Laundromat

It was 12:02 in the afternoon. He was getting on the bus that would take him to York street, where he would begin his shift of cleaning retail store shelves that were once spotless last night. He was fumbling for change as he tripped over the curb, throwing his King Cole with two cream onto the grey jacket in front of him. Both persons gasped; one in fright, the other surprise.

He cursed over his words as he apologized. Feeling bad for the woman, the coat, his inability to form words that served their purpose, and the hot beverage he hadn’t realized he had been looking forward to. She turned, smiling the polite smile you give to strangers in need of help, and the elderly you wish you could talk to.

“It’s okay.” She said, over and over. Seeing how through his rambling, it was the only effective way for her forgiveness to be heard.

He offered to take her to a Laundromat, or better yet, a dry-cleaners.

“I have work.” She said.

“I do too.”

They watched as the bus pulled away from them.

They entered a conversation neither of them would forget as they began walking the streets of an area they found out they both did not know. He told her how he had just recently moved there. How he hated the city but somehow chased it with the idea it would grant him everything he wanted in his life.

“What do you want?” She had asked him.

He admitted he did not know. No one had asked him that before, and in that absence he had neglected to ask himself.

He said. “What do you want?”

They were sitting in the only two chairs available in the building that now housed her jacket when she opened her heart for the first time. She wanted to visit the Colosseum in Rome for no reason other than the idea that it looked haunting on the inside. She wanted to learn how to play the violin but claimed she would never find the patience in her youth. She wanted to fall in love in Lithuania because it sounded romantic in a way that is not heard of, but most of all, she wanted to find a place where she could stop searching for all of the things she wanted.

He said.”I don’t know if such a place exists.”

“Neither do I.”

Little did they know that the beginnings of this place began inside themselves.