Daybreak Laundry

by

KJ Shepherd

THE SUN ALWAYS WINS. By November, the threat of hurricanes usually goes away in South Florida, and the monsoon gives way to a brief patch without the daily threat of rain. It wouldn’t be fair to call this period “autumn,” let alone “winter,” mostly out of respect for every other area in the country. It isn’t even fair to call it “dry season,” except on a purely relative level. Still, the end of the year brings the thrill and threat of chilly weather. TV meteorologists ride a manic high as they trot out well-worn banter: Well, Amalia, we all know a white Christmas isn’t in the cards, but Santa might bring us some truly wintry temps this week. Snowbirds wait until midmorning to chain smoke on the beach. Chongas and octogenarians unite in their sudden fondness for giant perfume-drenched coats. Everyone from Boca Raton to Homestead manifests the worst aspect of Miami-area culture: touting low-stakes success in the face of imaginary enemies. Millions of people clog the highways, turning their air conditioning dial to red as they crow to themselves, Nobody thought we had it in us, but here we are.

Yelena Saffitz found the whole situation moronic. She had moved down from Pittsburgh for law school a decade earlier and became ensnared in the state’s seemingly endless need for attorneys willing to handle business disputes. By the time she made partner at Rodriguez, Albern & Clark, she had already put money down on a condominium. Every year she hated the people in Miami more and more, once spending two hours sulking over how the only easily available coffee came in plastic thimbles filled with rocket fuel. But Yelena also knew that the longer she stayed in South Florida, the less she could avoid catching cultural melanoma. She once caught herself saying “hand” the way locals do – with a short “a,” hahhnd, is if she were Natalie Merchant or the Queen of Fucking England – and she refused to talk afterwards until a deposition the following morning.

To preserve some dignity during Miami holiday bedlam, the only winter wardrobe item Yelena wore was the last piece of cold-weather clothing she kept from Pennsylvania: a red LL Bean peacoat which spent roughly eleven-and-a-half months each year in storage. When local newscasters would begin their broadcasts with flimsy puns about Frosty the Snowman, Yelena knew it was time to retrieve her coat and take it to the dry cleaners. She pulled the peacoat from her closet’s uppermost shelf and shook it out. After fifteen years of surviving residence halls and cat-piss studios and eventually spaces that required credit scores and cashier’s checks, her coat was beginning to show deep wear. The colour had faded from oxblood to ketchup, and its collar and wrists were beginning to fray. Every year a different button needed to be reattached. Worst yet, it was beginning to pick up an unshakable smell from her closet – something not like its wooden shelves nor the plastic bins, but a depressingly human scent, the ghosts of Christmases past mouldering from neglect.

Yelena had paid off her mountain of law school debt soon after making partner; she could spend the afternoon along Brickell or Las Olas dropping coin on several jackets. But that idea made her want to vomit. It’s not as if Yelena fashioned some hardscrabble story about her journey or her attachment to the coat: she was a comfortably middle-class girl whose grandparents didn’t even know the Old Country. The most discernibly Russian thing about her childhood was her name, and living in Point Breeze put her close enough to the Jewish community in Squirrel Hill that she never felt too overwhelmed or annoyed by her gentile classmates during the holiday season. It was truly just a coat that worked year after year. Rather, the prospect of becoming a South Florida Woman, careening toward oversized sunglasses and Lilly Pulitzer loungewear, prints on perfume on prints on perfume on prints, gave her existential nausea. Yelena set the coat on her reading chair, making a mental note to ask the dry cleaner if they could also dye the garment closer to its original shade.

Before turning in for the night, Yelena pulled up the Trooly app to see if any men had sent messages. She had promised herself to go on at least one date per month, even if the options were underwhelming. Yelena had never sacrificed romance for her studies, dating regularly throughout college and law school, sometimes seriously, sometimes casually, never putting any pressure on herself for it to have a certain path. But the minute she settled into Miami, the ratio of cretins and sociopaths in the dating pool grew exponentially. Trooly promised “a drama-free body-positive progressive-minded sharing space,” but Yelena just found that it made men cheesier with their backhanded compliments. Her inbox was stuffed with Velveeta:

@sweetfaceraul (22, Kendall, “on that music tip for now”) – ay i bet a woman like you could teach a young buck like me a few things

;-))))

@YevgenyBoat71 (53, Keystone Islands, “crypto.”) – Wouldn’t you like to work a little less? Get a little sun? Maybe we could day trip to Bimini?

