Chapter 25: The Laundromat

"Come in," Verity said. "It's freezing. You'll catch something."

She held the alley door for me.

The hall inside smelled like bleach and wet concrete and cigarettes.

A mop bucket stood against the wall, exactly where Nessa had said.

Behind the second door the dryers were going.

A whole wall of them, round glass doors, tumbling empty, throwing heat into the room.

Rumble and thump, rumble and thump, twenty machines out of time with each other.

Somewhere in my left shin, a transmitter the size of a stick of gum was listening to that and nothing else.

Dez would hear a factory.

He wouldn't hear me.

Uncle was sitting at a folding table at the far end of the dryers, in an undershirt, counting nothing.

His black suit hung from a nail behind him in a dry cleaner's bag.

He was still the biggest thing in any room he sat in.

"There she is," he said. "My smart girl."

He got up and came over and took my chin in his hand and turned my patch to the light.

"Better," he said. "That glass thing on the TV looked stupid."

Five children sat on two mattresses against the opposite wall.

The girl of thirteen with long dark hair, holding the littlest one in her lap.

Two boys, maybe eight and nine, side by side.

A girl about seven with a bandage on her hand.

The littlest one coughed.

It was wet and deep and went on too long.

Nobody looked at him.

They'd learned not to.

"We go at eleven," Uncle said. "Milwaukee. But first you count, so I know what I'm carrying."

He held out a small brass key on a ring.

"The quarter machine. Out front."

She'd sat down on the edge of the folding table with her legs crossed, her white coat open.

"He keeps cash in a change machine," she said. "Isn't that adorable?"

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