Original fiction · Chapter 1 of 2
The Notice Inside the Dryer
The eviction notice was tucked inside the dryer my aunt had promised to fix before she died.
I found it while fishing for a quarter a customer had dropped through the lint screen. The paper was folded into a square, with our address showing on the outside and the deadline marked in blue ink. We had eleven days.
For six weeks I'd been getting up at five to open the laundromat before my shift at the hospital. I'd replaced a cracked window, learned how to clear a coin jam with a plastic spoon, and started putting a second chair by the change machine for people who couldn't stand through a whole wash. In my head, these were the difficult things. The lease belonged in a folder with the water bill and the fire inspection certificate. I hadn't imagined there was anything in it that could put us out.
I called my cousin Rob. He was Aunt June's son and the only other person who still had keys to the office.
“You saw the notice?” he said.
“How long have you known?”
“Since Tuesday.” It was Sunday. “I was going to see if I could sort it out.”
He said the property manager had stopped taking payments from June's business account while the landlord reviewed the commercial lease. Rob had been sending money from his own account in the meantime. He couldn't tell me where he'd sent it. He was driving, he said. He'd text me later.
At six, a woman named Alma came in carrying a plastic bag with one towel in it. She washed the same towel every week and paid for the smallest machine, even when I told her she could put it in with our cleaning rags.
“Is the back room open?” she asked.
I said we'd never had a back room. We had a bathroom, an office and a narrow closet where June kept the broom.
Alma looked past me toward a row of dryers. “She never showed you?”
The last machine stood half an inch farther out than the others. I had been meaning to push it back. Behind it, where I expected a water pipe, there was a door painted the same pale yellow as the wall. Alma took a brass key off her keyring.
“You can open it,” she said. “I don't need to be first anymore.”
Inside were two shelves and a table just wide enough for a sewing machine. A handwritten schedule hung from a nail. I recognized the names of people who did laundry every week, but the hours ran past closing. On the bottom shelf, envelopes were arranged by month. Most of them were addressed to the property owner.
“People came here after work to mend uniforms,” Alma said. “Your aunt kept the irons on until ten. Some could pay a little, so they did.”
I opened the latest envelope. Inside was a receipt for our full rent, printed on the property owner's letterhead. It was dated three days before the eviction notice. The receipt said “paid by check” and included an account reference.
I sent Rob a picture. His reply came while I was still holding the envelope.
Don't give the office that receipt.
A second message arrived.
They think June was the one who wrote that check.
