A crowd of
shopkeepers gathers at the little tables under the awning in front of Sombong’s
laundery. They babble, point, and guffaw
at the shenanigans the rain brings to their street. Motorcycles brought under cover. Shoes left on doorsteps soaked already,
unceremonious sacrifices. Who cares! Oh ho!
Your shoes are wet! Ha ha!
The rain
spatters furiousl. Wet darkness swamping
down in sheets. People. Absolutely soaked! Rickshaw drivers continue peddling, changing
only the bend of their heads to allow water to run off their brows. Lights of cars and trucks dancing in the
murk, swushing wheels beeping sopping engines roar by dull come again
gone. Two young men hop under an awning,
to another awning, store front to store front, their white shirts pasted to
their backs and their black dress pants hanging heavily. They hop one last time to the awning at the
nightclub - ah, ushers. The girls who
work there, too, laugh when they open the door to let them in.
Now black as
pitch, streetlight piercing, taillights red streaming past, pounding water from
the sky, swashing sounds. Damp drafts
nudge the heavy air hanging in the laundery.
Little tables littered with glasses of thick coffee and cigarettes. Bodies sitting, some clothes wet and dank,
others dry. All eyes turned to the
yawning black square, the storefront looking out at rainfall in Ubon.
The shop is deep
by eight metres and wide by three. Racks
of clothes, baskets of clothes, two ironing boards, three dryers and a washing
machine clutter the space. A ceiling fan
swirls above, obliviously swirling, swirling, while people cloth baskets food
smiles anger come and go. There are two
patterns of linoleum on the floor, one marked with orange squares and the other
spattered with blue blots. This is
Sombong's shop. She is
twenty-eight. At the moment she is
out. She zipped away on her motorscooter
to tend to last moment business before the rain fell again.
Thud-crunch tinkle. Silence.
An accident on the street.
Excited chatter and bodies rush past the opening of the shop. Chatter turns to laughter, so the accident not
serious. A child stands still at the
entrance to the coffee shop. Eyes
staring wide after where all the people went.
Her hair and little dress buffetted, flickering in the wind. Her face and shoulders relax. It is not Sombong.
A fellow who had
got knocked off his motorcycle by a truck is now sitting on a chair just inside
the shop. Some ointment is applied to
his foot and then a bandage by the woman who was driving the truck, a friend of
Sombong. He is sent on his way smiling
with ten dollars in his pocket. Sombong
arrives, grabs a bag of clean laundry, and leaves again. Two other friends arrive, wearing tight jeans
and flowers stitched into their jackets.
They ask for Sombong and decide to sit and wait. An empty tv squats on a nearby table and
watches the women listlessly, waiting for the rain.
Outside, grey
evening darkness. A swushing wind
threatens rain. In the shop, we are
glamourless, two fluorescent bulbs casting grainy light, the in-here
distinguished from the out-there.
The rain falls.
Rainy season
laundromat.
She slides in
out of the rain, sits down, and says she that she is Sombong's friend. She's got a sparkling, delicate watch, bands
of silver on her other wrist, a ring of gold on each hand, whopping huge
earrings, hair curled in a permanent, a pretty face. She, she believes, has got Sombong sold.
She has handed
Sombong a pamphlet with lots of sharp pictures of pots and pans and cosmetics
and household cleansers and other assorted etceteras. Each page is colourful and the items are
neatly arranged. Some pages have a blue scheme,
some have a pink scheme, and some a vibrant yellow. The pamphlet has just so many pages, not too
few. Short written descriptions tucked
neatly in columns to the side.
Without a breath
in between she slips Sombong a card.
Explaining this and that. You use
this for that and that for this. Use
some here, or there, oh everywhere! That
is for some of the time, this is for all of the time. So many places, uses, applications. Hardly costs a penny. Oh!
And this is for that and so and so used that once for this, over there,
over here. The air around her filled up with
pots and pans and visions of non-detergent hands. Out comes a sharp, leather notebook. And this is how much I am making!
Sombong places
the open pamphlet to the side of the ironing board and, keeping her eyes on the
pictures and her ears on the Amway gal, she reaches to the left for another
basket of her many customers' clothes and pulls out a shirt for pressing.
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