@W84MeGive2U (45, Surfside, “tenured prof econ”) – I bet I could listen to you talk about the law all day–especially if I’m looking up at from between your thighs.

@ClaytonFinsBoy (35, Hollywood, “enterprise coordinator for an exclusive experience-based lifestyle brand”) – Lawyer huh? Nice I’m going to do my MBA at Nova rn and I bet we could have some good conversations at my place if you’re into that idea

@LucasQuilian (38, Pinecrest, “nonprofit strategic planning and mission realignment”) – I’d love to take a nap with you–if I can be little spoon 🙂

Yelena muted every message except the one from the boat guy. She figured a trip to the Bahamas may be worth hearing about imaginary money all day.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Yelena sat an extra twenty minutes in traffic to head to Daybreak Laundry. As with nearly every other rush hour jam in Miami, the delay was caused by an elderly person who could no longer see over the dashboard careening across several lanes of traffic to take an exit solely based on muscle memory. This time there were no fatalities, but she’d seen at least one raisin take out a young family navigating a crosswalk. Yelena made a pact with herself to speed directly into a brick wall at the first sign of senescence. She figured if sea levels continued to rise, she could also easily drive into the ocean, but the thought of another fifty or even sixty years in this swamp always made her want to cry. As she pulled into the parking lot, she vowed that her next job would not require dry cleaning.

The clerk at Daybreak Laundry gave Yelena the same pained expression as usual. Yelena could never tell if it was a headache from cleaning chemicals, an inability to understand English, disgust at her wardrobe, or gas – but the snarl and furrowed brow always showed up when she reached the counter with an armful of shirts.

“Hi-iiii,” Yelena said in a sing-song that would sound phony regardless of anyone’s first language. “I just need these things cleaned.”

The woman on the other side of the counter wiggled her nose like a rabbit. “Yes, okay.”

Yelena couldn’t tell if that “okay” meant the woman understood the request or was just being polite, so she decided the best course was to repeat herself. “Right, so all of these, I need to have dry cleaned.”

“Yes.”

Yelena set all of the garments on the counter except her peacoat, which she held up while giving her next set of instructions: “So I would like to know if you can do two things with this? Two? Me-me gustaría saber si puedes hacer two – dos cosas con este abrigo?”

The woman gave no indication that she preferred either request, or if she actually spoke either language. “Yes.”

“Okay, so can you dye this – puedes pintarlo? – red. Can you make this – puedes hacerlo muy rojo? Muy muy red. Por favor. Thank you.” The woman coughed. Yelena set her coat down and the woman gave her a return ticket pre-stamped for the next afternoon.

“Oh, uh, puedes . . . llevarlos?”

The woman wiggled her nose again. Yelena realized nothing in Daybreak Laundry had any writing whatsoever, not even prices. The only decorations on the walls were stock photos of smiling senior citizens in sweaters and pants, the images blown out so much that pixels were visible to the naked eye, each portion printed out on regular copier paper and laminated with half-inch margins, so that every excited older person had been chopped into eighty or ninety fragments.

Yelena tried again: “Puedes . . . deliver?”

The woman’s eyes opened fully: “Delivery!” She handed Yelena an address form before writing “$50” on a separate slip.

Before getting back in her car, Yelena decided to walk to the bagel shop at the end of the strip mall. This was the first time since moving to Miami that she thought a winter front was genuinely cold, and the breeze cut through the one lightweight jacket she hadn’t dropped off for dry cleaning. She looked at the weather forecast on her phone while waiting for a lox on poppy: morning lows below 40 over the next five days, a streak she’d never seen before, only warming up after a soggy weekend. Nursing a burnt cup of coffee, she replied to the boat man: Hi Yevgeny. Honestly I could use a little time away from work, and some company in the sun sounds perfect. Before we hop on a boat to another country together, though, let’s grab dinner to see if the chemistry is right. Tomorrow night?

