The Laundromat

I was walking through the vacant parking lot of a dark office building. Dry powdered snow blew in swirls across the pavement, and little pellets of ice spit in the air. The clouds hung low and black, and the only light was from a thin break far off along the edge of the horizon behind me. I walked over to my car parked in the first row along the curb, the only car parked in the lot, and I saw that there was something piled in a loose heap on the top of the trunk. As I got closer, I saw that it was a thick cotton blanket. I knew this blanket. It kept showing up in my life. Someone kept leaving it behind for me in different places, wanting me to take it. They left it on tables and chairs with a note bearing my name attached to it. They left it on my desk at work. I found it at the bottom of gift boxes. I found it on beds next to my coat as I was leaving parties.

And now here it was, left on the trunk of my car. By leaving it here, they were insisting that I take it. This was a final gesture of exasperation. They had dumped it there on the trunk as if to say that they were done with it, that it was my blanket now and I could do what I wanted with it as long as it was out of their sight. I grabbed a handful of it and pulled an end of it up to look at it. It was heavy and damp and growing stiff from the cold. It was colored in patterns of orange and red and blue, but it had grown ratty and old and all the colors had faded and blended into a dull pink.

I was standing there still holding the edge of this blanket, wrinkling my nose at it, when a married couple came jogging across the parking lot. As they passed by, I called out to them, "I guess someone really wants me to have this blanket." As I said this, the woman broke off from her husband and she came jogging over to me. She grabbed two corners of the blanket and she held it up to look at it. She said that it looked like a fine blanket. But I complained that it was wet and cold and it had been left outside picking up who knows what sorts of germs. I couldn't imagine using it on my bed at home.

The woman assured me that that wouldn't be a problem. She rolled the blanket up and tucked it under her arm, and I followed her as she rounded the corner of the office building. When we came around, the light flicked on in one of the windows on the first floor. I saw that it was the light of a storefront window. It was the only window that was lit in the whole dark building. There were letters on the glass that said "Laundromat", and the shadows of the letters were elongated and written across the frozen ground. There was a neon sign saying that they were open 24 hours. The place seemed to have just appeared there for our benefit.

We went inside, and I dug in my pockets for some loose change, and we washed the blanket in one of the washing machines and dried it one of the dryers. There was a coffee pot brewing with free coffee for the customers. I drank a few cups while I waited, and I thumbed through some of the old magazines that were left scattered on the tables beside the chairs in the waiting area. When the blanket was done drying, the woman folded it neatly on the counter and she presented it to me with a bright smile. "See, it's just fine," she told me. The blanket was warm and clean and it smelled like fabric softener. I held it close and nodded. Outside, beyond the storefront window, the snow was beginning to fall in thicker, wetter flakes.