The fluorescent lights hummed their familiar tune when Yuki pushed through the glass door at eleven-fifty-eight. Always two minutes early. Never late, never more than five minutes early. She nodded at Dmitri, who sat in his usual plastic chair by the folding tables, his Russian newspaper spread before him like a map of some distant country.
"Evening," she said.
He looked up, nodded. "Evening."
Marcus was still there, counting the register. His Knicks jersey hung loose on his thin frame. He'd lost weight these past months. His mother's chemo, Yuki knew, though he'd never said so directly. She'd overheard him on the phone once, arguing with the insurance company.
"Slow night," Marcus said, not looking up from the bills. "Machine seven's acting up again. Makes a sound like it's dying when it hits the spin cycle."
"I'll watch it," Yuki said.
"Yeah, well." Marcus shrugged. "Do what you can."
He left without saying goodbye. The bell above the door chimed once, then silence except for the hum of the lights and the distant rumble of a dryer in the back.
Yuki went through her routine. Check the soap dispensers. Wipe down the folding tables. Empty the lint traps. Count the quarters in the change machine. Dmitri stayed at his table, reading. Sometimes she caught him moving his lips along with the words, like he was tasting something from home.
At one-thirty, a couple came in dragging two overstuffed laundry bags. Young, maybe mid-twenties. The woman had been crying; mascara traced dark rivers down her cheeks. The man kept touching her shoulder, her arm, like he was making sure she was still there.
"Which machines?" the woman asked.
Yuki pointed to the row along the far wall. "Those ones are the biggest."
They loaded their clothes in silence. The woman sat on the bench and stared at the spinning drum like it might reveal something important. The man stood beside her, hands in his pockets.
After they left, Dmitri folded his newspaper.
"Coffee?" he asked.
"Okay."
He walked to the back room where they kept the hot plate and the jar of instant coffee. His walk had changed lately. Slower, more careful, like he was navigating uncertain terrain. Yuki had noticed him checking his blood sugar last week, pricking his finger with a small device he kept in his jacket pocket.
He returned with two styrofoam cups. The coffee was terrible, always was, but it was warm and it was something to do with their hands.
"My sister," Dmitri said, then stopped.
Yuki waited. Sometimes he did this—started to say something about his life, then thought better of it. She understood. There were things that were safer left unsaid.
"She's sick," he finally continued. "Back home. In Kyiv."
Yuki nodded. Took a sip of coffee.
"I send money," he said. "Every month. Twenty years I send money."
The dryer in the back clicked off. Yuki stood to check it but Dmitri waved her down.
"I'll get it."
She watched him walk to the back, returning with an armload of someone's forgotten clothes. He began folding them methodically, creating neat squares and rectangles on the table. A child's dinosaur shirt. Women's jeans. Men's boxers with cartoon characters on them.
"Someone will come back for these," he said, though they both knew it wasn't always true. The lost-and-found box in the back was overflowing.
At three, the fluorescents flickered. Just for a second, but enough to make them both look up.
"Storm coming," Dmitri said.
Yuki hadn't checked the weather. She never did anymore. Weather happened or it didn't. You got wet or you stayed dry. It didn't much matter when you worked all night and slept all day with the blinds drawn tight.
A man came in around three-thirty. Tall, broad shoulders, wearing an expensive-looking coat despite the warm night. Yuki's body tensed before her mind caught up. Not him. Different walk, different shoulders. Still, she moved behind the counter, putting something solid between them.
"Change for a twenty?" the man asked.
She opened the register, counted out the bills. He took them without saying thanks, went to the change machine. Fed the bills in one by one. The quarters rattled down like rain.
After he left with his pockets heavy with coins, Dmitri looked at her.
"You okay?"
"Yes."
But her hands were shaking slightly. She pressed them flat against the counter.
"My husband," Dmitri said suddenly. "Ex-husband. He used to—" He made a gesture with his fist, then opened his hand like he was releasing something. "This was in Kyiv. Before I came here."
Yuki looked at him. He'd never mentioned a husband before.
"Nobody talks about it," he said. "Men who hit men. Like it doesn't happen. Like we're supposed to be stronger than that."
She wanted to say something, but the words felt too big for her mouth.
"I'm sorry," she managed.
He shrugged. "Long time ago."
But she knew that wasn't how it worked. Time didn't heal things like that. It just put distance between you and the last blow, and distance could shrink to nothing with the wrong word, the wrong footstep, the wrong cologne in a crowded subway car.
At four, she checked machine seven. Sure enough, when it hit the spin cycle, it screamed like something being torn apart. She hit the stop button, waited, started it again. Same sound. She made a note in the log book: Machine 7 needs repair.
