In the Laundromat

[OnTheJob story event]

"Why is it that the washers are all idle, with clothes in them, every time I come in here?" Nicole said. "Anyone?" she called out to the room at large. "Anybody? Are these your clothes?"

"Anyone" didn't answer. Neither did "anybody." So, with an exaggerated sigh, twenty-five-year old, pleasantly plump bleach blonde, married, with three kids, a dog, and a cat Nicole pulled the unidentified-owner clothes out of the washer at the laundromat, tossed them in the adjacent dryer, and slammed the door shut.

"I think it's to give the washers time to chew up just one sock of a pair."

"What?" Nicole asked, in exasperation as she shoved her own load of clothes into the now-liberated washer.

"Why the washers are all idle with clothes in them," Sandi, one of the laundromat attendants, and owner of said establishment, quipped, saddling up to the dryer and putting money in the slot to get the dryer going. It started up with a rumble, which moved fairly quickly into a shake, rattle, and roll. "Whoa," Sandi said. "I forgot that this was the defective dryer we're replacing today."

"Ha, ha," Nicole managed. "So, you fed the dryer because these are your clothes?"

"No," Sandi, a thin, rather hard-looking brunette in her late thirties answered amicably, ever in tune with keeping customers from chewing up the wallpaper. "These are Megan's. She'll pay me back when she returns for them. We're a full-service laundromat, you know. And Megan's a regular. She's good for the coins."

Nicole laughed at that, a better rendition of a laugh than she'd given for the sock joke. "Some laundromat. Never has a washer available when you come to it. And, God, this dryer is ready to take off from the floor. Isn't there any way to turn it off?"

"Not once it's gotten going, no. Trying to pull the plug might get you electrocuted. It's being replaced today. So, if our service is that bad, why do you keep coming here?" Sandi asked. It wasn't asked belligerently. The two women were friends from way back, and Sandi was a pro at dealing with people who had to take their laundry to a public facility. Nicole brought her laundry here every week—or had been doing so for the past six months. A lot of young—and not-so-young—women had been bringing their laundry here in recent months. Business had really picked up of late.

"You know why I keep coming back here," Nicole said.

"Yes, I know," Sandi responded, with a little smile. "Like I said, we're a full-service laundromat."

"So, where is he today?" Nicole asked.

"What?" Sandi said, motioning that she hadn't heard Nicole over the sound of the defective dryer, which was bucking and rumbling in place.

"I asked where Ryan was today," Nicole yelled over the noise from the dryer. Other women in the laundromat heard her and looked up. A couple of them rolled their eyes and sniggered before returning to dealing with their own wash or sitting and gossiping in the chairs at the front window while they waited for the cleansing magic being dealt by the washers and dryers.

"In the back," Sandi said, "doing what he does best."

Nicole didn't have to ask what that was. It was why she kept coming back to this laundromat. She just didn't fully believe until Sandi was so open about it that Sandi realized why business had picked up at her laundromat in the last six months—the six months since Sandi's cousin, Ryan, had come on board to help Sandi run the place.

"Well, I hope he doesn't wear himself out doing it," Nicole said.

"I bet you do," Sandi answered. Both women laughed.

Sandi wafted off to help others in the laundromat, and Nicole retreated to the window seats with her copy of a racy paperback, Raven's Possession, and fidgeted, looking occasionally, and impatiently, toward the rear of the establishment. The rattling of the dryer half way between her and the back stopped eventually. She watched an appliance store truck pull up into the handicapped space outside, two burly men come out of the cab, and the back of the truck being opened up. A commercial-grade dryer sat just inside the truck.

Nicole was engaged in watching the men lower the back gate of the truck to pull the dryer down onto a dolly, so she missed Megan coming into the front area, discovering, with a frown, that her clothes weren't in the washer, and being approached by Sandi, who explained they were in the adjacent dryer. When Nicole turned her attention back to the interior of the laundromat as the two servicemen started maneuvering the new dryer through the front door, she saw Sandi and Megan in conversation, but, beyond that, she saw that Ryan had emerged from the back. She readjusted herself into what she believed was one of her sexier poses and slapped on a coquettish smile.

God, he's gorgeous, she thought—thinking of him in a James Dean way, even though James Dean was much too before her time for her to realize it. He stood there, leaning into the frame of the wide doorway leading to the back, first through a smaller room with kitchen facilities, a table and six chairs, and a few machines in it and then into a hallway with the ladies' room and the manager's office to the left and the rarely used men's room and the room where Ryan now lived to the right. The men's room had a shower, so, with the kitchenette in the room between the main area and the office, Ryan was able to exist as the laundromat's live-in caretaker.

