26 Saturdays

I have a dirty little secret.

I, Caitlyn Denise Haversham, have my own washing machine and dryer.

Now, you’re probably thinking that it’s a weird thing to keep a secret. Normally I would agree with you, but six months ago on Halloween, I wandered into this 24-hour laundromat by accident and ran into a man. Literally. Somewhere between helping him pick up pairs of far-flung boxers, retrieving a t-shirt from a mop bucket, and trying to find a missing sock, I fell in love. The way he spoke about being a modern-day nomad and not being tied down to one place, and about seeing the world and learning about himself through the people he met, made me believe that I could be bold too.

Except when he asked me if I needed to get my own laundry, I didn’t tell him I was a responsible adult with access to my own laundry apparatuses and that I stayed for him; I told him that I was auditing new laundromats because my last one smelled like old cheese. Way to be bold, Caitlyn. My high school yearbook committee should have voted me most likely to blow a meet cute.

When he left, he told me it was nice to meet me and that he hoped I would choose this as my new laundry home base. It wasn’t until after he left that I realized I hadn’t gotten his name. Or his number. Or even what his face looked like thanks to the stupid yellow-and-red superhero Halloween mask covering most of his face.

                  “How much longer are you going to come in here and pretend to do laundry?” Jake, the annoying 30-year-old night employee asks me. Who works at a laundromat at thirty? Jake would tell me that it was because he was “between opportunities right now”, but I know that means he just can’t apply himself to a real job.

                  “I don’t pretend to do laundry,” I tell him, offended. I used to, but not anymore. I place the few unimportant items I brought from home in the well-used washer.

                  Jake snorts and goes back to whatever dumb thing he is doing on his phone. Jake was working the night I came back, trying to find Mr. Laundromat, as we’d both taken to calling him. He made it clear that he thought my persistence was stalkerish and even sent me home that first night I came back because, as he put it, I was “loitering” if I wasn’t doing laundry.

                  I sit down in one of the worn chairs as my washer begins filling with water and try to read my book, but a large shadow blocks my light. I look up and roll my eyes, “What, Jake?”

                  “What’s so special about this guy that you’d waste every single Saturday evening in this hole for six months?” I’ve only known Jake for about 26 Saturdays, but he’s used that time to develop a penchant for knowing just how to annoy me. Like breathing in my vicinity. Or just existing.

                  “You wouldn’t understand.” I lift my book a little higher, hoping he’ll get the hint and leave me alone, but in all the Saturdays I’ve spent here, he has yet to take a hint.

                  “Try me.” Jake swings a chair around and sits on it backwards, his arms crossed along the top as he faces me.

                  “Fine.” I sigh, “We connected. I felt it, and I know he felt it. That’s not something you can just let go.”

                  “So you’ve decided to stalk this guy?” If Jake didn’t have that perpetual look of superiority on his face, he’d be kind of cute.

                  “It’s not stalking if he said he hoped to see me here again.” I lift my book up higher, blocking him out.

                  “Stalking.” Jake doesn’t leave, “What kind of snacks did you bring tonight?”

                  I roll my eyes but put my book down and reach for the grocery bag I brought with me. I drop it on the white plastic table beside me and gesture in annoyance toward the stubble-faced thorn in my side. 

This has become our tradition every Saturday since the first time we met. I try to ignore Jake for the first 10 minutes with little success, he raids the snacks I bring for my stakeout, and then we play some type of card game or board game. No one else ever seems to use this all-night laundromat, so it gives me plenty of time to kick his sorry butt.

“Did you buy s’mores clusters because I told you they were my favourite?” Jake asks, pulling out the giant family-sized bag.

“What? No, of course not!” I can feel my face turning red as I sputter out the denial because, while I didn’t specifically seek them out, I remembered what he told me last week and added them to my cart because I knew he’d like them.

“I knew it.” That stupid, charming, know-it-all grin again, “Face it, Caitlyn. You’re starting to like me.”

“I like good snacks, Jake. I’m not going to deny myself a tasty treat just because you also like it.” I snatch the bag from his hands and steal the first taste. Damn, these are good.

“I thought we could do trivia tonight.” Jake ignores me, like he often does when I’m snarky, and pulls out what looks like a brand-new board game, unlike the others we’d taken off the laundromat shelves, which were missing half the pieces. Now it’s my turn to be suspicious.