Dmitri was reading again, but she could tell he wasn't really seeing the words. His eyes stayed on the same spot too long.
"The letter came yesterday," he said without looking up. "From Immigration."
She waited.
"I have to go to Federal Plaza next month. For a hearing."
"Will you go?"
He laughed, short and bitter. "Where else would I go? I'm sixty-three years old. I have diabetes. My English is shit after twenty years. Where would I go?"
"Your English is good."
"For here, maybe. For laundromat and grocery store and sending money to Western Union. But for lawyers? For judges?"
The couple from earlier came back. Their clothes were done. They folded them in silence, the woman moving mechanically, the man watching her like she might break.
After they left, Yuki found herself thinking about her apartment. The studio in Flushing she'd rented under a name that wasn't quite hers. The three deadbolts on the door. The baseball bat beside the bed. The phone that never rang because she'd never given anyone the number.
"I was a teacher," she said suddenly. "In Osaka. High school mathematics."
Dmitri looked up from his paper.
"I liked it," she continued. "The logic of it. The way everything had rules and the rules always worked."
"What happened?"
"I got married."
That wasn't the whole answer, but it was enough. He nodded like he understood, and maybe he did.
At five, a group of young men came in, drunk or high or both. They were loud, laughing at jokes that weren't funny, bumping into machines. One of them kicked a dryer door closed, and the sound echoed through the space.
"Hey," one called to Yuki. "Hey, mama-san. You work here all night?"
She didn't answer, but he came closer anyway. Dmitri stood up. Not aggressive, just stood, and suddenly his size was apparent. He'd seemed smaller sitting down, older, but standing he was still six feet tall with shoulders that remembered younger days.
"Machine's broken," he said to the young man. "Number seven. Makes bad sound."
It was a nothing statement, but the way he said it, calm and direct, shifted something in the air. The young man looked at him, at Yuki, back at him.
"Yeah, whatever, old man."
They left without doing laundry. The bell chimed and then it was quiet again.
"Thank you," Yuki said.
"It's nothing."
But it wasn't nothing. They both knew that.
At six, the sky began to lighten outside. Not sunrise yet, but the promise of it. The darkest part of the night was over. Soon the morning shift would arrive, the regular customers with their regular loads, and the laundromat would transform into something else, something that belonged to the day.
"I have savings," Yuki said. "Not much, but some."
Dmitri looked at her, confused.
"For a lawyer. For your hearing."
"No." He shook his head. "No, I couldn't."
"It's not charity. It's—" She searched for the word. "It's practical. You work. I work. We need to keep working."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I'll think about it," he said finally.
Marcus arrived at six-thirty, earlier than usual. He looked tired, older than his thirty-two years.
"How's your mother?" Dmitri asked.
Marcus shrugged. "You know. Good days and bad days."
He started counting the register. Yuki gathered her things—purse, jacket, the small container of pepper spray she kept in her pocket.
"Machine seven?" Marcus asked.
"Still broken."
"Yeah, figured."
Outside, the morning was humid and already warming. Dmitri walked out with her. They stood for a moment on the sidewalk, watching the street wake up. A food truck was setting up on the corner. A man in a suit hurried past, coffee in one hand, phone in the other.
"Same time tonight?" Dmitri asked.
"Same time."
They went their separate ways—him to the subway, her to the bus. But at the corner, she turned back. He was still visible, walking slowly but steadily, his shoulders straight despite everything.
That night, she arrived at eleven-fifty-eight. Dmitri was in his chair, newspaper spread before him. But there was something else on the table too. A small paper bag.
"What's this?"
"Look."
Inside were two fresh rolls from the Russian bakery on Queens Boulevard. Still warm.
"Thought we could use better than instant coffee," he said.
She sat down across from him. Broke one of the rolls in half. The bread was dense and dark, with seeds she couldn't identify. It tasted like earth and grain and something indefinably alive.
"It's good," she said.
"My grandmother's recipe. Or close to it. The baker, he's from Odessa. Knows the old ways."
They ate in silence, comfortable now in their routine. The laundromat hummed around them—washers filling, dryers spinning, fluorescent lights buzzing their eternal song.
A woman came in dragging a cart full of laundry. She was perhaps seventy, Chinese, wearing house slippers and a faded housecoat. She loaded her clothes with practiced efficiency, then sat down with a paperback novel.
"Every Tuesday," Dmitri said quietly. "Three loads. Always sits in the same spot."
Yuki had noticed her too. The woman was part of the landscape of their nights, like the vending machines and the poster advertising a laundry detergent that the place didn't even sell.
"Do you ever think about going back?" Yuki asked. "To Ukraine?"