AFTER WORK, Yelena stopped by her neighbourhood park before going to meet new clients. The day barely warmed up, and she was still cold despite her embarrassment at her body’s newfound wimpiness, but she had grown too accustomed to working dinners to consider stopping by her home to perch. Besides, the idea of sitting in traffic just to spend thirty minutes in a condo she only tolerated felt even more depressing. She sat on a bench in the middle of the highly manicured green, wondering what she could do to kill an hour of time. None of her library books were in her work purse, and she’d already done today’s crossword on her phone. All of the podcasts and video essays she had banked up were reserved for the gym or housework later in the week. Any text message or DM she hadn’t replied to was from someone she hated. Even the Cuban coffee stands were closed for the day; the coffee would have been warming even if it kept her up until midnight. She fished a new case of Tic Tacs out of her purse and decided to eat them all, one by one, as she recalled the last time she was so bone-deep bored.

By the fifteenth or sixteenth mint, Yelena could feel a strange headache forming, her tongue now riddled with tiny sugar cuts. She pitched the remaining mints towards a bush, irritated at life being so long. The plastic candy case didn’t seem to land in the grass but, instead, against something that made a deep thud. Yelena stood and walked towards the source of the sound, mostly because she still had about twenty minutes before she could reasonably get back in her car and drive to dinner. The object appeared the same colour as the grass, and was nearly as long as she was tall. From ten paces, she could see the thing was an iguana, completely stiff. Next to its head lay her case of Tic Tacs, another thirty or so mints still inside.

Yelena’s mind began to swirl with the legal ramifications of her choices. Did anyone see me kill this thing? Are iguanas an endangered species? Is this an iguana or an even rarer species? Is it a federal offense to have killed this iguana because I was littering? Can I claim mental distress because of the weather? What was the velocity of my pitch? Am I stronger than I think I am? How much force does it take to kill a critically endangered reptile? Is anyone going to narc on me? Do I have to take them out before they take me out? Did this iguana have a mother? Will I have to take that one out, too?

She looked in every direction: not a single other person was in the park. Using her windbreaker as a makeshift tarp, she scooped the iguana off the ground, surprised at how light the animal was relative to his length. Yelena darted to her car, the iguana remaining stiff the entire time, even the eighteen-inch tail hanging out of her flimsy jacket. A breeze immediately chilled the nervous sweat on her neck, and Yelena wished she hadn’t dropped her peacoat off at Daybreak Cleaners that morning until she realized any eyewitnesses would’ve easily described a tall woman in a large red winter parka running for her life with some sort of giant lump in a bag. When she approached her car, she spent a couple minutes pretending to take a call before opening the hatchback, hoping to throw any mobile wildlife surveillance units off her track with feigned nonchalance. Yelena pried the cover off her hatchback and dropped her coat. The iguana landed on top of old legal briefs with a bloodless thunk.

She looked at her watch: 6:39. There wasn’t enough time to drive home, nor did she have any gardening tools for a clandestine burial in her narrow backyard, nor did she have any dirt in her backyard after replacing the grass with bricks the second the ink cleared on her mortgage. No reputable large-animal veterinarians would be open at this time, she figured, and any attorneys who specialized in wildlife wouldn’t be available until the next morning. Yelena calculated that she had roughly forty-five minutes in the morning before a full day in court to get the scenario fixed by calling in all of her favours. Until then, she reasoned, the iguana was still dead. It could stay in her jacket.

MEETING HER FIRM’S NEW CLIENTS stretched from one drink to four, and by the time Yelena pulled up to her condominium it was well past midnight. Her mind alternated between focusing on driving within the lines, congratulating herself on the number of billable hours she racked up by gently lobbing questions about case details into the conversation, and calculating how much water and aspirin she needed to preemptively drink to avoid a severe hangover in the morning. She crept into her bed, but not before replying Sounds good – see you tomorrow! to Yevgeny’s paragraph-long message. She didn’t actually read what he wrote. Yelena had dated enough to know when a middle-aged man was giving both directions to a restaurant and instructions on how to fully appreciate the meal he was paying for.

