Lightly Scented Air

[rhiannon_lee]

Clink…clank…scratch…

Under a thick layer of mascara and liner, Rhiannon’s eyes lifted from the pages of her paperback to search out the sound. She sat slumped on a vinyl-cushioned bench in the laundromat, legs stretching into the aisle alongside her basket of detergent and dryer sheets. She leaned forward and squinted at a zippered hoodie bouncing ‘round and ‘round the front-facing dryer. Was it worthwhile to stop the machine and flip it inside out?

The Laundromat was humid and heavily scented: ocean breeze, spring bouquet, fresh cotton. A television was mounted in the corner and from it Rhiannon heard the subdued score of a soap opera punctuated by commercials for cleaning products or diapers. Headphones hung crookedly around her neck because she wasn’t sure how much juice was left in the cassette player’s batteries.

She set her book aside and knelt in front of the dryer to open it.

[Thread]

Comments

[holiday_pirner]

"What part of England? And please tell me it wasn't some dodgy boarding school."

Holly watched Rhiannon light the cigarette with a barely concealed look of envy. She hadn't told anyone, but she had decided to maybe attempt to quit. It was a big 'maybe', though.

"I heard there's a place here to go for shows. It's called, um," she looked up to the right. "The Dive."

[rhiannon_lee]

“London. It’s more like a vocational school with shitty living quarters.” Rhiannon studied a chipped fingernail and frowned. She flicked at her nail polish and dismissed it as a casualty of laundry. “I haven’t been to a show since I got to Nevada,” she said, stretching forward and touching the toes of her boots. “I don’t really know anyone, other than Valerie – the girl in the elevator with me – and this guy I’m… Okay, I have no idea how to politely describe what I’m doing with him.”

[holiday_pirner]

Holly smiled, hopping down from the counter. She grabbed a wheeled basket as she talked. "I'm from London." Grabbing her clothes out of a washer and tossing them into the basket, she added, "I've only been here, what, a few months."

Jeans, t-shirts, and a few dresses filled the basket and she pushed it over to the dryers. "If you can't politely describe it, maybe that's good. Who wants polite?"

[rhiannon_lee]

“Polite sex, anyway,” Rhiannon agreed. She ashed her cigarette and clamped it between her lips, where her Revlon ravishing red helped it stick. As she scratched idly at her elbow, she wished for the type of female friendship where she could ask life’s important questions – does it count as bestiality if he’s only an animal 5% of the time? Is it necrophilia when a human sleeps with a vampire? – without fear of judgment.

“Never fear, we’re nowhere near that.” One of her dryers stopped running. She squatted in front of the machine and pulled out an armload of clothes, which she transferred to the table and began to sort. “What about you, are you seeing anyone?”

[holiday_pirner]

"I guess you could say I am." She dug in her pockets for quarters, depositing them into the silver tray.

"Almost everyone who knows about it seems to judge me for it. And I don't care, not really, because I know they're wrong. But I'm tired of hearing it, you know?"

Holly picked dryer fuzz off of her t-shirt in an attempt to stop rambling.