"Sometimes. But it's not the same place I left. And I'm not the same person."
She understood that. Osaka existed in her memory like a photograph—static, unchanging, impossible to return to.
"Besides," Dmitri continued, "my life is here now. Such as it is."
Machine seven started its death rattle. Yuki stood to turn it off, but the Chinese woman was already there, pressing the stop button with a practiced motion.
"Every week, same thing," the woman said in accented English. "Why they don't fix?"
"No money," Yuki said.
The woman snorted. "Always no money for fixing. Always money for the boss's new car."
She wasn't wrong. Marcus had mentioned once that the owner drove a Mercedes, though he'd never seen the inside of his own laundromat.
The woman went back to her book. Dmitri returned to his newspaper. Yuki wiped down the already-clean counters. The night continued its slow progression toward morning.
At two, Dmitri's phone rang. He looked at the screen, frowned, walked outside to answer. Through the glass, Yuki could see him pacing, one hand pressed to his forehead. The conversation didn't last long.
When he came back in, his face was gray.
"My sister," he said. "She's in the hospital."
Yuki waited.
"Pneumonia. Her neighbor called. Said I should—" He stopped, swallowed. "Said I should come if I can."
But they both knew he couldn't. If he left, he couldn't come back. Twenty years of building a life here, however marginal, would be erased.
"I'm sorry," Yuki said.
He sat down heavily. Put his head in his hands. She wanted to comfort him but didn't know how. Physical contact felt too intimate, words too inadequate. So she did the only thing she could think of—she made him coffee. The terrible instant kind, but with two sugars, the way he liked it.
He took it without looking up. "Thank you."
The Chinese woman finished her laundry, loaded it back into her cart, and left. They were alone again.
"She practically raised me," Dmitri said. "Our parents died when I was ten. She was eighteen. Could have done anything with her life, but she stayed. Took care of me."
"And now you take care of her."
"From five thousand miles away. Some caretaker."
"You do what you can."
He laughed bitterly. "What I can. Twenty years of minimum wage jobs. Twenty years of looking over my shoulder. And for what? So I can send her three hundred dollars a month? So she can die alone while I fold someone else's underwear?"
There was nothing to say to that, so Yuki said nothing. Sometimes silence was more honest than words.
At four, a couple of teenagers came in. They looked exhausted, strung out, their clothes dirty and mismatched. They counted out quarters from a plastic bag, had just enough for one small load.
"Can we just, like, sit here for a while?" the girl asked. "After our clothes are done?"
Yuki looked at Dmitri. He shrugged.
"Don't make mess," Yuki said.
They nodded eagerly, grateful for even this small kindness. They sat close together on the bench, the girl's head on the boy's shoulder, both of them half-asleep before their wash cycle finished.
"Runaways," Dmitri said quietly.
"Maybe."
"We should call someone."
"Who? Police? Foster care?"
He didn't answer. They both knew those calls rarely made things better.
At five-thirty, the teenagers left, their single bag of clean clothes held between them like something precious. The girl turned back at the door.
"Thanks," she said. "For letting us stay."
After they were gone, Dmitri stood and stretched. His joints popped audibly.
"I'm going to take the money," he said. "Your offer. For the lawyer."
"Good."
"I'll pay you back."
"I know."
But they both knew he probably wouldn't be able to, and that it didn't matter.
Marcus arrived at six-forty-five, late and harried.
"Sorry, sorry. Mom had a bad night."
"It's okay," Yuki said.
"Machine seven?"
"Still broken."
"Christ. I'll call the repair guy again. Not that he'll come."
Outside, the morning was overcast, threatening rain. Dmitri walked with her to the corner.
"I'll try to call my sister today," he said. "If the hospital will let me talk to her."
"I hope she's okay."
"Me too."
They stood there for a moment, two people who'd become something like friends without ever really trying.
"You know," Dmitri said, "I never asked. Why nights? Why not work days like normal people?"
Yuki thought about how to answer. The truth was complicated—days meant visibility, meant the chance of being seen, being found. Nights were safer, darker, a place where people like her could exist in the margins.
"I like the quiet," she said finally.
He nodded. "Me too."
The bus was coming. She raised her hand in goodbye and hurried to catch it. From her seat, she could see him still standing on the corner, looking older and more fragile in the gray morning light.
That night, she arrived to find machine seven surrounded by yellow tape and an "Out of Order" sign. Marcus was arguing with someone on the phone.
"I don't care if it's not cost-effective," he was saying. "We're losing customers."
He hung up, saw her watching.
"Owner says it's cheaper to just have one less machine than fix it."
"He's probably right," Dmitri said from his chair.