When she finally heard her alarm clock, it was a quarter to eight, which gave her just enough time to shower, respray her hair, throw on a sweater, and speed to the courthouse for a full day of opening arguments in the morning and cross examinations in the afternoon, pausing only to gulp styrofoam colada cups and guava pastries from the carrito de cafe in the lobby. When she finally had a moment away from both clients and opponents, it was already half past four – giving her exactly five spare minutes to use the bathroom before hauling it to South Beach for dinner. Of course he wanted to impress her with a mediocre four-figure meal by the sea: what girl doesn’t dream of being hungry after several half-assed courses?

Yelena pulled up to the valet on the hour. She waited five, then ten, then twenty minutes for Yevgeny to arrive. Rummaging through her purse, she remembered she had no more mints to pass the time – and then made a mental note to tip the valet fifty dollars so he would remain silent about the dead iguana in her car. She wondered if he could be forced to testify in court about the iguana if he saw any of its belly or scales in the rearview mirror, but then she reminded herself that valets in Miami saw dead human bodies often enough not to even consider snitching about animal corpses.

While checking local police blotters for any BOLO reports matching her description, Yevgeny emerged from a rideshare. His skin was more leathery than his Trooly profile pic suggested, but was par for men his age in the area. The shoes were alligator and his linen pants ended an inch too high. Blond wisps along the sides and back of his head were teased to give the impression of a full head of hair – an illusion that failed even with overcast skies. He didn’t remove his sunglasses, even when he kissed her hello, and even as he impatiently ushered her inside Miami Motown Madras to their ocean-view table.

When the waiter arrived, Yevgeny pointed at the menu several times, alternating between gesturing towards Yelena and himself. For a moment, she was worried his English was better in text than in person, and that he’d somehow mistakenly seen in her name a fellow Russophone. But when he finally spoke, his English was the same as hers – the same studied regionless tone:

“You look tired.” He kept his glasses on.

For the first time all day, Yelena realized that she had nothing to say. She nodded and drank some water.

MIAMI MOTOWN MADRAS specialized in “Soul Style Latinoamericano Indian SubContinental Fusion,” which Yelena soon realized meant they did three cuisines poorly. The gunpowder ceviche tasted slimy and the aloo gobi grits came with a knob of unmelted butter. Her chai was somehow too spicy and too bland, filling her mouth with nothing but black pepper and tepid milk. Yevgeny ate each dish without any indication of whether or not he thought it was good, let alone caring what she thought. Every underhand pitch she gave to start conversation was swatted away with a clunky one-sentence reply (“How long have you lived in Miami?” “1993.”; “Have you always worked in investing?” “Yes.”; “Where did you get your alligator shoes?” “Crocodile – and Armani.”) She’d had better responses from the hostile witness she’d handled that afternoon. At one point, she dropped her phone as an excuse to roll her eyes under the table.

About an hour into the meal, Yelena poked at her hot honey chicken and black bean curry, desperate for any reason to avoid finishing her plate. “So, are you reading anything decent lately?”

Yevgeny looked up. “Yeah, it’s kind of a technical book really. It’s called Biohacks for Big Gains by Terrence Halt. This guy wrote the master guide on crypto – Part-Time Bitcoin, Full-Time Lifestyle. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it – it’s pretty technical, like I said. After mastering that sphere, he got into perfecting his body and finding ways to reverse the aging process. Get this: the author is like 51, 52, but says an independent lab verified he now has the same testosterone levels as his youngest son, who’s still at Yale. Reversed his hair loss, no more fine lines on his forehead, 8 percent body fat, benching over 300 – and bedroom performance like he’s still in his twenties.”

Yelena wondered what Yevgeny thought she was supposed to do with information about a random middle-aged author’s sexual stamina, but she instead decided to do what she did whenever a man left no useful way to make genuine conversation: continue to make it about him. “So have you started any of the advice from the book yet?”

