Monsters | Page 3

that he couldn't hear her
over the rumble of the cleaning drum.
"Broccoli in Velveeta sauce. I know you think that's weird but then you
think everything I do is weird. Besides, I like leftovers for breakfast.
Meat loaf, potatoes, lasagna, I don't care. When I was a kid I knew this
girl poured root beer on her corn flakes so I guess broccoli for breakfast
isn't so bad."
Henry followed a trail of coffee splatters up the placket of a silk blouse,
sponging them with wet spotter. He blotted the blouse and set it aside
for a few moments.
"What if our bodies don't wake up all at once? I mean, the eyes are
always last, right? Ears wake up before. I swear I can smell coffee
brewing even though I'm asleep. So maybe my taste buds have
insomnia or something. Say they're up at two in the morning. By
six-thirty, it's lunch time. I can't remember the last time I ate bacon and
eggs. What did you have for breakfast, Henry?"
He scraped the splotch on the lapel of a charcoal suit jacket with his
fingernail. Some kind of wax -- a candlelight dinner gone sour? The
cleaning machine buzzed and the drum creaked to a stop.
Celeste cupped a hand over her mouth. "I said, what did you have for
breakfast?"
"You talking to me?" He flushed the wax away with the steam gun.
"Cheerios." He tossed the jacket into a basket filled with darks. "With
milk." There were enough clothes in it to make a new load. "Jerry," he

called. "Yo, Jerry!"
"He's pretending he can't hear you." Celeste giggled. "Probably trying
to get into Maggie's pants."
That was his squawk with Jerry. When something needed doing, Jerry
was either at the front counter flirting with the cashier or in the
bathroom. Henry ducked around the coat hanging beside the spotting
bench, grabbed an empty basket and wheeled it to the cleaning machine.
As he gathered the warm clothes from the drum he breathed in harsh
perchloroethylene fumes. He wheeled the basket over to the empty rail
next to the presses. Perk nauseated some people, but Henry liked the
smell. It filled his head like Stairway To Heaven.
"How do you clean a syrup stain, anyway?" said Celeste.
"Huh?" He started pulling the clothes onto hangers and setting them on
the rail. "You want my job, is that it?"
"Your job?" She buttoned a white spread-collar shirt onto the susie and
stepped on the compressed air pedal. With a hiss, steam ballooned the
shirt away from the form and jetted from the neck and sleeves. "Don't
be paranoid, Henry -- you're the best. Just trying for a little friendly
chit-chat, is all." She pulled at her hair net. "Hey, I'm a slob. Syrup's an
accident I'll probably have someday."
He grunted and hung the last of the load on the rail. "Sponge it with
water then use wet spotter with a couple drops of vinegar. When it's
loose, you blot."
"Now was that so hard? Shit, how come getting you to say anything is
like moving a refrigerator?" She wiped her forehead. Her work smock,
already limp with moisture, clung to her child's body. Pressing shirts on
the susie was hot, dreary work. At least on his side, every garment was
different. Henry didn't blame her for being bored; he just didn't want to
entertain her.
Henry was pitching darks into the machine when Kaplan elbowed the

back door open. He was carrying a bag filled with takeout from Rudy's.
"Gonna rain." Louis Kaplan was a pink little man who wore a
short-sleeved shirt and a paisley tie that some customer had neglected
to pick up -- probably on purpose. He set the bag on a shelf next to a
jug of acetone. "What're you doing?" he said to Henry. Without waiting
for an answer, he turned to Celeste. "What's he doing?"
"Getting ready to run a load?" she said.
"I can see that. But I'm not paying him to do the idiot work. Where's
Jerry?"
"I didn't know it was my turn to watch him." She pulled a damp shirt
from the blue mesh laundry bag beside her and snapped it out. Kaplan
scuttled toward the front of the store.
"If that's what being boss does to you, I'm sure as hell glad it's him in
charge and not me." She draped the shirt over the susie. "Well, I'm
ready for a break."
While Henry finished emptying the basket into the drum, she pulled an
assortment of styrofoam coffee cups and cardboard sandwich boxes
from the bag and sorted through them. "Want yours now?"
"Not yet." He didn't want her near him. Touching the bus driver hadn't
satisfied the thing inside him. Maybe she hadn't felt enough