Marcus left without his usual counting of the register. "It's all there," he said. "I trust you."
The night was busier than usual. A group of nursing assistants coming off the late shift at the hospital. A taxi driver who said his wife kicked him out and he grabbed whatever clothes he could. A young mother with three sleeping children in a stroller, doing laundry while they slept because it was the only time she could.
Dmitri helped the mother carry her bags to the machines while Yuki watched the children. The oldest, maybe five, woke briefly and looked at her with serious dark eyes.
"Are you the laundry lady?" he asked.
"Yes."
"My mom says you're nice."
"Your mom is nice too."
The boy smiled and went back to sleep.
Around three, Dmitri's phone rang again. He looked at it, then at Yuki.
"It's my neighbor. In Kyiv."
He answered in Ukrainian, his voice careful, controlled. The conversation was short. When he hung up, he sat back down slowly, like his bones had turned to glass.
"She's gone," he said.
Yuki sat across from him. Reached across the table and took his hand. His skin was rough, calloused from years of work.
"When?"
"An hour ago. Two hours? Time zones, I can never—" He stopped. "It doesn't matter."
They sat like that for a while, her hand over his, the laundromat humming around them. The young mother finished her laundry, gathered her children, whispered thank you as she left.
"I should feel something," Dmitri said. "Shouldn't I? But I just feel... empty."
"That's feeling something."
"Is it?"
She squeezed his hand. "Yes."
At four-thirty, he stood abruptly.
"I need air."
He walked outside. Through the window, she watched him pace the sidewalk, occasionally stopping to look up at the lightening sky. A few early commuters passed him, giving him a wide berth.
When he came back in, his eyes were red but dry.
"The funeral is Thursday. Thursday there, Wednesday here, I don't know. I can't go."
"I know."
"Twenty years I haven't seen her. And now I never will."
Machine three buzzed. Someone's clothes were done but they hadn't come back for them. Yuki moved them to a dryer, started it with her own quarters. It was something to do.
"She used to make these dumplings," Dmitri said. "Vareniki. With potatoes and onions. Every Sunday when I was a kid. I've tried to make them here, but they never taste right. Wrong potatoes, maybe. Or wrong onions. Or just wrong place."
"Tell me about her."
So he did. Stories about growing up in Soviet Ukraine, about his sister teaching him to read, about the small apartment they shared after their parents died. About her job at the textile factory, how she saved every kopeck to send him to technical school. About the letters she wrote him after he left, always ending with "Come home safe."
By the time Marcus arrived, Dmitri had talked himself hoarse. Marcus took one look at them and didn't ask about the register or machine seven or anything else.
"You okay?" he asked Dmitri.
"Family stuff."
Marcus nodded. "I get it. Take care of yourself, man."
Outside, the morning was bright and clear. The storm that had been threatening never materialized.
"Will you come to my apartment?" Dmitri asked suddenly. "Just for tea. I don't want to be alone right now."
It was the first time either of them had suggested meeting outside the laundromat. Yuki hesitated, old fears rising. But this wasn't about her fears.
"Okay."
His apartment was a fifteen-minute walk, a studio in a building that had seen better days. But it was clean, organized. A single bed, neatly made. A small table with two chairs. A hot plate and mini-fridge. On the wall, a calendar with pictures of Ukraine and below it, a faded photograph of a young woman with Dmitri's eyes.
"That's her," he said. "Oksana. Ten years ago. Last photo she sent."
He made tea with an electric kettle, real tea with loose leaves in a strainer.
"From the Russian store," he said. "Same one as the bread."
They sat at his small table. Through the window, they could see the street filling with morning activity.
"Thank you," he said. "For coming. For listening."
"It's what friends do."
He looked surprised. "Is that what we are? Friends?"
"I think so. Yes."
He smiled, the first real smile she'd seen from him.
"I think so too."
She stayed another hour, until exhaustion started pulling at her. He walked her to the subway station.
"Tonight?" he asked.
"Tonight."
That evening, she arrived at eleven-fifty-eight to find something different. A new person behind the counter—a young woman with bright purple hair and nervous energy.
"Where's Marcus?"
"Oh, he quit. I'm Ashley. Just started today. Well, tonight. Is it day or night? I can never tell with overnight shifts."
Yuki looked around for Dmitri. His chair was empty, his newspaper absent.
"Was there an older man here? Russian accent?"
"Oh yeah, he was here earlier. Said to tell you he'd be back. Had to deal with something."
Yuki felt a flutter of panic. Had immigration come for him? Had something happened?
But at twelve-thirty, he walked through the door carrying two coffee cups from the diner down the street.
"Real coffee," he said. "Thought we deserved it."
