The Cleaners

I go to a really nice Korean cleaners – man and wife team.  My friend, M, who fixes my normal people size clothing into midget sized garments, knows them. She recommended them when I complained that my old cleaners turned my brown dress’ armpits green.

“They said it was my deodorant!” I complained.  “I’ve been using the same damn deodorant my whole life!  Suddenly it stains armpits?  Then they said I must have been sweating abnormally that day.  WTF?  I wasn’t running a marathon!  I was at work!”

“I know a good cleaners,” said M.

“Will they come to my house?” I asked, fingers crossed.  Arm Pit Stainers came to my house.

“I’ll ask,” said M.  She made a phone call right in front of me.  It was an intense conversation with a lot of gesturing on M’s part.  She hung up, looking exhausted yet triumphant.  “They’ll come!” she exclaimed.

Thus, my relationship with the Nice People was born on a shaky note – a friend of a friend doing me a favor.

Nice Man picks up my laundry on Thursday nights.  He plays with my dogs.  He loves my dogs.  They frolic together on the porch.   He tells me about his sons and their college careers in pretty good Korean accented English.  I love Nice Man.  Every so often Nice Man gives me a receipt.  I don’t know what the hell I’m paying.  I never seem to catch up to the month I’m on.  He tells me that this is because they aren’t used to customers for whom they have to make house calls.  It took a long time to charge me.  Now I’m charged a lot all the time.  I still love nice man.

Sometimes I think I’m missing a piece of clothing.  It is always my mistake.  When I call the Nice Lady to ask, she assures me that all of my clothes were carefully tagged and I got them all.  She nicely implies that I might be delusional.  She sweetly recommends Haldol.  Her English isn’t as good as Nice Man’s at these times.  Except for the word “Haldol”.  That is quite clear.  Occasionally I get the item a couple of deliveries down the road.  When something else does not arrive, and I have to call the cleaners I fantasize about bringing up these past mistakes and using it as an example of Nice Lady’s potential fallibility.  I do not do this. I’m scared of Nice Lady.

I got a sweater last week that I never met before.  A brown sweater with green stains around the neck.  I wonder if the owner had smeared deodorant around their neck.  It was a J Crew wool sweater in size small.  There are no size smalls in my house.  I took it to the Cleaners  on the way to work.

“I swear that I asked everyone in the house, but it isn’t our sweater,” I say.

Nice Woman smiles.  She feels sorry for the torture about to come, think.  “Your sweater.” She is definitive.

“No really.  It’s not.  It must be somebody else’s.  I asked my husband and both boys.

She looks down at the sweater, smile gone.  “Everything recorded and tagged for you and no extra clothes.  That your sweater,” she says.

I’m scared I’m going to lose my door to door service.  “We can’t wear it.  We’re too fat,” I laugh, trying for a little self deprecating humor to save my fat and lazy butt.

She holds the sweater up to her slender, wiry body.  “No problem!  I’ll wear the sweater!”  she says, and goes back to work.

Wonder what she’ll do with the green stain around the collar?

 

“

 

 

 

Advertisement