People watching

Laundry night.

Alone for a change. A recent craving for my well-thumbed Bradburys spurred my choice of nightly companion. Funny how some books just scream to be read at certain times. Bradbury is all about summer. Summers glorious laziness, ebbing into chilly autumnal anxiety. Good reading for a winter night. Something Wicked This Way Comes. What wonderful language. What beautiful evokative prose.

But I keep getting distracted by the people in the Laundromat. Busy night tonight.

Mostly watching the girl in blue. Then, others too. So many stories. So many lives.

She's small, youngish looking, plain. But with a striking figure. I suppose all in all she's quite average, but the proportions are unusual in my world these days. Not especially busty, nor wide in the hips, but that wasp waist that accentuates both at once. The royal bright blue sweater, set against the jet black, hip-hugging, dress pants, make quite an impression. Especially when the two separate as she bends into a low dryer; creamy pinkness with a sliver of cleft beginning to peek out. She's very fastidious, using half a dozen washers for three hampers of clothes; and now, the same number of dryers (that only have three settings), not overloading any of them. Very fastidious, folding and primping each item as she pulls it out of the dryer, a few items at at time, giving each one special attention. I keep looking back at her plain oval face. Delicate features surrounded by a very full mane of chestnut hair, clipped neatly at her shoulders, parted sharply at one side. Now back to her long, fastidious, think, very pink, fingers. Such attention to each fold of her items, looking for imperfections. For a man of my size, with a similarly sized wife, I'm always struck by how tiny most women's clothing appears. She hold up a pair of small sweatpants, and I wonder, "children?", but then, holding them to her waist, I see that they're the perfect size. Very nice shoes for laundry night. Perhaps coming from work. Nice sensible, dressy, shiny shoes, not too much, or maybe not any heel. Black, or maybe navy; it's hard to tell because of the bell bottom flare of her dress pants, gently sweep the floor, obscuring their true height. Done with the many t-shirts, each folded and stacked by color. Now the unmentionables. Boxer briefs for him, full black nylon for her. Now socks, lots of socks, mostly white sport socks, a few fluffy pink ones. Some delicate colored stripes, or flowery pink ones.Some argyle; I didn't know anybody wore argyle socks anymore.

The place is busy tonight. But blissfully without the rampaging spawn that usually run unchecked by parental control. The few children here tonight are all held loosely on one hip by gossiping hispanic mothers, in a loose circle over by the vending machines. The woman closing the place has her husband with her, hovering around, small round hispanic features with a shaggy haircut that seems to burst out at the edges. Another man, native looking, with LONG black hair, first loose, then bound under a small watch cap. It takes a third glance to notice the missing hand guiding his cart along to the dryers. That hair reminds me of the natives in the old westerns.

Ah well. My times up. Time for me to spend the rest of the evening folding, letting others watch me and wonder about the fat man with all the shirts.