Elizabeth Moon - The Speed of Dark

I do not understand: why does she have to move because my tires were slashed? No one could slash her tires, because she has no tires. She does not have a car.

“Did you see who did it?” she asks. She has left part of her wash hanging over the edge of the machine; it looks very messy and unpleasant, like food hanging over the edge of a plate.

“No,” I say. I take the light things out of the light basket and put them in the right-hand washing machine. I add the detergent, measuring carefully because it is wasteful to use too much and things will not be clean if I do not use enough. I put the coins in the slot, close the door, set the machine for warm wash, cool rinse, regular cycle, and push the START button. Inside the machine, something goes thunk and water hisses through the valves.

“It’s terrible,” Miss Kimberly says. She is scooping the rest of her wash into the dryer, the movements of her hands jerky. Something puckery and pink falls to the floor; I turn away and lift clothes out of the dark basket. I put them into the middle washer. “It’s all right for people like you,” she says.

“What is all right for people like me?” I ask. She has never talked this way before.

“You’re young,” she says. “And a man. You don’t have to worry.”

I do not understand. I am not young, according to Mr. Crenshaw. I am old enough to know better. I am a man, but I do not see why this means it is all right for my tires to be slashed.

“I did not want my tires slashed,” I say, speaking slowly because I do not know what she will do.

“Well, of course you didn’t,” she says, all in a rush. Usually her skin looks pale and yellowish in the lights of the laundry room, but now peach-colored patches glow on her cheeks. “But you don’t have to worry about people jumping on you. Men.”

I look at Miss Kimberly and cannot imagine anyone jumping on her. Her hair is gray and her pink scalp shows through it on top; her skin is wrinkled and she has brown spots on her arms. I want to ask if she is serious, but I know she is serious. She does not laugh, even at me when I drop something.

“I am sorry you are worried,” I say, shaking detergent into the washer full of dark things. I put the coins into the slot. The dryer door bangs shut; I had forgotten about the dryer, trying to understand Miss Kimberly, and my hand jerks. One of the coins misses the slot and falls into the wash. I will have to take everything out to find it, and the detergent will spill off the clothes onto the washer. I feel a buzzing in my head.

“Thank you, Lou,” Miss Kimberly says. Her voice is calmer, warmer. I am surprised. I did not expect to say the right thing. “What’s wrong?” she asks as I start lifting out the clothes, shaking them so most of the detergent falls back into the washing machine.

“I dropped a coin in,” I say.

She is coming closer. I do not want her to come closer. She wears a strong perfume, very sweet-smelling.

“Just use another. That one’ll be really clean when you take the clothes out,” she says.

I stand still a moment, the clothes in my hand. Can I leave that coin in? I have the spare in my pocket. I drop the clothes and reach for the coin in my pocket. It is the right size. I put it in the slot, close the door, set the machine, and push START. Again the thunk , the hiss of water. I feel strange inside. I thought I understood Miss Kimberly before, when she was the predictable old lady who washed her clothes on Friday night, as I do. I thought I understood her a few minutes ago, at least to understand that she was upset about something. But she thought of a solution so fast, while I was thinking she was still upset. How did she do that? Is that something normal people can do all the time?

“It’s easier than taking the clothes out,” she says. “This way you don’t get stuff on the machine and have to clean it up. I always bring some extra coins just in case.” She laughs, a little dry laugh. “As I get older, my hands shake sometimes.” She pauses, looking at me. I am still wondering how she did that, but I realize she is waiting for something from me. It is always appropriate to say thank you, even when you aren’t sure why.

“Thank you,” I say.

It was the right thing to say again; she smiles.

“You’re a nice man, Lou; I’m sorry about your tires,” she says. She looks at her watch. “I need to go make some phone calls; are you going to be here? To watch the dryer?”

“I will be downstairs,” I say. “Not in this room; it is too noisy.” I have said this before when she has asked me to keep an eye on her clothes. I always think of taking out an eye and putting it on the clothes, but I do not tell her that is what I think. I know what the expression means socially, but it is a silly meaning. She nods and smiles and goes out. I check again that the setting on both washers is correct and then go out into the hall.

The floor in the laundry room is ugly gray concrete, sloping down slightly to a big drain under the washing machines. I know the drain is there because two years ago I brought my washing down and workmen were there. They had moved the machines out and had the cover off the drain. It smelled very bad, sour and sick.

The floor in the hall is tile, each tile streaked with two shades of green on beige. The tiles are twelve-inch squares; the hall is five squares wide and forty-five and a half squares long. The person who laid the tiles laid them so that the streaks are crosswise to each other — each tile is laid so that the streaks are facing ninety degrees to the tile next to it. Most of the tiles are laid in one of two ways, but eight of them are laid upside down to the other tiles in the same orientation.

I like to look at this hall and think about those eight tiles. What pattern could be completed by having those eight tiles laid in reverse? So far I have come up with three possible patterns. I tried to tell Tom about it once, but he was not able to see the patterns in his head the way I can. I drew them all out on a sheet of paper, but soon I could tell that he was bored. It is not polite to bore people. I never tried to talk to him about it again.

But I find it endlessly interesting. When I get tired of the floor — but I never do get tired of the floor — I can look at the walls. All the walls in the hall are painted, but on one wall there was tile-patterned wallboard before. Those pretend tiles were four inches on a side, but unlike the floor tiles, the pretend wall tiles had a space for pretend grout. So the real pattern size is four and a half inches. If it were four inches, then three wall tiles would make one floor tile.

I look for the places where the line between the tiles can go up the wall and over the ceiling and back around without stopping. There is one place in this hall where the line almost makes it, but not quite. I used to think if the hall were twice as long there would be two places, but that’s not how it works. When I really look at it, I can tell that the hall would have to be five and a third times as long for all the lines to match exactly twice.

Hearing one washing machine whine down from spin, I go back into the laundry room. I know that it takes me exactly that long to arrive at the machine just as the drum stops turning. It is a kind of game, to take that last step when the machine takes its last turn. The left-hand dryer is still mumbling and bumbling; I take my wet clothes and put them in the empty right-hand dryer. By the time I have them all in and have checked to be sure nothing is left in the washer, the second washer comes spinning down. Once last year I worked out the relationship between the frictional force slowing the rotation and the frequency of the sound it makes. I did it by myself, without a computer, which made it more fun.