The man came in at three in the morning with a green duffel bag. Tuesday again. Marisa looked up from her paperback, one of those romance novels with a shirtless man on the cover that she'd never admit to reading. She folded down the corner of the page.
"Machine seven's out," she said.
He nodded, headed for machine eight. Same as last week. Same clothes too, she was pretty sure. A couple of work shirts, jeans, socks, underwear. She'd been working nights at the Super Clean for eight months now, since the divorce papers went through, and she noticed things. Had to notice things. It was either that or go crazy from the fluorescent lights and the smell of fabric softener.
The man—Dmitri, she'd learned his name was Dmitri—fed quarters into the slot. His hands were thick, scarred. Construction maybe. Or warehouse work. The kind of hands her ex-husband used to come home with, before he started coming home later and later, and then not at all.
"Coffee's fresh," she said. "Just made it."
"Thank you."
He poured himself a cup from the pot she kept on the folding table near the vending machines. Black. No sugar. She watched him sit on one of the orange plastic chairs that somebody had donated back in the nineties. He didn't pull out his phone like most people did. Just sat there, watching the machine turn.
Three-seventeen now. The place was dead except for them and the hum of the overhead lights. Outside, Sacramento spread out flat and endless under a brown sky that never quite got dark anymore.
"You work nights?" she asked.
"Days," he said. "I don't sleep so good."
She understood that. Since the divorce, she'd lie in her apartment staring at the ceiling fan until it was time to come here. At least here she got paid to be awake.
The washer churned. Dmitri sipped his coffee. She went back to her book but couldn't focus on the words. Something about a duke and a governess. It all seemed very far away from this laundromat with its cracked linoleum and the Out of Order sign that had been taped to machine seven for three weeks now.
"Same clothes," she said. "Every week, same clothes."
He looked at her. Gray eyes, tired. "Yes."
"Just wondering."
"They're my brother's."
She put the book down. "Your brother doesn't do his own laundry?"
"My brother's dead."
The washer hit its spin cycle, rattling like it always did. She should call the repair guy, but the owner was cheap. Fix it when it breaks completely, he always said. Not before.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Six months now. Overdose." He said it flat, like reading from a police report. "I keep washing his clothes. I don't know why."
She didn't know what to say to that. People did strange things with grief. Her mother had kept her father's coffee mug on the kitchen counter for two years after his heart attack. Still there, probably.
"What was his name?"
"Viktor. Younger than me. Thirty-eight."
The washing machine stopped. Dmitri stood, transferred the wet clothes to a dryer. More quarters. The clothes tumbled behind the glass door—a red flannel shirt, faded jeans, white socks going around and around.
"I should throw them away," he said. "Or donate them. But every Tuesday I come here."
"Nothing wrong with that."
"Isn't there?"
She shrugged. "People do what they need to do."
He sat back down. They didn't talk for a while. At three-forty, a woman came in with two garbage bags full of clothes, took up four machines, left without a word. At four, the street sweeper went by outside, its brushes whisking against the asphalt.
"You're divorced," Dmitri said. It wasn't a question. He'd noticed her tan line where the ring used to be.
"Eight months."
"Children?"
"A daughter. Emma. Sixteen. Lives with her dad." She didn't add: because I work nights and live in a one-bedroom apartment above a Thai restaurant. Because the judge thought stability meant staying in the house you can't afford instead of starting over.
"That's hard."
"Yeah."
The dryer buzzed. Dmitri pulled out the clothes, folded them carefully. The flannel shirt first, then the jeans. Everything precise, corners matched. He put them back in the duffel bag.
"See you next week," he said.
"I'll be here."
After he left, she found a twenty-dollar bill on the chair where he'd been sitting. Way too much for one cup of coffee. She put it in the register anyway.
The next Tuesday he came in at three, same as always. She had the coffee ready. They talked a little more this time. He was a foreman for a concrete company. Lived alone in an apartment in Citrus Heights. Viktor had been staying with him when it happened, trying to get clean.
"Found him in the bathroom," Dmitri said. "I was making breakfast. Scrambled eggs. They burned."
The machines hummed and rattled. Someone had carved "TREVOR + JASMINE 4EVER" into one of the plastic chairs. Marisa wondered how long forever had lasted for Trevor and Jasmine.
"My daughter's coming Friday," she said. "First time in a month."
"That's good."
"Maybe. She doesn't want to come. Court order."
