WILLY AND THE LAUNDROMAT first published in ADAM Magazine
short story
by
Patrick Breheny
Willy was a hermit. A young one, but a hermit---as much as he could be a hermit living within the city limits of Los Angeles. Introverted and introspective, he read books and looked at TV and brought food home to prepare and eat. To pay for that food, and for his room rent , he worked at the casual labor offices downtown around Main and Los Angeles Streets, the job brokerages that paid minimum wage and were called the “ slave market” by their skid row pay-by-day workers. Being young, Willy would usually get out any morning he showed up, but he still as much as possible avoided people. People were the cause of all the problems in the world, and were simply best not engaged with any more than necessary.
He’d left St. Louis to get away from people. He could have hitchhiked to save money, but people were funny when they picked up hitchhikers---they wanted to talk, ask all kinds of questions, like where are you going, what’s your name, why do you hitchhike, stuff like that. Willy took a Greyhound bus, sat in the back, and didn’t talk to anybody all the way to LA. What a disappointment when he got there to discover that besides the sunshine and beaches and McArthur Park with the smog crazed ducks that tried to bite strollers on the footpath around their lake on the ass (so sometimes animals could be a problem too) there were also people.
The laundry had to be done. It had to be done a week ago, and it wasn’t any cleaner. He had stopped wearing underwear three days ago, so it had to be done today. It was 6:30 AM on a weekday, and he reasoned that now was a good time, the laundromat opened at 6:00, and there wouldn’t likely be anyone there this early. He could do and get home, and probably not have to meet anybody.
The laundromat was on 6th Street in the McArthur Park area, on the perimeter of L.A.’s shabby downtown, in an indifferent dingy strip mall with parking lot, though Willy walked in. In the parking lot there were two cars, one an unwashed cream colored Thunderbird, not too new, and more than a bit beat up. The other a dark green security service sedan. At the door, asleep in a chair, was a security guard with a sky blue uniform that had a navy blue shoulder patch reading MINI MALL ROVING PATROL inside the same circular green logo that appeared on the car door. Willy figured he’d staked this place out as a good spot for a 6:00 AM nap. He was a medium sized guy with a bushy brown moustache, baggy unpressed uniform, and quite a pouch of gut around his waist. He also had a holster belt and gun, and was snoring.
There was a young woman in slacks and a bulky knit sweater there, a substantial blonde who was probably pretty when she took her curlers out and put lipstick on. She sat on a peeling brown bench across from the row of washers, and her legs were extended into the aisle. She too was asleep Willy started to step over her feet, and as he did, her eyes opened, apparently sensing another presence.
“Excuse me,” she said, smiled and pulled her feet in.”I didn’t expect anybody else here this early.”
Willy managed a smile back and walked to the last machines. He put his clothes in a washer and sat on the end of the bench away from the girl. He opened the paperback book he’d brought.
“Excuse me,” she said again, walking towards him. “Do you have a light?”
He fumbled with a lighter, and she held his hands with hers as she to lit her cigarette. “Oh”, she said, noticing the cover of his book, “Do you like Steinbeck?” She picked the book up to look at it.
Willy said, “He’s okay, what I’ve read of him.”
“ I don’t read much, but I had to read The Grapes of Wrath in high school.”
That was the last book Willy read. This one was East of Eden, chosen because of the James Dean movie, and he now knew the movie had only covered one generation, from a novel that had been about three.
She continued, ” The Grapes Of Wrath is a great novel. I think its lost its timeliness, but I still like it”
Willy was a wonderful actor. He could act gracious, he could be contrite, he could get angry. And for all these characteristics, he had references outside of himself for imitating emotions. A technique actor, that was Willy. He knew about “method” acting. That was relying on your own emotions. Willy was the opposite. To Willy, Willy didn’t really exist. He relied on observing what other people did when they seemed to have emotions. He was sort of a Frankenstein, the parts of those other people sewn together. And this young woman’s forwardness was summoning his “charm and scholar” character.
“Don’t you think its timely today?” he asked. “Its the story of all displaced people.”
“Well, yes” she said, “But I mean to the specific circumstances of the story”
“Displaced Americans still exist.”
She said “I know!”, he thought sounding a little annoyed that he’d dispute her. “Do you happen to know what time it is?”
“It must be going on seven.”
“That wash takes so long. I want to dry it before I go to work.”
Her laundry was on spin cycle, and she stopped the washer and transferred her clothes to a dryer. When she sat again, he asked her where she worked.
“Uh, State Life,” she said. [i]”I’m a secretary.
"Where?"
"Right around here... on Wishire Boulevard."
"Isn't State Life on Olympic?" He didn't know that. He was just testing because she seemed to have hesitated.
"There probably is one.They're all over, but all of the main office buildings and insurance companies are on Wilshire."
"Your office is."
"Right. What about you? What do you do?"
“I’m an actor. Just nothing happening right now.".
“I swear, L.A.! What kind of actor?”