“Did you buy a new game because I told you I liked trivia?” I expect him to deny it, just like I did.

“Yep.”

I’m taken aback by his response. I haven’t known Jake long, but in that time, I’ve come to learn that he is honest and speaks his mind. It doesn’t come as a shock to me that he tells me the truth, but it does surprise me that he did something because he knew I liked it.

“You want to play or not?” Jake’s impatience brings me back to the poorly lit laundromat.

“Of course.” I say, sassily flipping my ponytail over my shoulder, “I’m the seven-time trivia champion at my parents’ house, so be prepared to get smoked.”

“Bring it on, stalker.”

The rules of the game are simple: draw a card and answer the question correctly. You continue drawing cards until you get one wrong, and then play moves on to the next person. Once the timer runs out, the round is done, and whoever has answered the most questions correctly wins.

We play rock-paper-scissors to see who will start, and Jake beats my scissors with a rock. I’m not worried though. I’ve known Jake to care about two things since we met—making sure I stop putting so much soap in the machines and being annoyingly nonchalant about everything else.

“We can start with the easy ones.”  I assure him. 

“Start with whatever you want.” Jake grabs the bag of s’mores bites and a part of me is concerned that he won’t leave any for me. I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that his favourite snack might now be my favourite snack too.

“Fine.” I run my fingers along the deck until I find a red card. I look at him and he raises his eyebrow in a challenge, so I pull it out and read off the back, “What is the only letter that does not appear in the name of any U.S. state?”

“Q.” He answers a lot more quickly than I anticipated.

“You guessed.”

“Maybe.” He grins, “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Yes.” I grumble at him and draw another card, “Which planet has the shortest day.”

“Jupiter.” Another quick answer and grin. He knows he got it right.

“What’s the capital of Bhutan?”

“Thimphu.” 

“There’s no way you know that!” I accuse him. I’m impressed but I’m not going to let him know that. “Did you memorize all these cards before?”

“I didn’t,” Jake laughs, “You saw me take the shrink-wrap off.”

“Okay…” I only half believe him, so I change up the next question, “Which language is spoken in the state of Brazil?”

“I’m not sure what you’re up to, but Brazil is a country and they speak Portuguese.”

“What is the scientific term for animals that are primarily active at dawn and dusk?”

“Crepuscular.” Jake stuffs more snacks into his mouth, “I thought you were picking the hard questions, Caity.”

Great. Now I have another secret – I don’t hate this new nickname that he gave me. But I do hate that he is winning and I haven’t even answered a question yet.

“If you're not cheating, then how do you know all this?” I demand an answer. Trivia is my thing and this lint-for-brains Jake is destroying me.

“I’m a Jake-of-all-trades.” He leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head. My frustration at losing is momentarily distracted by his flexed arms. Has Jake always been this muscular or has sitting in this laundromat for so many hours altered the chemistry in my brain?  I shake my head to come back to reality.

“It’s jack-of-all-trades.” 

“Are you sure about that? I’m the one getting all the questions right.” Another grin and another snack, so I snatch the bag away in spite. And hunger.

“So…if you’re not cheating, how do you know all these answers?”

“I’m a genius.”

“Stop messing around.” I lightly smack his shoulder forcing his chair to stop leaning back and his hands to come back down. Goodbye, beautiful biceps.

“I’m not. My IQ is 146—my mom got me tested when my teachers said I was smart.”

“Maybe a smart-ass,” I retort and then stop, “Wait, doesn’t that mean you’re Mensa-level smart?”

“Yeah, I have a card and everything.”

“You’re shitting me.” I realize now that I know very little about Jake, the laundromat employee who said he was helping some family friends by taking the night shifts. And apparently is also an Einstein.

“Next question.”

“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you a CEO somewhere.”

“That’s not a trivia question.” There goes that eyebrow again. Maybe he can teach me how to do that so I can annoy him right back.

“You didn’t say it had to be a trivia question.” I try raising my eyebrow, but the amused look on his face implies that I failed miserably, “Answer the question.”

“Because being a genius doesn’t mean that I need to be boring. I don’t like staying in one place.” Jake grabs the snacks back.

