Is This Tomorrow A Novel by Caroline Leavitt

Author:Caroline Leavitt
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2013-04-14T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

It was Saturday, and Lewis was at Suds over on State Street, finishing up his laundry. He had called Mick earlier to see if he wanted to grab a pizza afterward, but Mick had to take his daughter to get a Halloween costume, and when Lewis called John, John told him that his wife wanted him to go look at carpet for the den. “We’ll catch you at Pins Palace Friday,” John said, and Lewis pretended it was okay. Lewis didn’t even really like bowling all that much. He just liked hanging out with them, having something to do and someone to do it with.

Suds was crowded with housewives lugging plastic baskets and kids hanging on to their slacks, and the only other guys there were students, which wasn’t such a bad thing, because they usually stuffed all their bright colors and whites together in one load, making things move a little more quickly. The Beatles boomed into the place, though you couldn’t really hear much over the noise. Plastic seats lined the walls and if you weren’t folding or washing, you were waiting for the next available machine, which Lewis knew from experience could take awhile. In the corner, the matron who gave you change was smoking, tapping the ashes on the floor. Lewis had positioned himself to be next in line for the washer over in the corner, sitting at a chair catty-corner to it, but he hadn’t realized that the woman commandeering it was going to do two separate loads plus a hand-wash. When he sighed audibly, she glared at him. “Hey, I was here first,” she told him.

By the time he was done with his wash, the dryer situation didn’t look much better. Already, a fight had broken out because a girl had taken out someone else’s dry clothes, piling them on the folding table, so she could stuff in her wet ones. At the far end, a dryer stopped with a whoosh, and a woman in a blue hat swarmed toward it. Lewis sat, resigned to a long wait, telling himself he had no plans anyway, and wishing he had brought a book, when a woman ran into Suds, all pineapple-blond corkscrews and dark eyes. She was out of breath, but Lewis couldn’t take his eyes off her. Every woman he knew now had hair as long and straight as Joan Baez’s or big teased bouffants, but here she was with all those ringlets. She opened the door to the dryer and even from where he was sitting, he could see the clothes inside were still damp.

“I just have to run it another cycle,” she apologized to the waiting woman. She dug in her jeans. “I know I have some change,” she said, shifting her hips.

“You don’t have change, then this dryer’s available, wet stuff or not,” the other woman snapped.

“Just wait. Please,” the blonde said. She patted down her back pockets. “I don’t know where my wallet is. Maybe it’s in the car.”

“I’ve been waiting here an hour,” the other woman said.

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