Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask | Page 3

the last two years, at least. I wonder if she complains to her friends?"
"'There's this guy at work, this regular guy? He's such a creep! Always bothering me for refills...' Like that, you mean, right?"
"She doesn't sound like that at *all* ," I said, laughing. In my best girl-voice, soft and gushy: "'There's this incredibly interesting guy with these cool glasses? I'm just waiting for him to jump my bones.' More like that."
Mary laughed, shaking her long blonde hair, and made a correction to my drawing.
* * *
A couple of days later I was doing some laundry and trying to finish off a Balzac novel. Exams were coming up, and one or two of the books I'd skipped in each course turned out to be the ones that the prof suddenly realized were *utterly seminal* works. Luckily, I had gotten three-quarters of the way through Balzac before I was borne away by the biology avalanche two months ago, so I didn't mind the pressure to finish it.
I felt a kinship with Balzac. You gotta admire a guy who dies of a caffeine overdose. Shaking and babbling into the next world.
I was sitting there thinking that, then thinking about getting my next fix, then thinking about where I would get it, then thinking about Cass, when she passed by the window. She was walking along briskly, eyes on the snow, a crazy lumpy hat on her head and a grin on her face. It was magical, almost as if my thinking about her had brought her into being.
I walked to the door and opened it, thinking that I'd call out to her. She was already too far for anything but an outright yell to be audible, so I stopped. I could see her brown hat bobbing amidst the other sidewalkers. I could see the plume of icy smoke from her, rising. I imagined it coming out from between her lips.
* * *
"I saw you today, passing the laundry on College," I said, immediately feeling creepy as I did so. *I saw you* is too too close to *I've been watching you* .
"You mean the one near Euclid?" Her face was suddenly grave. "I saw the weirdest thing there once. You want a coffee and a water, right?"
I nodded, waiting for the weirdest thing.
She left, her eyes distant in memory recall.
Sok was pretty empty -- it was a weekday afternoon. The old guy that was usually fixed outside had slipped his leash. There was a family who looked like tourists to me, a teenage girl and a toddler and a mom and dad. Why they were touring in winter was beyond me.
Cass came back with my order, and was about to leave.
"What's so scary about Miracle Wash?" I asked, snapping a sugar packet.
"It's not scary. It's odd. I went by there one time, late night. It was dark inside, closed, but I guess some movement caught my eye. Then I noticed this guy sitting on a chair -- "
"A chair *made of human bones* ?!" I suggested, eyes wide.
Cass smirked and ignored me. "He was sitting there, reading a magazine in the little light that was coming in from the street. And he was barefoot."
"What?"
"Yeah, he was sitting with his feet curled up beside him, so I saw them clearly. Bare."
"He was the owner, probably. Asian guy, right?"
"Yeah, but don't you think that's weird? Bare feet in a laundromat? Those places are dirty -- they're where people bring their dirt, for Christ's sake."
The look on her face appealed to me, asking me to confirm her uneasiness. I could not oblige. "But it's also where people go for cleanliness," I said. "It's an environment rife with paradox." She laughed and I was a happy boy.
She sat down at the table next to me, and rolled her feet in circles. "It's amazing what you see at night, walking around the city. Stuff you never would have seen if you had just gone to bed. It's like stolen time. I wish I could do it more often." Someone came in and she looked up, but he walked to the counter and said hi to the cook.
I was about to say *why don't you* when a parade of rape statistics marched merrily through my brain. "It's dangerous," I mumbled lamely.
She shook her head. "That's not it."
I waited for why.
"There's... another reason."
I kept my face impassive. She waited a second or two and then stood and walked around her tables. I was a little disappointed. Maybe if I had arched my eyebrow in playful curiosity, I would have gotten an answer. Maybe she wanted to tell me, but needed that extra prompt.
Then again, it might have been better to keep it casual. I didn't want to get involved in her life too quickly, after all.
Which, of course,