Amelia Gray - Threats

“It’s cold out,” he said, digging in his pockets for quarters. The skin on the back of his hand rubbed raw on the frozen fabric of his jeans.

Shelly stood close enough that he could tell she was chewing fruit-flavored gum. Pushing the empty quarter tray halfway, she smacked the dryer’s front panel with a practiced palm. The machine began to mumble with activity. She regarded David sidelong and thumped the center of his chest with the heel of her hand.

He coughed. “Nice trick.”

“It’s exclusively a night trick.” She took a pair of pants out of another dryer and pulled them on under her long brown skirt. When she tugged down the skirt’s waist to button the pants, he saw that she was wearing at least two more pairs. The waists of the pants layered in circles like rings in a tree. She readjusted her skirt and focused again on her baskets, consolidating clothes by color, picking out a sweater that featured a wide dark stain around the collar and tossing it into a machine that was already full of water.

“It’s too cold to be out,” she said. “Stay where it’s warm and safe.”

The water tinted pink around the sweater soaking alone in the wash. “You’ll have a hard time wearing that one,” David said.

“Think of a time you’ve felt warm and un safe,” she said. “Try to think of such a time.” As she spoke, she took a batch of clean clothes from a clicking dryer, draped a warm blanket over the child in the cart, and loaded the rest into an empty cart. She rolled the cart to the high folding table, and she ducked underneath to find a plastic step stool. She held the table and stepped onto the stool, then crouched to the rolling cart and began transferring handfuls of jeans and shirts and sweaters and blouses to the table. Organizing the clothes in a loose pile, she took a pair of slacks from the top. She stretched the slacks between two hands and smoothed them with her palm, then leaned in close and examined the fabric. There was a scorch mark on the fly, which she ignored, focusing on a stray thread that emerged from a pocket.

David watched her fold the clothes. He looked out the window and at the clock on the wall. After a while he opened the dryer that contained his shoes and socks. The canvas on his shoes was hot and wet and smelled like pancakes, but Franny’s rust-ringed socks were dry. He removed Marlon’s socks and tucked them atop the machine.

Shelly was folding a slashed-up shirt as carefully as the rest, buttoning it to the neck and holding the collar taut.

“Thanks for the free dry,” David said, taking a seat to put his shoes on. “Are you here most nights?”

She lifted her eyes from her work and saw him lacing up his shoes, hunched over himself in the plastic chair, his head tipped toward her, face reddening against the strain as if he was holding his breath or trying not to expel gas, and she laughed at the sight of him. She held the counter to steady herself and laughed. The noise startled him. He stood and tried to back up at the same time, tripping sideways over the chair. It made her laugh harder, the sight of him holding the chair and tripping across his untied shoes and finally staggering half laced out of the laundromat. It would be foolish to be afraid of the woman’s laughter, but David could easily put reason to feeling surprised and unsettled. He admitted to these emotions in the dark and limped home.

IT WAS STILL FULLY NIGHT when David returned to his street. His wet shoes had frozen again, their trailing laces gathering a snowy coating like a naked wick in wax. The warmth in Franny’s old socks had slipped away and the bones in his feet were a stiff, burning cold. He kicked the shoes off the moment he reached his porch steps. He had fashioned a grounding wire for the doorknob earlier that day, and now he safely tapped the frame with his socked foot. He detected an energy, but when he reached for the knob, he felt no shock and opened the door. Behind him, a pair of joggers crested the final hill and held hands as they navigated the icy road together.

He still had the laundromat’s scent on his skin, an odor that was supposedly the chemical essence of mountain air. His empty home smelled like coffee and furniture polish and paper. In the entry, the grandfather clock gave a few easy ticks and stopped again. The flaps of a cardboard box at the base of the stairs rustled in the opening door’s breeze, and David remembered the urine-soaked clothes inside. He emptied the mess out on the porch and tossed the soiled box down the basement’s dark stairs.

Upstairs, he removed his clothes and stood naked under the bathroom’s warm light. He scooped the last of Franny’s eye cream from its jar, which was so small that only the tip of his smallest finger fit inside. He spread the thimbleful of cream on his chest, where it warmed pleasantly. Inside a hinged pot he found a sparkling paste she might have used on her eyes or lips. It was an ivory color, and when he spread it on his mouth it tasted like mineral oil and pencil shavings. Wrapped around the base of the hinged pot was a thin piece of paper that reeled out like an old ticker tape when he loosened its sticky tab. It read:

I WILL CROSS-STITCH AN IMAGE OF YOUR FUTURE HOME BURNING. I WILL HANG THIS IMAGE OVER YOUR BED WHILE YOU SLEEP.

Released from its anchor, the paper sprang free and curled into the sink. One end was still attached to the fragile hinged jar, and he picked it off with his fingernail, flattening the thin page on the counter and considering it. His mother would buy cross-stitch patterns but never begin work on them, even at the women’s home, where she had a seemingly endless span of time for artistic and other projects.

David considered the possibility that the threat had been included with the product from the manufacturer as a way to distract women from the amount of money they were spending on mineral oil and pencil shavings. Wiping the stinging product from his lips with the back of his hand, he wrapped the threat around the sink’s faucet.

He got into bed but felt a low-level awareness of the threat curled up in the bathroom. He pulled a stack of magazines from the bedside table into bed with him, making a line between his body and the bathroom. The magazines and Franny’s copper-colored coat insulated him, and he tucked his legs toward his chest. He imagined the words and images in the magazines rising up like a wall.

When he switched off the bedroom light, his eyes adjusted to the green glow of his electric shaver in the bathroom and he remembered how Franny’s body shone when she came out of the bathroom to join him in bed at night, her skin a reflected emerald shade that inspired in him a vision of her rising from some stagnant pond and approaching him, robe flowing, eyes empty. Replaying the vision in a loop, he fell asleep and had no dreams.

DETECTIVE CHICO rang the front bell and waited. “There’s a grounding wire on your door,” he said pleasantly when David opened up. Chico tapped the wire with his boot. “Was this your doing?”

A woman stood next to Chico. She was bundled up. “This is Dr. Walls,” said Chico. “She is a mental health professional.”

The woman held out her gloved hand.

“Hello,” David said, shaking it.

“Don’t worry, sir,” said Dr. Walls, squinting at him, removing her winter gloves though she was still outside. She extended her bare hand, and David shook it again. “I’m not here to commit you.”

“We came by to have another talk about how you’re doing,” said Chico.

David wondered at the condition of Chico’s teeth.

“Dr. Walls would like to know you. There’s no harm in inviting us in.”

“It’s cold out here,” Dr. Walls said, holding one bare hand with the other. She had the kind of pale skin that turned translucent in the winter.