“I can be anything you want”, he said, and laughed.
She laughed with him, and began taking the curlers from her hair.
“Excuse me, but if I don’t do it now I’ll be late for work.”
She took out all the curlers, and began to comb. As she combed, her hair took on a golden cast under the sunlight from the window. She was a pretty girl indeed.
“You’re up early,” she said, applying lipstick now “I’d sleep a little later if I wasn’t working today.”
“I hate wasting time”. He didn’t know what to say, how to talk to women. He wanted to go back to his book. Problem was, it was on the other side of her.
He pointed across her lap. “Mind if I get my book back?”
“Oh, sure,” she said, laughing. “Sorry.”
She was placing the book in his hand, but stopped suddenly. She took his wrist in her right hand, then dropped the book in her lap, and cupped his hand in both of hers.
“Has anybody ever read you?”
“Huh?” Like he was a book.
“You have a very interesting palm. May I? I just do it as a hobby, but people are always amazed at the things I tell them. They can’t believe it, its so accurate.”
“You want to read my palm?”
“I can’t fortell the future, but I can tell you about yourself, and your career and love life patterns.”
Career? And… ”My love life patterns?”
“Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead.”
“You can stop me as we go along.”
She began probing his hand with her fingers, as though sifting for a ring in the sand.
“You’ve journeyed on a twisting road,” she said. “There have been many barricades along the way. One of them very early. Perhaps your parents wanted something for you that you didn’t want. Did you ever go against your parents wishes?”
“Only when I was born.”
“You were unwanted?”
“Something like that. They never had any plans for me. I’ve always done whatever I wanted.”
“Well, that’s what it is then. You have a strong line of determination. I thought it was stubbornness, but its determination.”
“What’s your name?”
“Janet, but let me finish the reading Willy, okay?”
“Willy? How did you know...?"
”It’s on your laundry bag.”
“Oh yeah”. Stencilled. From that hospital he was in for a while.
“There is one big contradiction in your emotional life. On one hand, you have this great tolerance, this tremendous capacity to love and forgive. But you can also be blindly unreasoning. While you show this compassion at times, at other times you surrender to anger. Love and rage are very strong. You have enormous potentials in both directions.”
She had become very involved in the reading, pressed Willy’s hand tightly to her lap, and now shrieked,
“Oh! Oh, my God! You’re a perfect match. Willy, our lines are exactly the same.”
Willy heard a gruff voice behind him, to his left. “You molesting this woman?”
He glanced over his shoulder. It was the security guard, looking intimidating now that he was standing over him.
“Lay off, Jug”, Jane--- Janet---- said “He’s the real thing I’ve always been looking for. I love him, and you can’t shake him down anyway. He's just street. He wouldn’t have anything.”
Jug said, “We’ll see about that. Empty your pockets.”
Willy could see his own shadow on the floor, formed through the window to his right, morning sunlight angling into the shop, surprising him with the shape of his wavy hair, his head. HIS head. It was a revelation. He existed. I cast a shodow, therefore I am.
He.turned to face Jug, said “Fuck you”, and he wasn’t acting.
Jug seemed a little surprised at how this was playing out, his victim's obstinance. His tone was reasonable, as though he too was on Willy's side, counseling him, helping him see how life is.
“You want prison? Attempted rape? I come in here, you’re attacking this woman, and I arrest you.”
Explaining the situation to Willy, but... “Let him be, Jug”
That he really seemed not to be counting on as a variable.His manner grew meaner than before, more menacing, and he roared "SHUT UP."
Addressing Willy again he calmed himself, but the edge was back in what seemed would be his last civil petition, his ability to perform a role not usually part of his repertoire expended. He asked, with a smile that was quickly turning nasty "Okay? "
Like it had better be this time.
Willy neither responded nor complied. Seeming out of patience with both of them, nice guy shit never works, Jug carefully enunciated each syllable in case Willy was a foreigner or hard of hearing or just didn't comprehend that he was being robbed, and there were certain things expected of people in such a situation: “Show me your green, pal.”
Willy had very little green, maybe a couple of dollars and the change for the dryers, and when you don’t have much of something, you’re just not too eager to give any up. Again he did nothing, said nothing..
Jug, exasperated beyond all limits at this unanticipated and unacceptable lack of cooperation, said, to his credit still attempting to maintan a civil negotiation, show he cared about Willy's sensitivities, "Its nothing personal, you understand. You're probably a nice guy. I like you. But I need your fuckin' money, so just GIVE IT TO ME."
But Willy didn't want to give it to him. How not to?
"Fuck this," Jug said."You're under arrest . Turn around so I can cuff you."
And then empty my pockets, Willy thought.
Sandra (what was it?) said, with bare sarcasm and contempt now "So at least you get a collar? Maybe they'll make you a hero. Give you a promotion."
Wily wasn't listening to either of them. He just heard words---words falling down, words alone, not holding each other up with a context---words, not just sounds, but unconnected.