They sat at his usual table. The new girl, Ashley, chattered nervously in the background, talking to herself or maybe to them, it was hard to tell.
"Marcus's mother took a turn for the worse," Dmitri explained. "He had to quit to take care of her full-time."
"That's hard."
"Yes. But at least he can be there. At least he has that choice."
They drank their coffee—it was better than instant but not by much. Ashley eventually settled down, found her rhythm with the register and the machines.
"I've been thinking," Dmitri said. "About my sister. About choices."
Yuki waited.
"I want to stay here. Even if they deport me, I want to try to come back. This is my home now. This laundromat, this terrible coffee, this—" he gestured at the space between them, "—whatever this is."
"It's friendship."
"Yes. It is."
A customer came in, an elderly man with a walker, moving slowly but determinedly. Ashley jumped up to help him, but he waved her off.
"I've been doing my own laundry for eighty years," he announced. "Not stopping now."
They watched him navigate the machines with practiced ease.
"I want to tell you something," Yuki said. "About why I work nights. About what I'm running from."
"You don't have to."
"I know. But I want to."
So she told him. About her ex-husband, the escalating violence, the night she finally left with nothing but the clothes she was wearing. About the months of hiding, the constant fear, the reasons she couldn't go to the police.
"He's connected," she said. "His family has money, lawyers. And I'm here on a marriage visa. If I divorce him, I lose my status."
"So we're both illegal," Dmitri said with a dark laugh.
"I suppose we are."
"A fine pair."
Ashley called over to them. "Hey, is machine seven always broken?"
"Yes," they said in unison.
"Weird. In my last job, we had a copier like that. Broken for three years. They just worked around it."
"That's what we do," Dmitri said. "Work around things."
The night continued. Ashley gradually stopped talking, settled into the rhythm. Customers came and went. The machines spun their eternal cycles.
At three, Dmitri pulled out his phone and showed Yuki a photo. It was a document, all in Ukrainian.
"What is it?"
"My sister's will. My neighbor sent it. She left me everything. Not that there's much—the apartment, some savings. Maybe five thousand dollars total."
"That's something."
"It's enough for a better lawyer. A real one, not legal aid."
"That's good."
"Maybe. We'll see."
At four, the teenagers from the night before returned. Same plastic bag of quarters, same exhausted faces.
"Is it okay if we—" the girl started.
"Yes," Yuki said. "Just be quiet."
They nodded gratefully, started their small load.
"Every night now," Dmitri observed.
"Yes."
"We should do something."
"Like what?"
He thought about it. "I don't know. But something."
Ashley, who had been listening, piped up. "There's a youth shelter on Roosevelt. My cousin stayed there. It's not great, but it's something."
The teenagers were already half-asleep on their bench. Tomorrow, Yuki thought. Tomorrow they could talk about shelters. Tonight, let them rest.
Marcus never came back. His replacement arrived at six-thirty, a middle-aged Dominican man named Carlos who counted the register twice and asked suspicious questions about everything.
"Where's the log book?"
"There," Yuki pointed.
"Why's machine seven broken?"
"It's been broken for months."
"Why don't they fix it?"
"Ask the owner."
Carlos grumbled but eventually settled down. Yuki and Dmitri left together, walking into a morning that smelled like rain and exhaust and the bread from the Korean bakery next door.
"Coffee?" Dmitri asked. "Real coffee, from the diner?"
"I should sleep."
"So should I. But coffee first?"
They went to the diner. Sat in a booth with cracked vinyl seats. Ordered coffee and, on impulse, eggs and toast. The food was basic but hot, and they were hungrier than they'd realized.
"I have my hearing in two weeks," Dmitri said.
"I know."
"Will you come? To wait outside, I mean. They won't let you in."
"Of course."
They ate in comfortable silence. Around them, the diner filled with the morning rush—construction workers, medical residents, people starting or ending their days.
"We're like ghosts," Dmitri said. "Living in the spaces between other people's lives."
"Maybe. But ghosts together."
He smiled. "Ghosts together."
They paid the check, split it precisely down the middle despite his protests. Outside, the rain had started, gentle but insistent.
"See you tonight," he said.
"See you tonight."
She took the bus home to her studio apartment with its triple-locked door. Lay in her narrow bed listening to the rain against the window. Thought about Dmitri at his sister's photo, about the teenagers with their bag of quarters, about Marcus and his dying mother, about all the ways people took care of each other or failed to.
That night, she arrived to find the laundromat transformed. Someone had fixed the overhead light that had been flickering for months. The floors had been mopped with something that smelled like lemons. And machine seven—machine seven had a new "Out of Order" sign, this one laminated and official-looking.