"How do you know she doesn't want to?"
"She told me."
Dmitri smiled a little. First time she'd seen that. "At least she's honest."
"Yeah. There's that."
Week after week, Tuesday after Tuesday. The clothes went in dirty, came out clean, went back in the bag. They talked about small things. The construction site where Dmitri worked. The romance novels Marisa read. The price of gas. The homeless camp that kept getting cleared out and coming back.
One Tuesday in November, the power went out. The whole strip mall went dark. The machines stopped mid-cycle.
"Damn," Marisa said. She felt around for the flashlight under the counter, clicked it on. "Could be an hour. Could be all night."
Dmitri didn't move from his chair. "I'll wait."
She sat down next to him. The darkness made everything different. Closer somehow.
"Tell me about Viktor," she said.
In the dark, he talked. Viktor had been an artist. Painted landscapes, mostly. Deserts and mountains. Had a gift for light, for catching the way sun hit rock. But the pills started after a back injury. Construction accident—ironically, on one of Dmitri's sites. The pills led to heroin. The heroin led to the bathroom floor.
"I should have done more," Dmitri said.
"You let him stay with you. You tried."
"Not enough."
"It's never enough. That's not your fault."
The emergency lights finally kicked on, casting everything in a sick green glow. They could see each other's faces now, wished they couldn't.
"My husband left me for a woman from his office," Marisa said. "Twenty-eight years old. Emma blames me. Says I drove him away by being boring."
"Kids say things."
"She's not wrong, though. I am boring."
"You work. You take care of things. That's not boring. That's life."
The power came back on at five-thirty. The machines lurched back to life. Dmitri's clothes were still wet, had to start the cycle over. By the time they were done, the sun was coming up, filtering through the grimy windows.
"I'm late for work," he said.
"Sorry about the power."
"Not your fault."
But he didn't leave right away. Stood there holding the duffel bag, looking at her.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing. I'll see you next week."
That Friday, Emma showed up. Not at the apartment but at the laundromat. Two in the morning. Marisa looked up from her book to see her daughter standing in the doorway, backpack over one shoulder.
"Emma? What are you doing here?"
"Dad's being an asshole. Can I stay here for a while?"
"Of course, but—how did you even get here?"
"Uber."
"At two in the morning? Emma—"
"Don't start, okay? Just don't."
Emma slumped into one of the plastic chairs, pulled out her phone. She looked older than sixteen. When had that happened? Her hair was dyed black now, cut short. Nose piercing Marisa hadn't known about.
"You want some coffee?"
"I'm sixteen."
"So that's a no?"
"Whatever. Sure."
Marisa poured her a cup, added sugar and the powdered creamer that turned everything a weird beige color. Emma took a sip, made a face.
"This is terrible."
"Yeah, well. It's free."
They sat there, not talking. A couple came in around two-thirty, did two loads, fought the entire time about money. After they left, Emma said, "Is this really what you do all night?"
"Pretty much."
"God. No wonder Dad left."
The words stung, but Marisa didn't react. She'd learned not to react.
"I didn't mean that," Emma said after a minute.
"It's okay."
"No, it's not. I'm being a bitch."
"Language."
"Mom, I'm sixteen. I know all the words."
At three, Dmitri walked in with his duffel bag. He stopped when he saw Emma.
"Machine seven's still broken," Marisa said.
He nodded, went to machine eight. Emma watched him load the clothes, feed in the quarters.
"Who's that?"
"Regular customer. Dmitri."
"Weird time to do laundry."
"People have their reasons."
Dmitri got his coffee, sat in his usual spot. Emma kept staring at him.
"What's his deal?" she whispered.
"Emma, stop."
But Dmitri had heard. "I don't sleep well," he said to Emma. "Your mother's kind enough to let me do my laundry in peace."
"Those don't look like your clothes," Emma said, pointing at the machine. "Too small."
Marisa wanted to intervene, but Dmitri just nodded. "They're my brother's."
"Why are you washing your brother's clothes?"
"Because he's dead."
Emma's mouth opened, then closed. For once, she had nothing to say.
"Overdose," Dmitri continued. "Six months ago. I wash his clothes every week. I don't know why."
"That's..." Emma paused. "That's really sad."
"Yes."
They all sat there, watching the machine turn. The clothes going around and around, never getting anywhere.
"My friend Chloe's brother died," Emma said suddenly. "Car accident. She kept his Instagram active for like a year. Posted pictures and stuff like he was still alive. Everyone thought it was creepy but I got it. You know?"
