Stuck waiting on the last dryer after midnight, a married redhead lets a tall stranger with dark stubble bend her over the folding table while her laundry spins.
Continue reading “Closing Time at the All-Night Launderette”
Author: Akiko
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Familiar Face: Cancel
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“I think I should cancel,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Not because of you. Because of, well. You.”
Tess nodded quickly. “Yeah. No. Totally. Sensible.”
“I’ll still pay. Obviously. It’s not your fault.”
“You don’t have to…”
“I insist.” I fetched the envelope and handed it to her, and our fingers touched, and we both jumped like it was electrified.
She lingered on the doormat. “For the record,” she said, “this is my job. It’s legal, I pay tax on it, and it’s paying for my master’s in urban planning. I’m not embarrassed. I’m just…” She waved a hand at me, at the door, at the universe. “This is a lot.”
“It’s a lot,” I agreed. “Does Gemma know? About the job?”
“God, no. Does Gemma know you book escorts?”
“I’ve never booked one before in my life. Tonight was the first time.”
“Of course it was.” She laughed, and then looked at me a bit differently, like she was seeing me for the first time instead of as part of the barbecue furniture. “Well. Night, Ben. See you at the next family thing, I suppose.”
“See you.”
She walked to the lift in her red coat, and I closed the door and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor.
I didn’t sleep. At two in the morning I was still staring at my phone, with her number in it from a group chat about Gemma’s surprise party four years ago.
Familiar Face: The Knock
I booked an escort for the first time in my life, and the woman who knocked on my door was my little sister’s best friend. We’d shared a lot of burgers at family barbecues. We’d never shared this.
Familiar Face: Pretending
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I put the phone face down on the bedside table and decided, with the firmness of a man who has never once succeeded at this, that it had never happened.
It worked for about a week. Then Gemma rang.
“Christmas,” she said, without saying hello. “Mum wants a head count for the turkey. You’re coming, obviously. And Tess is coming, her parents are in Tenerife, so she’s having Christmas with us. Isn’t that nice?”
“So nice,” I said, in a voice like a squeaky hinge.
“Are you all right? You sound weird.”
“Just a cold.”
The weeks crawled past. I saw Tess’s name come up in the family group chat with a Christmas tree emoji and nearly dropped my phone into a pan of pasta. I rehearsed what I would say to her. Nothing felt right. Hi, Tess, great to see you again, I hope you’ve been well since you stood on my doormat with my escort fee.
On the twenty-third, Gemma rang again.
“Mum wants to know if you’re definitely coming. You’ve gone very quiet.”
I looked at the train ticket on my phone. I looked at my sofa, which was comfortable and had no sister’s best friend on it.
“Actually,” I started to say, “I’m not sure I can make it this year.”
Familiar Face: Come In
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“Come in,” I said. “Quick. Before Mrs Okafor, seventy-two, across the hall sees and tells the entire building.”
Tess stepped inside and I shut the door, and then we both just stood in my hallway like two people who’d walked into the same toilet cubicle.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
She burst out laughing. Properly, bent over, hand on the wall. After a second I did too. It was that or die.
“I can’t believe it,” she wheezed. “Of all the flats in Manchester. Gemma’s big brother. The one who cried at Toy Story 3 at her twenty-first.”
“I had something in my eye.”
“For ninety minutes?” She wiped her eyes and straightened up, and I got my first proper look at her. She’d taken her coat off. Underneath was a fitted black dress that stopped well above the knee, and she looked nothing like the girl in denim shorts at the barbecue and also exactly like her, only grown-up and dangerous.
“You look,” I said, and stopped.
“Go on.”
“Really good, Tess.”
Her smile shifted a little. “Thanks.” She glanced at the envelope on the counter, then back at me. “So here’s the awkward bit. I’m here. You booked. I’m not going to pretend that’s not what this is. But we could also just sit down and talk like normal people first.”
She bit her lip.
“Your call, Ben H.”
→ I suggest we sit down and talk first
→ I hand her the envelope and say we should do what I booked
Familiar Face: The Envelope
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I picked up the envelope and held it out. My hand was steady, which surprised me.
“I booked you,” I said. “I’d like to do what I booked. If you’re still all right with it. If you’re not, I completely get it, and you keep the money anyway.”
Tess looked at the envelope. Then at me. Then she took it, and counted it, which she didn’t seem to do with other clients, I could tell, because she laughed at herself halfway through.