“But a laundromat is full of adventure?”

“I used to think it wasn’t.”

Did he mean me? I don’t want to ask, but the way he’s looking at me is making me feel warm all the way down to my toes. Or maybe I’m sitting a little too close to a dryer.

“What changed?” I ask cautiously.

“I discovered I loved helping technologically inept humans figure out how to use the new payment system.” Smart-ass. I couldn’t figure it out one time. And I would have figured it out on my own—eventually.

“What did you do before you worked here?” Jake’s frat-boy persona is softening and I’m curious. Maybe if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with Mr. Laundromat, I might have noticed these things about him sooner.

“I don’t think so,” Jake tells me as I reach for the snack bag. He hands it to me anyway, then says, “It’s my turn to ask the questions.”

I pass him the trivia card deck, but he shakes his head, “No, my turn to ask questions about you.”

“I’m an open book.” I uncross my arms so he knows I’m serious about being open.

“Why do you keep washing a duck pajama onesie?”

“I plead the Fifth. Next.” I cross my arms again.

“You can’t plead the Fifth. We’re Canadian. You don’t have Fifth Amendment rights. And if you did, I don’t think they would apply to pajamas.”

“Well, this isn’t a real game, so I’ve decided that, according to the not-real rules, I can plead the Fifth.” I stick my tongue out at him and now I realize he’s looking at my mouth. Convinced that I’m imagining things, I decide to redirect him. “Fine, it’s my costume from Halloween. I was a duck. I want Mr. Laundromat to recognize me.”

“You were a duck.” He laughs and is no longer looking at my mouth, “So this is some Anatidae-Cinderella-type situation?”

“Ana-what now?” I’ll have to Google that word when Jake isn’t looking. Maybe he really is in Mensa. “It’s not a Cinderella thing. Or maybe it is. I don’t know.”

“But a duck, really? No sexy nurse outfit for you?”

“Ugh, no. I’m the funny friend. I can’t pull off sexy.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” I blush because I don’t think anyone has looked at me the way Jake is looking at me right now.

The door buzzer goes off, alerting us to the first customer who has come in overnight in the 6 months I’ve been spending Saturdays here. Jake reaches his arms over his head and stretches. I get to see the veins in his arms and a peek of his abs as his shirt hikes up. Does he know what he’s doing to me right now? Do I know what he’s doing to me right now?

“Not even going to look if it’s Mr. Laundromat?” he teases. Before I can come up with a retort, he walks away to help the new customer, an older woman who is struggling even more with the new card-operated payment system than I did. 

Jake doesn’t return after helping the customer, so I start rereading my book. I reread the same page four times before putting it down and closing my eyes. The truth is: I don’t want to look for Mr. Laundromat anymore; I want to play more trivia with Jake.

I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until I see Jake’s grin in front of me as I open my eyes. I briefly think how much I’d like to wake up to that grin every morning before I groggily ask him the time.

“Morning. The sun is coming up.” I shoot upright and look out the windows to see the sun peeking its way between the city buildings.

“Crap. I spent the whole night here?”

“Yeah, don’t worry. I kept watch for you. And I put your clothes in the dryer.”

“Thanks.” I’m relieved but also a little sad, “I’m sorry we didn’t get to finish our game.”

“Next week,” Jake tells me.

“I still don’t believe you’re in Mensa.” I tell him, making sure he knows I haven’t completely softened.

“Check my backpack.” He gestures to a beat-up black bag sitting behind the desk, “My card is in my wallet in the front pocket.”

 “You carry it around?” I think about raising my eyebrow again but remember how amused he was the last time I tried.

“Yeah, to prove my god-like intelligence to non-believers like you.” 

I head over to the backpack. It has two front pockets and he didn’t specify which, so I make an executive decision to open the larger one on the bottom. There’s no visible wallet in that pocket. Instead, I see an itinerary printout for flight to Lisbon, Portugal.

November 1.

CANCELLED.

Underneath it is a yellow-and-red mask. I quickly zip up the bag and return to the table where Jake is waiting for me. Our table.

“Find it?” he asks.

                  “Yeah.” I slip my book back into my bag and grab the laundry he folded while I slept. “I’ll see you next Saturday?”

                  “I wouldn’t miss it.”