup of tea and sat at my desk in the office while Davie blundered about in the shop. My head was already aching, so it wasn’t long before I was making a hash of the month’s work schedule for the fifth time. Nicole’s nonappearances of late have added to the complexity of the task; I have to pretend that she’s coming in, while still having Haruto or Davie available in case she doesn’t. I vigorously applied my shrinking eraser to the schedule yet again.

  An overcast sky delivered on the promise it had been making all morning and rain began drumming on the window. Davie, complete with his black eye and split lip, a brand-new lightning bolt shaved into his short bristly hair, and an amethyst stud in his nose, pushed through the piles of boxes into our crack-in-the-wall office and stood in the doorway.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Did that asshole hurt you?”

  Damn. He looked more worried than a kid his age should have to be. I wish I’d explained things to him before all those telephone calls from my neighbors. “No, honey. He got into the flat when I wasn’t there and he ran away when I got home. Don’t worry.”

  His face cleared and he gave me a shy smile. He seems to feel I need protecting, which is one of life’s little ironies. I tapped my papers into a neat pile. “I’m nearly finished,” I lied. “Everything okay out front?”

  “Can I help with the customers today?” He didn’t ask very often, and I loved him for wanting to help somehow.

  “Sure, if you’d like to,” I said. He effortlessly picked up a forty-pound carton of soap dishes and carried it out to unpack.

  I heard a customer come in and started to get up, but I heard Davie say: “May I help you?” in his politest voice, and I watched him through the two-way mirror. The customer’s eyes flickered between Davie’s lightning bolt—not to mention the split lip and black eye—and the lace and satin shower caps she was asking about. I went back to my scheduling, scowling at the calendar of classes Davie had given me at the start of the semester so his time with us wouldn’t conflict. I was glad he was with me. The man on the washing machine had given me the creeps and revitalized some long-buried anxieties. I penciled in Davie’s name with a query mark for Monday morning, too.

  I heard the spring bell on the front door and looked out in time to see the customer leaving with an Aromas bag tucked under her arm.

  “Good for you, Davie,” I said.

  He was playing it cool, but he was delighted. “She bought three shower caps.”

  “Three! I’ll have to put you on commission,” I said. He grinned and went back to unpacking the soap dishes. Kidding aside, I was impressed. The shower caps cost nineteen dollars each.

  After that successful sale, the rain came down even harder. Haruto was on the schedule that morning, but he telephoned at about ten-thirty to tell me he was having a crisis with a design for a bamboo fence and did I mind if he came in later, because business was bound to be slow there at the store, and the rain released his gamma rays (or endorphins or some damn thing), which helped him to think, and if he didn’t get this fence designed his client was going to have cat fits. The storm had pulled in some giant waves at Ocean Beach, so I figured he was headed there with his surfboard. I didn’t mind as it happened, apart from the shower caps, business was nonexistent, but I grumbled anyway.

  I eventually gave up on the schedule. I put out a bucket of folding umbrellas I was trying to get rid of at a bargain price, then moved on to dusting shelves and rearranging the displays of by-the-ounce potpourri. One of them is called Spring Rain, which was depressingly apt. Several dripping people came in during the morning and dawdled around hoping the rain would stop. Two of them bought umbrellas. At about twelve-thirty, I handed Davie two twenties and told him what to get me for lunch. “Get yourself something, too,” I said as an afterthought. His shower caps sale deserved a little celebration.

  “We gonna have lunch together?” he said eagerly. He usually headed out to the McDonald’s a few blocks away, in spite of my best efforts.

  “Sure. Get whatever you’d like and we’ll have lunch together.” I didn’t feel like eating alone anyway.

  A short while later he lumbered in the front door dripping wet, carefully shielding several Styrofoam containers inside his jacket. We sat in the office—me with an ear cocked for the spring bell, and one eye on the two-way mirror—and ate our quiche and drank our sodas, and listened to the rain. The quiche wasn’t bad but the salad was slightly limp and the rain was flooding down the shop window. If it keeps up, I thought, I’ll be able to count the day’s profit on one hand. It was days like this that I missed my life as a freelance photographer. The light outside was interesting; passersby on the sidewalk, backlit by a ray of sunshine coming from somewhere, had turned into silhouettes and I felt the urge to pick up a camera again.

  “You know what?” Davie said happily. “This is fun.”

  I opened my mouth to snort, and then looked at him. His eye was blooming into a deep pansy purple. He was perched on a carton of shampoo jugs like an enormous elf on an undersized mushroom, stabbing at his plate with his plastic fork, stuffing great green bouquets of salad into his mouth and chewing vigorously. Huge gulps of Coke followed each mouthful. I handed him my half-eaten quiche.

  “Thanks,” he said, and wolfed it down. This was only a snack; he’d eat three more times before the day was over. Basically everything I paid him went straight into his stomach.

  And if no one came into the store all day I wouldn’t have to be diplomatic with shoplifters, or be stern with Jehovah’s Witnesses, or apologize for running out of pink orchid soaps and having only blue orchid soaps left. For the first time since I’d come in that morning, I relaxed. I smiled at him. He was right. It was kind of fun.

  “So what do you think about the man who broke into my apartment?” I asked him.

  He swallowed his latest mouthful. He looked thoughtful and frowned. It made him look shifty, which is unfortunate because he’s anything but.

  “Maybe he was taking something into your apartment, not taking something out,” he said, and he laughed at his own joke. Davie laughs like an asthmatic: “Heh, heh, heh, heh.” He stuffed another forkful of salad into his mouth.

  The first customer of the afternoon came in as the rain stopped. It must be a good omen, I decided as Davie trudged out to serve him.

  He was wearing a yellow rain hat, which caught my eye in the two-way mirror and made me smile. He bought more than eighty dollars’ worth of stuff, too. “… and two tins of Gibney talc number seven,” I heard him say.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No. How much?” He was gruff, but I was in a mood not to
mind. Eighty-seven dollars and he could be as gruff as he liked. Davie was doing well. “Is Nicole here?” the customer said as he counted out the money.

  “Nicole’s not here today,” Davie said.

  Until then I hadn’t looked at him closely, except for his dorky hat and his eyes when he first came in. I always look customers in the eye and taught Davie to do the same. It makes customers feel you’re warm and sincere, but I do it because troublemakers give themselves away with their eyes. It’s hard to explain, but now I can usually tell. I hadn’t yet learned that skill when the guy tried to rob me last year.

  But this fellow had calm, mud-colored eyes. I moved to the office doorway, ready to give Davie a well-deserved pat on the back, when my jaw dropped with an audible click as the customer left the store. He was taking off his rain hat and rolling it to put in his pocket. There was something about his back, and the way his bald head looked as he walked away from me. The last time I’d seen this man he was stomping away from me across my neighbor’s roof.

  I started mouthing air like a landed fish, but he’d pulled open the door and left the store before I could say anything.

  “Davie! That’s the man on my washing machine—watch the store! Call the police! I’ll be right back!” And I vaulted the counter and ran out. I heard something crash and break as the door slammed behind me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even spare a thought to what I’d do if I caught up with him.

  The sidewalk was still glossy from the morning’s rain, but there were a few young mothers barging around with strollers, and office workers hugging go-cups of cappuccino from Helga’s coffee shop. I looked both ways and caught a glimpse of him passing the hardware store at the corner. I could see his bald head and thick neck above his black raincoat like a new mushroom popping out of a plant pot.

  But, now I had him, figuratively speaking, I didn’t know what to do. Accost him? Follow him? Our local beat cop wasn’t in sight. He was probably flirting with the girls at the flower shop.