Laundromat at 3 AM

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting that sickly, institutional glow that makes everyone look like they've been dead for three days. Elena sat on the folding table, watching her clothes spin in dryer number seven, the drum thumping rhythmically like a slow heartbeat.

She'd forgotten to bring something to read. Again. So she watched the orange in her hand instead, turning it over and over. The skin was imperfect, pocked with little dots, its color too bright against the sterile white of the room. She'd bought it three days ago from a bodega on the corner where the cashier always looked at her like she was planning to steal something.

The door chimed. A man walked in carrying a laundry basket overflowing with dark clothes, a black beanie pulled low over his forehead. He moved with that particular posture of someone trying to take up as little space as possible—shoulders curled inward, eyes on the floor.

He chose the dryer farthest from hers.

Elena peeled her orange. The scent hit her suddenly, sharp and clean, cutting through the smell of fabric softener and whatever the previous person had washed—something that smelled like wet dog and cheap cologne. Section by section, she dismantled the fruit, letting the peel fall into a tiny pile on the table. The pith underneath her fingernails looked like crescent moons.

"I used to work here," the man said.

Elena looked up. He was watching her now, really looking, and she saw something familiar in his face. The way his hair fell over his eyes, dark and too long. The exhausted set of his mouth.

"Yeah?"

"Third shift." He nodded toward the back wall. "There's a cat that lives behind the dumpsters. Gray, with one ear that doesn't stand up right. She used to scratch at the back door around 4 AM, every single night, like clockwork. I'd give her the ham from my sandwich."

Elena laughed, surprised. "You remember the cat's name?"

"I named her Sheila. After my mother." He cracked a small, crooked smile. "She hated it."

"The cat or your mother?"

"Both."

They sat there for a moment, the quiet between them not quite comfortable but not uncomfortable either. The clothes tumbled. Elena's orange sat in sections on a paper towel. She hadn't taken a bite yet.

"My wife left me," he said suddenly, like he was confessing to a crime. "Two weeks ago tomorrow."

"I'm sorry."

"She took the good towels. The matching set we got for our wedding." He gestured vaguely at his laundry. "Hence the emergency wash at 3 AM."

Elena nodded slowly. She understood emergencies at 3 AM. The way the world narrowed down to one immediate problem, everything else—grief, anger, the way your life had split open and spilled its contents everywhere—temporarily suspended.

"I cut off all my hair," she said. "Last month. After I didn't get the promotion."

He looked at her then, really looked, and she wondered what he saw. Her hair was just starting to grow back, dark and choppy, hitting her jawline at odd angles. She'd cried while she cut it, scissors sliding through wet hair in her bathtub, watching months of growth spiral down the drain.

"Did it help?"

"No," she said. "But it's done."

"Yeah," he said. "That's something."

His dryer beeped. He stood up, the movement fluid and sudden, and began pulling clothes from the drum without folding them. Just shoving them into his basket, a tangled mess of dark fabric.

He stopped at the door, his hand on the handle. "Hey."

"Yeah?"

"Your orange. You're not gonna eat it."

Elena looked down at the sections she'd so carefully separated. She'd forgotten about them completely.

"You want it?"

"Nah." He adjusted his hat, that black beanie pulled low. "Just—it looks like you put work into it. Seems like a shame to waste."

He walked out into the night, and the door swung shut behind him, and the fluorescent lights kept buzzing overhead, and Elena sat there with her perfect, untouched orange, and somewhere behind the building, a cat named Sheila was probably waiting for 4 AM.