But Marvalyn encouraged him to inquire about a management position at Dollar Discount Plus!, because if he could become a manager there, they would be set. Because Dollar Discount Plus! wasn’t going to shut down or go out of business or furlough or lay off folks like the mills had been doing.

And then she suddenly stopped ironing. And just stared at those khaki pants. And then slammed the iron down on the ironing board. And crumpled the pants up into a ball and tried to make them as wrinkled as you could make a pair of wrinkle-free pants. And chucked them into her laundry basket.

She wouldn’t have done this had she known that Steve Doody, another tenant at Ma Dudley’s, had come down to switch his laundry from the washers to the dryers. He had started his wash when Marvalyn had gone out to smoke the last cigarette she would ever smoke. And then had gone back to his room.

Steve was surprised to see Marvalyn in the laundry room. It was a Friday night, and people weren’t usually in the laundry room doing their laundry on Friday nights. Because Friday nights were when most people were out doing something fun. Like going to the Moose Paddy. Which is what Steve’s brother, Rob, was doing on the night when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen. He went there every Friday night to have dinner and drink beer and play darts and pool and foosball with his friends. And Steve stayed home and did the laundry—one of the few chores he was able to complete unsupervised.

Steve recognized Marvalyn as the woman who had moved into Ma Dudley’s a couple of weeks ago. But he didn’t know her name. Because he hadn’t met her yet. And he hadn’t met the man she moved in with yet, either.

He stopped and stared at her for a while, hoping she’d turn and see him.

And wanted to meet her. He liked meeting people.

But she seemed angry. She was pulling a bunch of polo shirts off their hangers and crumpling them up and chucking them into her laundry basket. So Steve decided to not bother her. And he sat down on the bench facing the washing machines and opened up a three-hundred-page black marble composition book he had brought with him that was labeled THINGS TO BE AFRAID OF and started studying it while he waited for his wash to finish.

Meanwhile, Marvalyn unplugged the iron and shook the water out of it into the sink. And then, while she was coiling its cord, her wrist touched the iron’s hot surface. “Dammit!” she hissed, and she dropped the iron, and it bounced the way heavy metal-and-plastic items bounce. Marvalyn grimaced and shook her hand rapidly back and forth as if that would make the pain go away.

Steve wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but then Marvalyn said, “Ow!”

And then Steve knew exactly what had happened: Marvalyn had hurt herself. He had learned a long time ago that ow is something people say when they hurt themselves.