Ryan was the epitome of tall, dark, muscular, and handsome, with wavy hair, a shiny-toothed smile, arresting blue eyes, and a loose-fitting chambray shirt, showing tattoos on his upper arms, and low-rise worn jeans. To a woman like Megan—indeed to nearly all of the women now coming to the laundromat—he was the very, very good bad boy.

Nicole watched Ryan come out of his oh-so-sexy slouch against the doorframe and come forward into the main area as the two servicemen muscled the new dryer down the side aisle where Sandi and Megan were standing. Ryan got to the women first, and Nicole gave a little scowl as she saw him pat Megan on the hip and Megan simper at the touch.

Sandi called out to the deliver guys, "That machine goes here, where this dryer is. You can take this dryer away, please. I paid the disposal fee."

"No, don't," Ryan said in a deep, melodic baritone that had Nicole and every other woman in the place nearly swoon. "Don't take the old dryer. It still works. There's an empty slot back in the kitchen. You can move the old dryer back there."

Sandi frowned, but she didn't contradict Ryan. She just helped Megan move her hamper of now-dry clothes to the other aisle and to a folding table. As the two workmen moved to switch the dryers, Ryan walked on up to the front of the room, to the chairs lining the front window. Every woman's eye in the place followed him.

"Hey, there, Nicole. Nice to see you."

"Hello, Ryan," Nicole said in the sweetest flirty tones she could manage. "I hoped you'd be here."

"I'm always here for you, baby," Ryan said. "You want to come on back?"

When the next woman came into the laundromat with her clothes, she stopped at the now-idle washer with Nicole's clothes in it. "Why is it that the washers are all idle with clothes in them every time I come in here?" She asked of the room in general.

As Sandi came over to assist the woman in finding an empty washer, she said, "I think it's to give the washers time to chew up just one sock of a pair."

"Heard that one before," the woman said. "About a million times—but oh so true."

They both laughed, as Sandi pulled Nicole's clothes out of the washer and put them in an adjacent dryer.

* * * *

"That's a pretty blouse you have on today, sweet thing," Ryan said, as he ushered Nicole into his room. He fingered the buttons running down the front of the blouse. "Here, come here and sit on the side of the bed with me. Sorry that I don't have two chairs in here. I'll have to get another one, I guess."

"Was that Megan I saw coming out of here earlier?" Nicole asked. She did, though, sit on the side of the bed, and when Ryan sat down right beside her and put one arm around her waist, palming her hip, and turned her face to him with the other hand holding her chin, she let him kiss her on the lips. The hand left her chin and cupped her left breast. She moaned for him.

"It's such a pretty blouse that we wouldn't want to muss it up," he said. He unbuttoned her blouse while they went back to kissing. Nicole didn't object to the garment being unbuttoned and pulled off her back. He carefully draped it over the arm of the chair by the bed. He worked in a laundromat. He understood how to keep clothes as wrinkle free as possible. All of the women who came here—who had started coming here in the six months since he'd been working here—appreciated that in him. Some of them probably even told themselves that was why they were attracted to him. He was so neat and attentive. They probably wouldn't have admitted that it was because of what they touched when, like now, Ryan had unzipped his jeans, taken Nicole's hand, and moved it inside his fly.

Ryan deftly unfastened and eased Nicole's bra off her then, carefully hung it over the back of the chair, and returned to massaging her breasts. Given leave by her low moans of "yes," his hand was replaced by his lips and teeth on her nipples. She arched her back, projecting her breasts forward, reveling in his attention. Then she was gasping and beginning to pant hard. His hand, freed from her breasts, went to her knee and then up her thigh under the hem of her skirt, she having worn a skirt rather than jeans just for this possibility, and then all the way to her folds, as he pushed the rim of her panty leg hole to the side to reach his goal.

Nicole began to tremble and her body shimmered, quaking in Ryan's strong grip. She was completely under his control—just as she wanted to be. She was giving little yipping sounds as he feasted on her nipples and his fingers played among her folds, rubbed her clit, and moved inside her.

"Yes, yes, she murmured. Do it. Fuck me."

"Soon, baby, soon," Ryan murmured. He was already on the move, though, twisting her and pressing her back onto the mattress, slipping her panties off her legs—with her full cooperation—and lifting her right leg around his hips and stretched out on the bed. He moved down her body. She cried out a "Shit, yes!" as his tongue pushed in between her labia and he began lapping at her clit. Arching her back and clutching at his wavy locks, she entered a mantra of "Yes, oh God, yes. Yes, yes."

He worked her with the fingers of a hand, penetrating and spreading with two, sliding out and up, rubbing her nub as she panted hard and moaned, and then penetrating her deep again, letting the heel of the hand take over the rubbing. Unable to take any more, she cried out, "Do it. Cover me! Fuck me!"