Dmitri nodded. "Yes. I know."
When the clothes were done, Dmitri folded them as usual. But this time, he held up the red flannel shirt, looking at it.
"Viktor loved this shirt," he said. "Wore it all the time. Even in summer."
"It's nice," Emma said.
"He painted in it. There's still paint stains. See? Here." He pointed to small spots of blue and yellow on the sleeve. "He was painting the day before he died. A sunset. It's still on the easel in his room. I can't look at it."
He folded the shirt, put it in the bag with the rest. Left another twenty on the chair.
After he was gone, Emma said, "That's really fucked up."
"Emma."
"No, I mean... it's sad. But also kind of beautiful? Like, he can't let go."
"Sometimes letting go isn't the point," Marisa said.
"What is, then?"
"I don't know. Holding on, maybe. Until you're ready."
Emma stayed until five, when her father called, frantic. Marisa drove her home in her ten-year-old Corolla, watched her daughter walk up the driveway to the house Marisa used to live in. Her ex-husband stood in the doorway, glaring. She drove away before he could come out and start anything.
The next Tuesday, Dmitri didn't come.
Marisa waited. Three o'clock. Three-thirty. Four. The laundromat stayed empty except for her and the moths batting against the windows. She read fifty pages of her book without absorbing a single word.
He didn't come the next Tuesday either. Or the one after that.
She thought about him more than she should have. Wondered if he was okay. If he'd finally thrown away Viktor's clothes. If he'd found a different laundromat, one without a nosy attendant who asked too many questions.
Three weeks after he'd stopped coming, she found a receipt in the trash. His receipt—she recognized the timestamp, three-eighteen AM. It had fallen out of his pocket, maybe. His address was on it. Some apartment complex in Citrus Heights, like he'd said.
She held the receipt for a long time. It would be crazy to go there. Inappropriate. They weren't friends, not really. Just two people who happened to be awake at the same time, in the same place.
But the next morning, after her shift ended, she drove to Citrus Heights.
The apartment complex was one of those seventies buildings with external stairs and a pool that nobody used. She found his unit on the second floor. Knocked before she could lose her nerve.
He answered in sweatpants and a t-shirt. Looked like he hadn't slept in days. Weeks, maybe.
"Marisa."
"You stopped coming."
"Yes."
"I wanted to make sure you were okay."
He stepped aside, let her in. The apartment was sparse. Goodwill furniture, nothing on the walls. But in the corner, an easel with a half-finished painting. A sunset over mountains, the light catching the peaks just right.
"Viktor's," he said.
"It's beautiful."
"I've been trying to finish it. I don't know how. I'm not an artist."
She looked around. The duffel bag was on the couch, clothes spilling out. Not folded anymore.
"I stopped going," he said, "because I realized something. I wasn't washing them for him. I was washing them for me. To have somewhere to go. Someone to talk to."
"Nothing wrong with that."
"I was using you."
"No. We were using each other. That's different."
He made coffee—real coffee, not the instant stuff from the laundromat. They sat at his small kitchen table. Through the window, she could see the pool, empty except for dead leaves.
"I need to pack his things," he said. "Donate them. Let someone else wear them. Someone who needs them."
"Okay."
"I can't do it alone."
"Okay."
They spent the morning packing. Not just the clothes from the duffel bag but everything from Viktor's room. More flannel shirts. Paint-stained jeans. Brushes and tubes of paint. Sketches of places Marisa didn't recognize. Each item folded, wrapped, placed carefully in boxes.
"He was talented," she said, looking at a sketch of a Joshua tree.
"He was. But talent isn't enough sometimes."
"No. It's not."
When they were done, the room was empty except for the furniture. Dmitri stood in the doorway, looking at the space where his brother used to be.
"Now what?" he asked.
"I don't know. Whatever comes next."
"I don't know how to do that."
"Neither do I. But we do it anyway."
They loaded the boxes into his truck. Drove them to Goodwill. The teenager working donations didn't look up from his phone, just pointed to where they should leave everything. All of Viktor's life, reduced to a tax-deductible receipt.
"You want to get breakfast?" Dmitri asked.
"I should sleep. I work tonight."
"Right. Of course."
"But coffee. We could get coffee."