“Sorry. Habit. Nerves.” She tucked it into her bag. “Right. Then let’s be grown-ups about this. I’m Sienna tonight, if that helps. Or Tess, if that’s better. Your choice.”
“Tess,” I said.
“Tess it is.” She stepped closer. In heels she came up to my chin. She smelled like vanilla and the outdoors. “The rules are the same as with anyone. Condoms, always. If either of us says stop, we stop. Nobody gets filmed, nobody gets photographed.”
“Of course.”
“And there’s one rule I’ve never needed before.” She put her hands on my chest. “Gemma can never, ever know.”
I swallowed. Her fingers were undoing my top button.
“There’s something else,” she said softly. “I’ve done this a hundred times. You’ve done it never. So either you tell me exactly what you want, or you shut up and let me lead.”
Familiar Face: The Text
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I typed and deleted for twenty minutes. In the end I sent the simplest version.
“Tess, it’s Ben. I’m so sorry about tonight. I wasn’t judging you. I was just shocked. You’re brilliant, and you didn’t deserve to stand on my doormat feeling weird. Hope you got home safe.”
Three dots appeared immediately. Then disappeared. Then appeared again.
“Home safe. You weren’t weird. Well, a bit weird. You said oh my God four times.”
“You said it twice.”
“I’m a professional. Twice is my limit.” A pause. Then: “Honestly though, thank you. Most men would have been gross about it. You paid and apologised and looked like you wanted to be swallowed by the carpet. It was quite sweet.”
We texted until three. About Gemma and her terrible new boyfriend who played the ukulele. About Tess’s master’s. About how she’d once fallen in my parents’ pond at a barbecue and I’d fished her out, which I’d forgotten and she clearly hadn’t.
At ten to three she sent: “Can I be honest? A small part of me was disappointed you cancelled.”
I stared at that for a full minute.
“Only a small part?”
“Don’t push it, Hartley.”
I sat up in bed. My heart was going like I’d run for a bus.
There were two things I could say next. One was brave. The other was braver.
Familiar Face: Boxing Day
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I told Gemma I had a cold and stayed home. It was a lie. It was the most cowardly lie I have ever told and I ate a frozen lasagne for Christmas dinner as punishment.
On Boxing Day, at about four in the afternoon, there was a knock on my door.
I opened it in my dressing gown with a mince pie in my mouth.
Tess stood on my doormat in her red coat, holding a tinfoil-wrapped plate in both hands. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. Snow, the rare Manchester kind, was melting in her curls.
“Your mum sent leftovers,” she said. “And your sister made me promise to check you weren’t dying. She says you’ve had man flu since November.”
“Oh,” I said, through the mince pie.
“You weren’t ill, were you.”
“No.”
“You were avoiding me.”
“Yes.”
“You idiot.” She held out the plate. Turkey, stuffing, sprouts, a slab of Mum’s trifle. “I spent all of Christmas Day thinking you hated me. Gemma kept asking why I was checking my phone.”
“I don’t hate you. Tess, I think about you constantly. That’s the problem.”
She looked at me for a long moment. The snow kept falling behind her.
“It’s freezing out here, Ben,” she said quietly. “And I’m not working tonight.”
Familiar Face: Just Talking
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We sat on the sofa with a bottle of red. She kicked off her heels and tucked her feet under her, the way she did on my parents’ garden bench, and suddenly it felt less like a disaster and more like a very strange catch-up.
She told me about the job first, because I asked and because she wanted me to understand. Two years with Ivory Rose. Fully licensed, checked by the council, an agency that looked after its women. It paid for her master’s and her flat, and she was good at it, and she liked it, mostly.
“Most of my clients are lonely,” she said. “Nice men who forgot how to talk to women. Some want sex. Some want a girlfriend for two hours. Some just want someone to listen.”
“Which am I?”
“I don’t know yet.” She swirled her wine. “You’re the first one I already know.”
I told her about Laura and the sourdough man. She laughed at the right moments and swore on my behalf at the others. Our knees were touching. Neither of us moved them.
“Can I tell you something embarrassing?” she said. “When I was twenty-one, I had the most enormous crush on you. You came to the barbecue in that awful band T-shirt and I followed you round the garden all afternoon.”
“I thought you were just really into swingball.”
“I was really into watching you lose at swingball.”