My armload of clothes smelled about the same as hers. We didn’t hesitate to throw them into the same machine. I put quarters into the slot and jammed them home.

“I’ll pay for the drying,” she said. We sat on a dirty green bench to wait. A lone woman in a business suit and house slippers was shaking out blouses before putting them into the dryer. She put in money and went to a corner to do her nails.

It was dark outside. The light fell in long tubes from the ceiling. It pretended to be honest, but only managed to be cruel. It made the tidy scabs on her cheeks look fresh somehow. Her hands were clasped on her knees. Her bare feet were gray on the gritty floor.

I told myself it was important to be sympathetic. I stared at the floor to avoid the effort of looking at her face.

“How do you feel?”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“You seem angry.”

“Oh.”

Didn’t seem to be anyone home at her house.

“Do you blame him for the baby dying?”

“Han Shan? No. He just disgusts me.”

The machine groaned in front of us. The dryer at the end of the room tossed clothes aimlessly, lazily, while the lady in the corner intently filed her nails. It was raining again.

“I don’t understand.”

“He was disgusting up there. He and Lichtenstein together disgusted me.”

We weren’t whispering but we sat so close, our throats tight, that our voices hissed and shuddered like we were sharing secrets.

“They didn’t do anything. They talked. Han Shan talks about the ice in the bucket, but he doesn’t mention how the bucket got up the hill. They cut down a tree the first day we were there for firewood. At first one of them, or both of them, would build the fire, but after a while they just sat and talked and strolled around under the trees. Lichtenstein always wanted his clothes washed.”

There was poison in her eyes and in her clenched fist.

“How did you do the laundry, anyway?”

“In the stream on a rock. That was nice until it got so cold. Then my hands would hurt and nothing would dry. They complained if I put things near the fire. There’d be diapers hanging for days all over the room. I kept running out.”

“It must have been cold.”

“Han Shan didn’t care about the baby.”

“You mean, that it died?”

“That, too. He got sick of it. He didn’t say anything, but when the baby cried, he’d get this mean look on his face.”

“When did that start?”