They went to a diner off Highway 50. The kind of place with vinyl booths and a rotating pie case. Marisa ordered coffee and toast. Dmitri got the same. They sat there as the morning rush came and went, construction workers and office people heading to their days.
"I might start sleeping better," he said. "Without the clothes to wash."
"Maybe."
"Will you miss it? The three AM visits?"
"Yeah. I will."
"I could still come. Just to talk."
"You could."
"Would that be weird?"
She thought about it. Everything was weird. Working nights was weird. Washing a dead man's clothes was weird. Being forty-seven and starting over was weird.
"No," she said. "Not weird."
"Okay then."
The next Tuesday, he came in at three with no duffel bag. Just himself. She had the coffee ready. They sat and talked while the laundromat hummed empty around them. He told her about the concrete pour he'd supervised that day. She told him about Emma, who'd called to apologize for what she'd said. Sort of apologize, anyway.
"She's sixteen," Dmitri said. "She's supposed to be difficult."
"I know. Still hurts, though."
"Yes."
At four, a regular came in, one of the night shift workers from the hospital. Did three loads, fell asleep in the chair waiting. Marisa had to wake her when the dryers stopped.
"You could sleep," she told Dmitri. "If you're tired. I'll wake you."
"I'm okay. This is nice. Just sitting."
"Yeah."
He came back the next week. And the next. No laundry, just coffee and conversation. Sometimes Emma would show up, when things got bad at her dad's place. The three of them would sit there, an odd little family of sorts, watching the empty machines and talking about nothing important.
One Tuesday in January, Dmitri brought the painting. Viktor's sunset.
"I finished it," he said. "Best I could, anyway."
She looked at it under the fluorescent lights. He'd done something to it, added layers or depth or something she didn't have words for. The light on the mountains looked different. Better, maybe. Or just different.
"It's perfect," she said.
"It's not. But it's done."
"Same thing sometimes."
He'd brought tools, hung it on the wall above the folding table. It looked strange there, all that beauty and color against the dingy walls and industrial machines. But also right somehow.
"Viktor would have hated this," he said. "His art in a laundromat."
"Or maybe he would have loved it. People seeing it who wouldn't normally see art."
"Maybe."
They stood there looking at it. Outside, the first commuters were starting their days. Inside, the coffee was getting cold and machine seven was still broken and would probably stay broken forever.
"I've been thinking," Dmitri said.
"Yeah?"
"About asking you to dinner. Somewhere that isn't here. Somewhere normal people go."
"I'm not normal people. I work nights and read romance novels and my teenager hates me."
"I wash my dead brother's clothes. Or I used to."
"So we're perfect for each other."
"Or perfectly wrong."
"Same thing sometimes," she said again.
He smiled. She smiled back. Machine three started making that rattling noise again, the one that meant it would break soon but not yet. Not quite yet.
"Friday?" he asked. "When you're off?"
"I have Emma on Friday."
"She can come."
"You don't know what you're asking."
"I raised Viktor. I know about difficult."
"Okay then. Friday."
They went to an Italian place, one of those chain restaurants with unlimited breadsticks. Emma complained about the food, the service, the music. But she also ate three plates of pasta and talked to Dmitri about art, about Viktor's paintings, about how she was thinking of taking an art class next semester.
"Mom didn't tell me you were dating," Emma said over dessert.
"We're not dating," Marisa said quickly.
"This is literally a date."
"It's dinner."
"With a man who isn't Dad. That's a date."
Dmitri laughed. "She has a point."
"Don't encourage her."
But she was smiling. They all were.
After dinner, they drove Emma back to her father's house. She hugged Marisa goodbye, which hadn't happened in months. Even gave Dmitri an awkward half-wave.
"That went well," he said as they drove away.
"You think?"
"She ate. She talked. She didn't storm off. That's a victory."
"You're setting the bar pretty low."
"Sometimes that's where the bar needs to be."
They went back to his apartment. Not for anything romantic—they were both too tired, too careful for that. Just to sit on his couch and watch television. Some show about people fixing houses. The kind of show you didn't have to think about.
"I should go," she said around ten. "Work tomorrow. Tonight. Whatever."
"You could sleep here. I'll drive you to work later."
"Dmitri."
"On the couch. Or the bed. I'll take the couch. I don't sleep anyway, remember?"
She was too tired to argue. Took the bed, which smelled like laundry detergent and something else, something masculine and safe. Fell asleep immediately.
Woke to him shaking her shoulder gently. "It's two. You need to get ready."
