Super Rich
Tonight, while dropping off a dozen slightly soiled and well-wrinkled shirts along with over ten pounds of loose laundry to Super Rich, down there on the northwest corner, three obese women confined to wheelchairs obstructed his entry. A body’s length to the left of the entrance they triangulated such that six gigantic knees sat pressed together, connected at their front outside edges. Slowly yet briefly they looked up, without interest, as he passed.
Quickly, efficiently, in no discernible order, they emptied the dozen or so sacks of laundry that slumped around them with loosened drawstrings.
The Korean with her shoulder to the window dispatched a pair of gray slacks with two deft swipes and added it to the stack that grew on the ledge beside her.
A brunette with oily bangs and drumstick forearms pushed together the wrists of a maroon and green self-knit collared sweater and then halved it with her chin before dropping it limp to the pile at her feet.
Laughing, her eyes darting up then down the street and lighting--occasionally--for a moment--on the stacks of her companions, the broad black woman forced a series of white undershirts into rectangles with great, dark sausage fingers.
From this angle it was difificult to tell: was it obesity alone? Or some other--unobservable-- injury to those well-nourished legs that lay gathered there between them? They strained against their armrests, hands groping, as the clothes level dipped in the bags beside them.
They folded on.
Inside, the tiny Filipino woman with the ponytail and well-fitted jeans waited and eyed his approach. She was the owner and operator. She knew that blue mesh bag, which was, impossibly, the only bag quite like itself. Memorable especially because of the semen splashed socks that spotted the bag’s interior like mines. Her eyes were tired. Bespoke long pain. Behind her, bent over a stool at the waist, her spectacled, multiply braceleted, lighter-skinned son was reading Glamour as he fingered the pencil behind his ear.
He looked up and watched Leon’s entrance with what looked, to a casual observer, like too much interest.
Quickly, efficiently, in no discernible order, they emptied the dozen or so sacks of laundry that slumped around them with loosened drawstrings.
The Korean with her shoulder to the window dispatched a pair of gray slacks with two deft swipes and added it to the stack that grew on the ledge beside her.
A brunette with oily bangs and drumstick forearms pushed together the wrists of a maroon and green self-knit collared sweater and then halved it with her chin before dropping it limp to the pile at her feet.
Laughing, her eyes darting up then down the street and lighting--occasionally--for a moment--on the stacks of her companions, the broad black woman forced a series of white undershirts into rectangles with great, dark sausage fingers.
From this angle it was difificult to tell: was it obesity alone? Or some other--unobservable-- injury to those well-nourished legs that lay gathered there between them? They strained against their armrests, hands groping, as the clothes level dipped in the bags beside them.
They folded on.
Inside, the tiny Filipino woman with the ponytail and well-fitted jeans waited and eyed his approach. She was the owner and operator. She knew that blue mesh bag, which was, impossibly, the only bag quite like itself. Memorable especially because of the semen splashed socks that spotted the bag’s interior like mines. Her eyes were tired. Bespoke long pain. Behind her, bent over a stool at the waist, her spectacled, multiply braceleted, lighter-skinned son was reading Glamour as he fingered the pencil behind his ear.
He looked up and watched Leon’s entrance with what looked, to a casual observer, like too much interest.
posted by Michael Deuser at 7:57 PM
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