"Carlos did all this?" she asked Ashley, who was back for her second night.
"Yeah, he's intense. But good, I think. He actually cares."
Dmitri arrived at midnight, apologizing for being late.
"Immigration lawyer," he explained. "Papers to sign."
"How did it go?"
"She says I have a chance. Not a good chance, but a chance."
They settled into their routine, but there was an undercurrent of change. Ashley had brought a radio, was playing jazz quietly behind the counter. The teenagers arrived at their usual time, but tonight they had more clothes, looked slightly less desperate.
"We got into the shelter," the girl said. "The one you told us about."
"I didn't—" Yuki started, then saw Ashley give a small wave.
"It's not perfect," the boy added. "But it's better."
They did their laundry, two loads this time. When they went to pay for the second, Yuki waved them off.
"On the house."
After they left, Dmitri looked at her. "We can't afford to give away washes."
"Once won't hurt."
"No," he agreed. "Once won't hurt."
At three, a woman came in. Well-dressed, professional, pulling an expensive suitcase. She looked around the laundromat with barely concealed disgust.
"Is there a manager?"
"Not at night," Yuki said carefully.
"Well, someone must be in charge."
"What do you need?"
The woman sighed dramatically. "My flight was cancelled. I'm stuck in this... neighborhood... until tomorrow. The hotel's laundry service is broken. I need these clothes cleaned immediately."
She opened her suitcase, revealing what looked like a week's worth of designer clothing.
"It'll take two hours minimum," Yuki said.
"That's unacceptable."
Dmitri stood up. "There's a 24-hour dry cleaner in Manhattan. Probably more your speed."
The woman looked at him—his worn clothes, his tired face, his careful dignity—and something shifted in her expression.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "It's been a long day. Two hours is fine."
She loaded her clothes carefully, paid with a credit card, sat in the corner with her phone. After an hour, she approached Yuki.
"I'm sorry about earlier. I was rude."
"It's okay."
"No, it's not." She paused. "My father worked nights. Janitor at an office building. I swore I'd never... but here I am, being exactly the kind of person who made his life harder."
She left a twenty-dollar tip when her clothes were done. Yuki tried to refuse it, but the woman insisted.
"For the teenagers," she said. "I saw you help them."
After she left, Dmitri shook his head. "Twenty dollars to clear her conscience."
"Twenty dollars is twenty dollars."
"True."
They split it, ten each, though both knew it would probably end up back in the register one way or another.
The rest of the night was quiet. Ashley dozed behind the counter. Dmitri read a book he'd borrowed from the library—English, not Russian, something about climate change. Yuki cleaned what Carlos had already cleaned, finding comfort in the repetition.
At five, Dmitri's phone rang. He looked at the number, confused.
"Unknown," he said, then answered. "Hello?"
His face changed as he listened. He said something in Ukrainian, then English, then Ukrainian again. When he hung up, his hands were shaking.
"My cousin," he said. "From Kharkiv. He's here. In New York. He just arrived, has refugee status because of the war. He wants to see me."
"That's good?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I haven't seen him in twenty-five years. He was a kid when I left."
"Family is family."
"Sometimes. Sometimes family is just people you used to know."
But he agreed to meet the cousin the next day. Yuki could see the war in his head—wanting connection but fearing it too, the way all of them feared anything that might disturb their carefully balanced lives.
Carlos arrived early, five-forty-five, with coffee and donuts for everyone.
"You don't have to—" Ashley started.
"I know. But night shift is hard. We should take care of each other."
It was such a simple statement, but it hung in the air like a promise.
Walking out together, Dmitri told Yuki about his plans to meet his cousin.
"Will you come?" he asked. "I don't want to go alone."
"Of course."
They met the cousin at a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village. He was younger than Yuki expected, maybe thirty-five, with Dmitri's eyes but without the weight of years. His name was Petro, and he spoke English with the careful precision of someone who'd learned it recently and well.
"Uncle," he said, embracing Dmitri. "I thought I'd never see you again."
They talked in a mixture of Ukrainian and English, Petro explaining his journey, the refugee program, his plans to bring his wife and daughter once he was settled. He had skills—computer programming—and already had job interviews lined up.
"You could apply too," he told Dmitri. "For refugee status. Things are different now with the war."
Dmitri shook his head. "I've been gone too long. I'm not a refugee anymore. I'm just... undocumented."
"But family reunification—"
"It's complicated."
Petro looked between Dmitri and Yuki, seemed to understand something.
"This is home now," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
They parted with promises to meet again, phone numbers exchanged, but Yuki could see Dmitri's exhaustion. The emotional weight of it all.
"He makes me feel old," he said as they walked to the subway.