And Jug, in a voice quiet with the conviction of feminine capriciousness, even while delivering the promise of a later retalliation, "Broad."
Words.
The perimiters of the room were changing like shapes in an amusement park fun house mirror, the floor tilted at a 45 degree angle, the walls slanting in from the ceiling.
But Willy heard all of Jug's next sentences when he saw the handcuffs in his hand.
"I said turn around. Put up or turn around."
Willy didn’t know where it came from so unexpectedly, maybe a little of that supressed rage she’d been going on about, and maybe that she seemed to be on his side was helping, and that he had seen his shadow, and that one of it's hands were occupied, but before he realized it, he was out of the chair, had turned, then kicked and punched wildly at the blue uniform. To even Willy's surprise, It fell, the chairs scattering. He certainly didn't want it to get back up, and stepped forward to kick it some more, make sure it couldn’t, but remembered then that it had a gun.
The thing called Jug was trying to unsnap the holster. The snap popped open, and his hand went to the handle of the gun. Willy's fortune teller pushed by him screaming “NO” and threw herself on top of Jug.
Jug had the gun out of the holster now, and seemed to be trying to release the safety, as she wrestled with him for control. Jug apparently succeeded in getting the safety off, because the gun exploded with a deafening roar, accompanied almost immediately after by the pungent odor of burned powder and gasses.
Jan (Janet? ) got up. Willy could see that Jug would probably never again be doing that.
The room was taking on its normal deminsions. He said with awe---real awe, no "method", no "technique": “Holy shit! You shot him.”
"He shot himself. I’m free now. I saw it in your palm. I've always been waiting for you."
“What was going on?”
“I was his bait, his decoy. He owned me. When I saw your hand, I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. Let’s get out of here.”
“Don’t you think we should wait for the cops?"
“What for?”
Willy pointed with his chin toward the motionless glump on the floor.
“Well---him!”
“Who cares about him? Gun in his own hand. He did it himself.”
“Not exactly.”
“You really want the cops? He wanted to shoot you. It was self defense, I was defending you, but he was…authority. A lot of explaining to do”
He was authority? That car! “He’s a real security guard?”
“They don’t pay them much. He felt he had to supplement. The job was real but it was a front. For a lot of things.“
"What if he's still alive?"
"All the more reason not to be here. He'll have his version."
“So---just go?”
“It looks like a suicide to me. It will to them. But tell you what, Mr. Sensitivity. We'll stop and make an annoymous ambulance call a couple of blocks from here, okay? Just in case. "
But---why not wait? Willy didn’t like talking to anybody, but he didn’t do anything. He was getting robbed. She was a witness. He was hers. She’d defended him. Of course, she was a former accomplice too, who’d switched sides. She could be seen as the aggressor, Jug as the victim. If he was alive, he'd tell it that way. Things were a little blurry here.
Willy was thinking, whatever they decided to do, it was time to stop the washers and dryers and get their clothes. Not only (if they left) would leaving them behind implicate them, he had nothing clean to wear. They both hastily shoved his wet clothes from a washer and her damp clothes from a dryer into bags. Willy took one more glance at Jug, who was neither breathing nor had moved even a millimeter. Deader than the washers and dryers, he thought. They could still do things.
She was packed up and waiting in the doorway, then went out through it when she saw him coming. He and his shadow, elongated now across the parking lot, followed. Not only did it seem he'd just acquired a girlfriend, but she had a car, that unwashed cream Thunderbird. Unless she was at that very moment in the act of stealing it. No, she had the keys.
Nothing comes of nothing. All this because he went out today to do the laundry, had his palm read, and met a security guard extortionist who then shot himself. That was their story and he was sticking to it. He slid into the passenger seat and closed the door.
The woman who'd been looking for him all her life asked, “Which way?”
So, as strong willed and presumptive as she was, in that she hadn't even ASKED him if she was his girlfriend, she was at this point deferring a decision to him.
His rented room was to the right, toward downtown, first Alvarado Street before downtown, Alvarado on the east peremiter of wino wildlife refuge McArthur Park, Alvarado with the pawnshops, seedy bars, cheap hotels, and he hadn't even payed the rent for today. What did he need? Had his book, had his clothes. Toothbrush replaceable. Maybe she had one. Anything else?
Willy pointed the other way. West, She gave it the gas. He didn’t know how much she had, sure they might run out, they probably would, but at least they were moving now. Toward Hollywood. Toward Laurel Canyon, Mulholland, Malibu, the blue Pacific. To the edge of the American continent. California, here we come. Look out West Coast. Willy and... Jan? ---Jane?---Janet!...are on the way. Duck!
He only had one question as she squealed the Thunderbird's tires on a 6th Street curve throwing him against the door, needed to be sure, get it right at last:
"I know you told me, but---how do you say your name exactly?"
Copyright, 1965, all rights reserved, Patrick Breheny
(If you thought the tale above was preposterous, you probably just haven't live in L.A.)