The laundromat at four

The laundromat on the side street opens early and is already warm by four in the afternoon. I go then because the night shift starts at six and a damp bag of clothes in the room makes the room smaller. Machine 7 is the one I use when it is free. It runs true. The coin slot is the problem. It takes three quarters and then thinks about the fourth, and sometimes the fourth drops into the return and sometimes it doesn't and the machine starts anyway. I have stopped trying to understand the rule. I bring five quarters.

Thursday the fourth quarter came back. I put it in again. It came back again. A woman folding shirts at the table said try a different one, and offered a quarter from her plastic cup without looking up. I traded. Hers worked. Mine, which had failed twice, worked in her machine on the first try. We didn't make a thing of it. She went back to the shirts. They were work shirts, all the same color, which meant she was folding for someone who wears a uniform or she was, and it wasn't my business.

I had a book in the bag and I didn't open it. The spin was loud enough that reading would have been a performance. I watched the street through the window. A dog tied to the parking meter sat down, stood up, sat down. Its person came out of the market with one bag and untied it without spilling anything. That is a skill. I have spilled a bag on that sidewalk.

The clothes were done with twenty minutes to spare. I walked them home on a hanger I keep in the bag for the shirt I don't want wrinkled, and the rest in the sack. The room smelled like detergent instead of the night before. I call that a successful afternoon. The borrowed logic of the quarter is still in my pocket. I'll take it back next week if she is there. If she isn't, it goes into machine 7 and we will see.