So, he did, rising over her, positioning himself, thick and long, throbbing. As Ryan positioned himself, she turned her head toward the chair, for the first time focusing on the clothes he'd draped there. The bra she saw was pink. Her bra hadn't been pink. It was black. Then she saw them, hanging side by side over the back of the chair. A pink bra and a black bra. Megan was wearing a pink sweater.

She had a nanosecond of anger, followed by a second of realization that she shouldn't be under any illusions. She'd known he'd fuck anything that moved—and did. She was just lucky that . . .

And then she gasped and cried out as he entered her and entered her and entered her and began to pump.

Nicole's cry was loud enough to pierce the wall of Ryan's room, travel through the men's room, and then on, diminished but not evaporated, through the wall into the main laundromat room to the folding table abutting the wall.

"Did you hear that?" asked Ellen, a middle-aged woman who had been using this laundromat for years—for years before Ryan was taken on staff here. Ryan was young enough to be her son, and there had been some time since Alexis had let any man, including her husband, mess with her. She was folding her clothes at the table. Sandi was helping her.

"I heard something, yes," Sandi said. "But you know how some of these old machines squeak and groan. You should hear the rattling a dryer does that we just had replaced."

"Don't shit me, Sandi Nelson," Ellen said, with a snort. "You've been hearing those noises since your cousin started working here. You know what that noise is. I'm surprised you—"

"Nobody involved is complaining," Sandi interjected. "And you've been coming here for some time. Business was bad before Ryan came—bad enough that we were close to having to shut the place down. Look around. Business is very good now."

"Well, far be it for me to want you out of business," Ellen said with another snort. "I don't want to have to go across town to do my laundry. It's no skin off my nose. I know how difficult it is to work with cousins."

No, it's not your concern or call, Sandi thought, although she just "harumped" for Ellen's benefit and concentrated on folding a man's stretched-out undershirt that still had yellowed underarms despite just having been put through the wash. Don't be too rough on Ellen, she thought. She must be married to a real pig. She's likely out of the game and damn glad she is. And Ryan's not my cousin, she went on to muse. That's what we tell old biddies like you who like to tell us how to run our business. He's here for my pleasure as much as anyone else's.

* * * *

The laundromat was open late, but not all night. Sandi and Ryan were there, closing up at 1:00 a.m. They left some of the lights on in the interior, as Sandi thought that was good advertising—seeing the place somewhat lit up when you passed it in the night in a car. Neither of them worked the morning shift. Lauren would be in at 6:00 a.m. to open up. Sandi would show up to take over at 3:00 p.m. Ryan would come out of his room and roam around, as he liked, when he liked. He'd roam around, checking the machines then, and flirting with whoever had come here especially for that. Their "special" patrons, most of whom had only started coming here in the past six months, took a chance on when to catch him here. As a group, they probably had the cleanest clothes in the town.

When Sandi made her way to the rear of the room, on her way to the office for a last check there, she found Ryan leaning into the defective dryer, stiff armed. The dryer was just around the corner in the kitchen area off the main room—just out of sight from the main room and the glass front going all the way across the front wall of the laundromat.

"I meant to ask you why you had the delivery guys move that piece of junk here," Sandi said. "I paid for it to be scrapped. Now we—"

Ryan smiled. "You want to give me four quarters from the pouch you carry around your waist, little darlin'. I'll show you what we can use this for."

"Whatcha want quarters for?" Sandi asked, tired and a bit petulant.

Ryan snapped his fingers. "Quarters. You wanted to know why I kept this machine. For the pleasure of it."

Turns out it was for the pleasure of both of them. When he got the machine hopping up and down and to the side real well by feeding it quarters, he grabbed Sandi and pressed her, butt down, on top of the jiggling machine.

"What the hell, Ryan," she objected. But real soon she wasn't objecting anymore. Real soon she was panting and yelling. Ryan had her T-shirt and bra and jeans and panties off her, and she was splayed out on top of that old, defective commercial dryer, with Ryan crouched over her, covering her close, squeezing her tits, and with his thick and long cock up inside her, letting the machine do its thing in bouncing the two of them against each other, the machine doing more in the fuck than either one of them was doing. Sandi put her ankles on Ryan's shoulders, dug her fingernails into his biceps as he held her waist tight, and held on for a rough ride.

"Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Yessss!" Sandi was crying out, her hips rowing with the rhythm of Ryan's machine-assisted thrusts.

"As good as a mechanical bull in a whore house and a lot cheaper," Ryan yelled. "I think business is going to be picking up a lot when we add an after-closing hour to our schedule."

There were times when Sandi wondered why she let Ryan stay around the laundromat. This wasn't one of those times.