Yevgeny flashed a look of disgust before launching into all things process. “Well, first, it’s not advice – that would suggest that these are just general vague guidelines that anybody could half-assedly follow. Like I said, this is technical information. This guy is giving you a step-by-step on how he cracked the code. Of course, every man is different, so he tells everyone to get their T – their testosterone – levels measured before starting on the process. If a man is practically a hermaphrodite with his T levels, it’s not going to be the exact same formula as a man who has healthy T levels. But, yes, I’ve been following Halt’s advice.” He put down his drink to start ticking accomplishments on his fingers. “I’ve switched to a morning routine of maca and biotin before weightlifting and kickboxing sessions. In the afternoons, I take chelated zinc alongside folic acid for a powerhouse combo that lets me do futures trading even more efficiently. Before dinner, everything is paleo – that’s a no-brainer – but before dinner I do ashwagandha root and CBD serum. That levels me off until bedtime. No more melatonin necessary. In the past three months, I’ve put on five pounds of muscle, dropped eight pounds of fat, set new PRs – personal records – for bench press, leg press, and deadlifts. Plus, for what it’s worth, my volume has more than doubled at the end of every bedroom performance.” He raised his eyebrows while shoveling a chunk of seafood into his mouth.

Yelena understood that the only good question – How, exactly, did you measure your increased production of semen? – was the only question that had to remain unasked. She continued to feign interest, driven strictly by the prospect of a weekend in Bimini. “It seems like this Halt guy is sort of a role model for you, then.”

“Well, I don’t know if grown men should have role models. That’s probably something best left to boys and men without an inner self. But he is a guru, and a visionary. You could say an innovator and a truth-teller. Certainly the only person whose insights have given me proven financial and physical success. I just signed up for his conference this winter in Vail – including the upgrade for his morning ski lift chats.”

She desperately imagined water crashing against golden Bahamian sands. “Yeah, I feel like there’s a couple authors I look up to in some way. Actually, I just finished a book by Olivia Gutierrez – it was a memoir about her life in L.A. in the 80s. I couldn’t put it down. There were a few moments where I thought, ‘Geez, I wish I could’ve written that sentence.’”

Yevgeny laughed out of his nose. “What does that have to do with anything I just said?”

Seashells. Sand dollars. Conch salad. “Well, you were talking about a writer you admire who wrote a new book, and then I did the same thing.”

“Admire? My dear, you just described jealousy.”

“Jealousy?” Seahorses. “What do you mean ‘jealousy’?” Calypso music and tourist trinkets. “I was discussing loving something precisely because I couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just writing. If you wanted to do it, you could just sit down and write. I thought you apparently wrote a lot for your work – it’s no different.”

Starfish, pelicans, flamingo pink stucco: nothing worked anymore. “What would make you think I could write a memoir about being a Mexican lesbian artist who survived attempted murder forty-something years ago?”

He waved his hand to flit away the conversation. “You creative types are supposed to be the ones with imaginations, but it seems like the real dreamers have been my kind of people all along.” Yevgeny motioned the waiter over to order another vodka soda with lime.

THE MEAL WOUND DOWN after a few more minutes. Yelena was grateful that her date’s dietary astrophysics clearly didn’t allow for dessert. Yevgeny handed the waiter his credit card without looking at the bill, which impressed her a little until she noticed he also signed the bill without doing any tip math on the receipt. She planned to walk out without even a goodbye until he placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Look, I hate to ask you for a favour on our first date, but my phone seems to be acting up.” The tone in his voice was almost pathetic. She tried to maintain eye contact but she could tell in her peripheral vision that his phone was fine. “I can’t use any of the rideshare apps. Would you be able to drive me to the marina? My car is there – and I could even show you the boat.”

At that moment she wanted to burn her passport, but most marinas were on the way back to her condominium and she also needed a convenient place to dump the iguana corpse. Yelena worried her car might reek but then she realized this would ensure that she never had to talk to this man again. “Of course,” she said with a smile while flagging the valet. The afternoon air was still unpleasantly cool by Miami standards but a few degrees warmer than the TV meteorologists had predicted. Still, Yelena was eager to get in her car and crank the heat – disgusting smells or otherwise.