"You're not old."
"I feel it. Watching him with his energy, his plans. I remember being like that."
"You still have plans."
"Do I? Beyond surviving each day?"
She took his arm, surprising them both.
"Yes," she said firmly. "You do."
That night at the laundromat, they found chaos. A pipe had burst in the afternoon. Half the machines were out of order, wrapped in yellow tape like crime scenes. Carlos was there with a mop and bucket, Ashley helping him.
"It's a disaster," Carlos said. "Owner finally showed up, took one look, and left. Said it's not worth fixing if he's going to sell the place."
"Sell?" Dmitri asked.
"That's what he said. Got an offer from developers. Wants to turn it into condos or something."
They all stood there, absorbing this. The laundromat had felt eternal, unchangeable, but of course it wasn't. Nothing was.
"When?" Yuki asked.
"Don't know. Could be months, could be weeks."
They worked through the night with half the usual machines. Customers grumbled but adapted. The teenagers showed up, saw the situation, offered to help mop. Even the elderly Chinese woman with her three loads pitched in, organizing the chaos with brutal efficiency.
"Crisis brings people together," she announced. "Always has."
By three in the morning, they'd established a system. A sign-up sheet for the working machines, estimated wait times, a rotation that seemed to satisfy everyone. It wasn't perfect, but it worked.
"We're good at this," Ashley said, surveying their handiwork.
"At what?" Carlos asked.
"Making things work when they shouldn't."
Dmitri's hearing was the next week. Yuki went with him to Federal Plaza, waited outside on a bench while he disappeared into the bureaucratic maze. Three hours later, he emerged looking drained but not defeated.
"Continued pending further review," he said. "My lawyer says that's good. Not yes, but not no."
"How long?"
"Six months, maybe a year."
A year. It seemed both endless and no time at all.
They went to the diner, ordered coffee and pie this time. Dmitri's hands shook slightly as he raised his cup.
"I'm tired," he said. "Tired of being afraid. Tired of waiting. Just tired."
"I know."
"Do you ever think about just... stopping? Going back?"
"To Japan? No. There's nothing there for me now."
"But at least you'd be legal. At least you'd exist in the system."
"I'd rather be a ghost here than visible there."
He nodded, understanding.
That night, the laundromat was almost back to normal. New pipes had been installed, most of the machines were working. Only machine seven remained definitively broken, like a monument to persistence.
"Good news," Carlos announced. "Owner changed his mind about selling. For now."
Relief washed through the room, palpable as humidity.
"What changed?" Dmitri asked.
"His buyer backed out. Market's unstable or something."
They all knew it was temporary, but temporary was all any of them had anyway.
The teenagers came in with news of their own—they'd both gotten jobs at a fast-food place, minimum wage but with regular hours.
"We're saving up," the girl said proudly. "For an apartment."
"Good," Yuki said. "That's good."
After they left, Dmitri said, "They remind me of myself at that age. So certain that work would solve everything."
"It solves some things."
"Yes. Some things."
At four, Petro showed up unexpectedly. He looked excited, energized in a way that made everyone else seem tired by comparison.
"I got the job," he announced. "Start Monday. And I found an apartment—a real one, not a shelter. Two bedrooms in case..." he looked at Dmitri hopefully.
"That's wonderful," Dmitri said carefully.
"You could stay with me. While you sort out your status."
"I have a place."
"That studio? Uncle, you deserve better."
"We all deserve better," Dmitri said quietly. "That's not how it works."
Petro looked hurt but didn't push. He stayed another hour, helping fold forgotten laundry, trying to bridge the gap between them with small talk and shared work. When he left, Dmitri slumped in his chair.
"He means well," Yuki said.
"I know. That makes it worse somehow."
The weeks passed with a strange mixture of monotony and tension. The laundromat's reprieve from sale became old news. Carlos instituted new cleaning protocols that actually made the place nicer. Ashley started bringing in baked goods from her other job at a bakery. The teenagers got their apartment—a studio in a bad building, but theirs.
And Dmitri and Yuki continued their nights together, finding rhythm in the repetition, comfort in the consistency.
One night, a month after his hearing, Dmitri didn't show up.
"He called," Ashley said. "Sick. Told me to tell you not to worry."
But Yuki worried. After her shift, she went to his apartment. Found him feverish, disoriented, his diabetes medication scattered on the table.
"Hospital," she said.
"No insurance."
"Hospital anyway."
She called an ambulance. Rode with him to Queens General. Stayed while they stabilized his blood sugar, adjusted his medications, lectured him about self-care. The bill would be astronomical, they both knew, but that was tomorrow's problem.
"You didn't have to," he said when he was lucid again.
