The laundromat
I'm in a laundromat. When I was 9 years old, I always went to a laundromat - I lived in an old apartment, how else was I supposed to wash my clothes? It was an occasion nevertheless; we went, (usually in the evening, when the sky was light enough so that you could see in the distance if you squinted, but dark so that people's faces were obscured save for the orange glow on half of their skin - or at least that's how I remember it) loading into the car the plastic white and blue baskets filled with white socks turned brown on the soles and sweaters camouflaged in thin dog hairs. The smell is the same. The smell of lavender fabric softener that was strangely far from lavender-smelling, lemon-scented floor cleaner, and a faint tinny smell, like sterling silver or metal machinery. I think of the different ways different people make decisions. Some are calculated, some logical, some prepare and deliberate so intensely that the actual deciding of the matter is no longer importan