![]() ![]() Then he slammed the phone down and growled, “There he is.” He shrugged apologetically, then put the receiver back to his ear and turned toward the window facing Division. He took my keys off the…no! Don’t put me on…hello? Goddammit!” The trucker smacked the phone against the wall. “I’m on Division Street, at a pay phone….Division….D-i-v…Listen, this asshole’s out there right now, he’s fucked-up, and he’s got my truck. “Yeah, I wanna report a stolen vehicle,” he said. I was ready to go by the time he got through to the police. The trucker waved her off: “Naaah, it’s not that kind of emergency.” “Anyways,” he said, “I gotta call the cops. They were on the bar.” She shook her head again. I have a few beers, I start gettin’ a little tired, so I put my head down–just resting, OK? Asshole takes my truck keys.” I’m at the bar ‘cross the street havin’ a beer, right? Me and this guy are talkin’–this, that, so on. She shook her head and asked, “What’s wrong with you?” When the trucker saw her, he threw his arms up toward the ceiling as if his prayers had been answered. The bathroom door opened and out came the manager of the laundromat. “Goddammit!” he bellowed, and looked around the room. He stomped up to the change machine, but it wouldn’t take his wrinkled dollar. The door banged shut behind her and bounced wide open again as an older guy in a blue flannel shirt barged in. She winked as she dropped the change into her purse. She looked around and saw me watching her. She eyed the slot suspiciously, then poked in a finger and took out the money. ![]() It was so like him.īefore hanging up, the lady told her daughter, “I love you….I LOVE YOU….OK, bye….BYE.” She put the phone in the cradle, and some change clinked into the coin return. Nobody had heard from him all day, but from what I could tell, nobody was worried about it. By the time I got to my pants, I’d figured out she was talking to her daughter, whose boyfriend was supposed to have picked up the lady from a friend’s house an hour ago. ![]() It went on like this for all of my underwear and most of my socks. “I’m at a laundry-mat….A LAUNDRY-mat…on West Division…WEST Division….D-i-v…V…V, as in W, X, Y…V as in ‘vase.’…VASE….What you put flowers in?” A lady was screaming into one of the pay phones. There was all this noise: dryers whirring, washers rattling, Johnny Mathis crackling from the piped-in AM radio. I got up to fold my clothes and realized I had a headache. He shoved the lighter in his pocket and went up to an Asian woman measuring detergent: “Hey, se–ora, you need some pens? Two bucks.” There were still five or six quarters in my pocket, but I just sat there making my poker face. The guy bit his lip and stared at me, trying to decide if I was lying.
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