"Yes, I did."
"Why?"
She thought about it. "Because that's what we do. We take care of each other."
He was released the next day with strict instructions and a referral to a clinic that worked with undocumented immigrants. Yuki went with him to the appointment, translated when his English failed him under stress.
"You're lucky," the doctor said. "Much longer and you'd have been in serious trouble."
That night, Dmitri returned to the laundromat. Carlos had brought a cushion for his chair. Ashley had made sugar-free cookies. Even the elderly Chinese woman had left a thermos of soup with a note: "For health."
"You told them?" Dmitri asked.
"They figured it out."
He sat in his newly cushioned chair, looking around at the familiar space with new eyes.
"This is family," he said quietly. "Isn't it? This strange collection of night people."
"Yes," Yuki agreed. "It is."
The seasons changed. Summer bled into fall. The laundromat survived another sale scare, more broken pipes, a power outage that lasted eighteen hours. Through it all, they adapted, persisted, endured.
Dmitri's immigration case inched forward. Yuki started the complicated process of adjusting her own status, finding a lawyer through the same clinic that treated Dmitri. The teenagers moved to a better apartment, got promoted at their jobs, started talking about community college.
And then, on an ordinary Tuesday night in October, everything changed.
Yuki arrived to find police cars outside, lights flashing. Her heart stopped. ICE? Had they come for Dmitri? For her?
But it was Carlos in handcuffs, being led to a squad car.
"What happened?" she asked Ashley, who was crying behind the counter.
"I don't know. They just came in and arrested him. Something about an old warrant? From before, I don't know."
Dmitri arrived minutes later, took in the scene.
"We need to find out where they're taking him," he said, suddenly focused. "Get him a lawyer."
They spent the night making calls instead of washing clothes. Petro, when reached, had connections through the refugee network. The elderly Chinese woman, it turned out, had a son who was a paralegal. Even the teenagers knew someone who'd been through the system.
By morning, they'd assembled a patchwork of help. Carlos had been picked up on a fifteen-year-old warrant for a minor drug charge, something from a different life. But he'd built a new life since then—steady work, no problems, a model of rehabilitation.
"We'll fight it," Ashley said fiercely. "We'll get him back."
And they did. It took three weeks, money scraped together from everyone who'd ever sat in that laundromat at night, character references from customers who'd barely exchanged two words with Carlos but recognized his dignity. When he walked free, they were all there—Yuki, Dmitri, Ashley, Petro, the teenagers, the elderly Chinese woman, others Yuki had never seen in daylight.
"Why?" Carlos asked, tears streaming down his face. "Why did you all..."
"Because," Dmitri said simply, "you're one of us."
That night, they all worked together. Carlos at the register, Ashley cleaning, the teenagers helping customers, the elderly woman folding with mechanical precision. Dmitri and Yuki sat at their usual table, watching it all.
"We did something good," she said.
"We did something necessary."
"Sometimes that's the same thing."
He reached across the table and took her hand, the second time they'd touched like that.
"I got a letter today," he said. "From immigration. My case was approved. Temporary protected status, because of the war. Not citizenship, not permanent, but... legal. For now."
She squeezed his hand. "That's wonderful."
"And terrifying. I don't know how to be legal anymore. How to exist in the open."
"You'll learn."
"Will you help me?"
"Always."
They sat like that, hands clasped across the formica table, while the machines spun and the fluorescents hummed and their makeshift family went about the ancient business of making things clean.
Later, much later, when the morning came and Carlos tallied the register and Ashley distributed her cookies and the teenagers headed to their jobs and the elderly woman to her apartment, Dmitri and Yuki walked out together into a world that seemed, if not transformed, then at least survivable.
"Coffee?" he asked, as he always did.
"Coffee," she agreed.
They went to their usual diner, sat in their usual booth, ordered their usual meal. But something was different. The weight they'd both carried for so long had shifted, lightened just enough to allow for something that might have been hope.
"What now?" Yuki asked.
"Now we continue. We work. We live. We take care of each other."
"That's all?"
"That's everything."
And it was. In that moment, in that diner, with the morning sun slanting through grimy windows and the coffee bitter and the eggs overcooked and the whole imperfect world spinning on despite everything, it was enough. They were visible to each other, and that made them real.
The laundromat would survive or it wouldn't. The neighborhood would change or it wouldn't. They would get their papers sorted or they wouldn't. But tonight, there would be machines to run and clothes to fold and people to care for, and tomorrow night the same, and the night after that. The cycle would continue, reliable as laundry, necessary as breathing, until it didn't need to anymore.
For now, that was enough. That was everything.
Machine seven never did get fixed.