The valet arrived with her car a few moments later, and the general nonchalance on his face gave her a giant sense of relief. Clearly there was nothing he detected, so the iguana must have been slow to decompose. She allowed herself the idea that the iguana had been dead for a while, so maybe it was already a petrified husk. Regardless, she slipped the valet a fat tip as she shook his hand.

Before heading off, she connected her phone to her car’s Bluetooth and turned the air to a toasty 78. She opened up Spotify and flashed the screen at Yevgeny. “Any requests?”

“I’ve never been a music person. Too distracting.”

“Fair enough.”

“Unless you have The Eagles. My investment partner told me about them.”

“Yeah, I don’t think they’ve made it to Spotify yet – probably soon.” She put the car in drive and peeled out. “So, which harbour is it again?”

“Well, actually, it’s at Haulover. I was doing an afternoon reconnection meditation with my men’s bonding group and we lost track of time.”

Yelena repressed a scream. She had hoped that he’d name any of the dozen docks in that part of Miami Beach. Instead, he asked her to drive forty-five minutes north to the only nude beach in the area, where he had spent hours admiring the ball stink of other fifty-something men who thought the greatest problem in society was that too many women knew calculus. “Fine.”

The two drove without music or conversation for nearly a half hour, the only noise in the car the steady fan of the heater and Yevgeny’s congested breathing as he slid into a nap. She made a mental list of all the places at Haulover where she could drop both Yevgeny and the dead iguana without having to take off more than her trousers. As rush-hour Collins slowed to a crawl, she thought about which of the men on Trooly she should have sent a message to instead. The economics professor seemed performatively submissive, but at least he’d have enough money for a cab. That college kid wouldn’t have had money for a cab, but he would’ve known to be polite until it was time to put out. The nonprofit strategist would have barely put out, but he seemed to like naps. The car was now pleasantly balmy. She could desperately use a nap.

From the driver’s seat, each block of Miami Beach looked uglier to Yelena than the last, every boutique hotel and knockoff Art Deco building and hypercoloured glass fixture a testament to the international economics of brainless consumption and cocaine. At least everyone in Pittsburgh knew ugliness was part of the city’s charm. The combination of architectural beauty and industrial grime was the appeal itself – Flashdance couldn’t have taken place in any other city. Every movie about Miami was a commentary on how there were only three legal things to do in Miami. Even Las Vegas acknowledged the need for buffets. She realized she could also use an actual dinner.

Yelena approached the intersection of Collins and Normandy, dreaming of the popcorn chicken she would order that night, eating like a feral hound under the covers, as her car began to scream: “INCOMING CALL FROM DAYBREAK LAUNDRY. INCOMING CALL FROM DAYBREAK LAUNDRY. ANSWER?”

Yevgeny bolted awake and screamed back at the car to shut up while Yelena yelled in the general direction of both man and machine. At that moment a rustling began in her hatchback. What Yelena failed to notice during all of her winters in Miami, making fun of the local news and its viewership of local idiots, were the annual warnings not to touch reptiles that looked frozen or dead, let alone take them indoors. The creatures had merely gone into torpor to preserve energy, and would be their normal selves once the sun came out again – or, less ideally, if kept in a well-heated car.

The iguana sprung onto the right rear headrest and began to hiss. Yevgeny screamed even louder as he pushed himself toward the windshield. Yelena slammed on the breaks as she jammed her steering wheel to the right, sending the hatchback spinning in the middle of the intersection. Cars dodged left and right to avoid this afternoon’s idiot. When the car came to a stop, Yevgeny ran out without closing the door, continuing to yell as he dodged dozens of senior citizens in land boats. The iguana quickly followed, convinced it had found the dinner of a lifetime, all until an octogenarian attempting to avoid Yevgeny swerved, taking the reptile out with his Cadillac. Horns began to surround the hatchback on all sides as drivers attempted to make their dinner reservations without slowing down. Yelena put the car in park and wondered if it was too late to cancel her dry-cleaning delivery.