Scenes From a Laundromat: Charity

There's a girl here--14, maybe. She's hunched into a corner, scared, and from the marks on her face it's her father or a boyfriend she's afraid of. She hasn't got any laundry--barely has any clothes, just a t-shirt and jeans. She doesn't seem cold, though, even without something to cover her pale arms. Most people take her for homeless and ignore her. When I approach her to maybe give her a few bucks or offer her lunch, she backs away. As she slides out of the corner, her hand falls into a ray of sunlight from the glass door of the laundromat. The second it does, she howls like a cat that just got its tail stepped on, startling the whole place. As she pulls her hand back, I see faint wisps of smoke rising from her pale fingers. Wordlessly, I pull off my hooded sweatshirt and hand it to her. She looks at me, almost crying, and wraps herself in the too-big sweatshirt. She pulls the hood over her head and smiles at me weakly from under the hood. I sit next to her on the floor while my drier finishes. It's the holidays, and charity extends even to monsters.

Scenes From a Laundromat: Queen of Air and Tumble Dry

There's this woman wearing this crazy necklace--runes and everything on it. She smiles wide and makes small talk with everybody. What strikes me about her most is she doesn't have a container of quarters: I have a baggie, some folks have old margarine tubs or zip-up coin purses, but she's got nothing and is running three driers on it. I don't figure it out till she goes to get a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine. She lays her right hand on the side of the machine, fingers spread and eyes closed. I catch the briefest glimmer of light from her necklace, and a pair of 20 ounce bottles pop out of the machine. She offers one to me. I politely decline, remembering all too well the legend of Persephone and the dangers of accepting hospitality from one of their kind.