SHANE, THE LAUNDRY man, someone I barely knew and yet who seemed to be in my mind more than I cared to admit. The way he looked at me that night was different, cryptic, distinctive, like he knew what I was and yet he looked beyond the skin I was cast. He saw me as something more than a piece of ass he could pay a couple of bills to take. It was the way he talked to Crystal that night and the words seemed to offer freedom from the woman she had to become when selling her body. His warm manner was as foreign to me as having sex to express my love for someone.
I don’t know why I thought searching him out was a good idea. Here I was heading to the laundromat, my dirty clothes in hand, my heart on my sleeve as I clung to a stupid idea that he was going to be there.
I pulled into the parking garage, a block and a half away from the Stop and Wash. Usually, there were several open parking spaces but for some reason the garage was packed. People poured from their cars and hustled into uppity shops and trendy restaurants. They come here because they’re promised happy hour specials and moisturizing treatments with exotic oils; the upper block of Van Ness had always pulsed with a douchy hipster vibe. It was what lurked on the next street over and the back alleys behind the fa?ade that tainted the veins of the haves with the have-nots. The count was endless, the clean and unpolluted souls who found the magic doorway into the impure world of prostitution.
To most people a full parking garage was an inconvenience, too many people trying to fit into the square footage of an already bulging city block. The only thing I saw was lost opportunity. Maybe that was the problem with hanging out a couple blocks from where I worked. All I saw was dollar signs strolling across the melting fantasy of possibilities. New dates, Johns, clients, tricks, that meant new energy, new money and ultimately more referrals.
I pulled my car into a shitty parking spot on the third floor of the garage, grabbed my purse, made sure I had a couple rolls of quarters and hoisted the laundry sack over my shoulder. By the time I had made it down to the laundromat a block and a half away, my arms felt like they were going to fall off.
I pushed open the glass door with my ass before I tried to muscle the hefty sack of dirty clothes off my shoulder and into a rolling laundry cart. I thought it was going to be a good idea, but when I dropped my bag into the cart I tripped and fell into it. It wasn’t my most glamorous of moments.
The laundry cart went sailing toward the heavy duty washing machines with me and all my dirty laundry. I just closed my eyes and hoped that I wouldn’t break any bones when I collided with the ginormous steel washing machine across the room. When I came to an abrupt stop I discovered what had become the buffer between me and my pain.
“Whoa, are you okay?” Shane asked. His voice hung with a slight Harry Connick Jr. twang that sent chills down my spine.
All the blood in my body rushed to my cheeks before it drained and collected in splotches across my neck. What in the hell am I going to say? Holy shit, it’s Shane; the man who carried every moment of escape in my head since I saw him in the alley.
“Ahh, yeah, me and rogue laundry carts are nothing new.”
He chuckled at my stupid answer and the jumbled attempt I made to free myself from the cart.
“Hang on there. Here, let me help you,” he said, his voice was low and growly. His long swift fingers tangled in between the metal bars of the cart as he maneuvered around to me. “It isn’t every day I get to save a clumsy beautiful woman from rogue laundry carts.”
I shot him a hastened smirk before he dragged his big sturdy hand across my shoulder and down my exposed skin to the bend of my elbow. All the hair that normally lay flat against my flesh, pricked to attention. He held the cart steady as I pushed myself out of the basket and stood on my own. His hand hovered close just in case I fell. When I freed myself without incident his expression broke from lip biting concern to a relaxed reassuring smile.
“Well, that was embarrassing. Do you think anyone saw me?”
We both looked around the laundromat and all but a small little boy with brown hair seemed to be minding their own business. Owned by their smart phones and tattered romance paperbacks, most were absorbed into managing their social media.
“Oh, absolutely,” he hummed. “See that sweet older lady by the big dryer over there?” he asked as he pointed to a silver-haired woman that had to be pushing into her late seventies.
I nodded.
“She videotaped the whole thing on her iPhone. Trust me, you and your rogue laundry cart will be plastered all over YouTube and Facebook before you know it.” His hazel eyes bursting with rusty flecks twinkled as they caught up to his smile.
“Oh, it better not! You’ll have to confiscate her phone for me,” I snapped as I socked him in the arm.