He drove her to work. The laundromat was empty, as usual. She made coffee. He sat in his usual chair. Everything the same but different now.
"This is weird," she said.
"Good weird or bad weird?"
"I don't know yet."
"Fair enough."
At three-thirty, he stood to leave. "I should try to sleep. Work in four hours."
"Dmitri."
He stopped.
"The clothes. Viktor's clothes. Do you miss washing them?"
He thought about it. "No. I miss him. But not the clothes."
"Good. That's good."
"Is it?"
"I think so."
He kissed her goodbye. Just a small kiss, careful and quiet. The kind of kiss that could mean nothing or everything, depending on what came next.
What came next was more Tuesdays. More coffee. More conversations about nothing. Emma started coming regularly, bringing homework she didn't do, complaining about school and her father and the general unfairness of everything.
Spring came. Machine seven got fixed, finally. The homeless camp got cleared out again. Gas prices went up. Dmitri started sleeping better, not great but better. Marisa got a raise, fifty cents an hour, which was something.
One Tuesday in April, a year after they'd met, Dmitri came in with a duffel bag.
Marisa's heart sank. "Oh."
"What?"
"You're washing them again. Viktor's clothes."
He laughed. "No. These are mine. My actual laundry. My machine broke."
"Oh."
She watched him load the clothes. His clothes. Work shirts and jeans that fit him. Socks that were his size. Underwear she tried not to think about.
"This is weird," she said.
"Good weird or bad weird?"
"Good. Definitely good."
The machines hummed. The coffee got cold. Somewhere outside, Sacramento was waking up, people starting their normal days with their normal problems. Inside the Super Clean, Marisa and Dmitri sat in their plastic chairs, watching the clothes go around and around, getting clean.
"I love you," he said suddenly.
She looked at him. "That's a big statement."
"Yes."
"We've known each other a year."
"Yes."
"We've been dating—or whatever this is—for three months."
"Yes."
"My life is a mess."
"So is mine."
"This could all fall apart."
"Everything falls apart eventually."
She thought about it. About her ex-husband and his new wife. About Emma, difficult and perfect. About Viktor's clothes, clean and folded and given away. About the painting on the wall, the light caught just right on the mountains.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
"I love you too."
He reached over, took her hand. His fingers were rough, callused. Working hands. Hands that built things. Fixed things. Sometimes broke things too, probably.
The washer clicked into its spin cycle. Almost done now. Soon the clothes would be clean, ready to wear, ready to get dirty again. The cycle continuing. But for now, they just sat there, holding hands in the fluorescent light, watching the ordinary miracle of clothes getting clean.
Emma found them like that when she showed up at four, unannounced as usual.
"Oh my God, are you guys holding hands? That's so embarrassing."
But she was smiling when she said it.
She sat down next to them, pulled out her phone, then put it away. "Can I tell you something?"
"Always," Marisa said.
"I'm thinking about art school. After graduation. Like, seriously thinking about it."
"That's wonderful."
"Dad'll freak."
"Probably."
"Will you help me? With applications and stuff?"
"Of course."
Emma looked at the painting on the wall. "Do you think Viktor would mind? Me being inspired by his work?"
Dmitri squeezed Marisa's hand. "No. He wouldn't mind at all."
The dryer buzzed. The clothes were done. Dmitri got up to fold them, and Emma helped, making jokes about his boring underwear choices. Marisa watched them, this small, strange family that had formed in a laundromat at three in the morning.
Outside, the sun was coming up. Another day starting. Inside, under the harsh lights, with the smell of detergent and the sound of machines, something else was happening. Something harder to name. Not happiness exactly, but close. Maybe just life, continuing on despite everything. The clothes getting washed. The coffee getting made. People finding each other in the most unlikely places.
"Same time next week?" Dmitri asked as he headed for the door.
"I'll be here."
"We both will," Emma added.
And they were. Week after week, Tuesday after Tuesday. The three of them, and sometimes others—other night-shift workers, other insomniacs, other people with their own losses and complications. All of them doing what needed to be done. Washing what needed to be washed. Getting through the dark hours until morning came.
The painting stayed on the wall. Viktor's sunset, or Viktor and Dmitri's sunset now. The light always catching the mountains just right, no matter what time it was, no matter who was looking. A reminder that some things, once made, couldn't be unmade. Could only be finished, as best as anyone could manage.
And that was enough. More than enough, really. It was everything.