Cruddy - Lynda Barry [37]
A few blocks farther down the streets were still ratty, but empty. The odd smell was very strong, and all of its parts had increased. The alluring part and the repulsing part and the cold core that seemed to make the colors around me sharpen. There was a buzzing inside of me, nerves buzzing, and I was thinking it would be good to have something to eat, it didn’t matter what it was, and I saw a laundromat and I was thinking that would be a good place to sit, get a candy bar out of the vending machine and listen to the sounds of clothes washing and drying. It would be good for the buzzing, which was making me grind my teeth.
The Laundromat door opened an inch and then stuck and I had to push very hard to get it to go wide enough to let me in. It was empty. There were gumballs in the gumball machine that were bleached two-toned from facing the sun, and a rubber tree plant next to the window that had been dead for a few years. There was the buzzing of tube lights and a higher-pitched sound coming from a clock that was broken but still trying to move, the red secondhand stuck but jerking anyway. Cigarette burns were melted into the chairs and tabletops.
I was looking at the candy bar machine and thinking how rank all of it probably was, how it was weird to see a Sir Goober candy bar next to Salvo laundry soap because the soap was mixed in with the candy. I put my money in and counted the red pull knobs carefully so I would get the Sir Goober and I pulled that knob. The Salvo package landed in the tray.
“Shit,” I said. “Fuck.” I didn’t normally swear, but I was in the mood to try it out. “Fucking piece of shit,” I said. A sharp voice said, “HEY!”
There was a person in the room. A woman who was very large sitting in a chair I swear she wasn’t sitting in before. She had a greasy pageboy haircut and smeared glasses and she was wearing a change apron. When our eyes met she pointed at the hand-lettered sign above her.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THIS ESTABLISHMENT
1. NO sitting or STANDing or LOITERING on Laundry Tables
2. NO eating of Food on Laundry TABLEs NO Wet Drinks
3. If Attendant is Absent DO NOT ask The TAstee Chicken King For Change as the Tastee Chicken King wants it known there will be NO CHANGE for LAUNDRY
4. We are NOT responsible for ANY Injury Loss or Damage
5. Pay Phone for Patrons ONLY do NOT tie up PHONE
6. NO arguments just Take It Outside
7. NO Toilet available for any Reason
8. Do NOT ask the TAstee Chicken King to use its Toilet As the Toilet of the Tastee Chicken King is Reserved For The Tastee Chicken King Only
9. NO Dying is Permitted in ANY Machine
10. No FOUL language this IS A CHRISTIAN Establishment WE CALL POLICE!!!!!
The lady watched me read all the rules. She tapped number ten significantly.
I said, “You spelled ‘dyeing’ wrong. On number nine. Unless you mean actually die in your washing machine.”
She said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Dead people in your washing machines.”
“Get the hell out of here.”
I held up the Salvo. “I wanted a Sir Goober.”
She said, “Cram it up your ass.”
I figured out where the cool smell was coming from. It was coming from a thing called The Sound. The Dentsville Sound. Along one side of Dentsville was a body of water, an inlet of salt water coming in from the ocean. There was land on both sides, so it wasn’t the ocean, but I was thinking that must be what the ocean would smell like. It had a tide like the ocean and the tide was low and I saw exposed barnacles and clusters of pinched-looking shells, deep blue-black in color. And varieties of seaweed hanging off of things and floating in the water with cigarette butts and pieces of Styrofoam and striped drinking straws. There were dark shapes moving especially deep, I couldn’t tell what they were. Possibly fish. But I was thinking of the movie The Creature, and I was thinking how now that I saw the kind