David Speranza

Seven Minutes for a Quarter

by David Speranza

On the curb outside the laundromat the girl's voice floated calmly towards him. It rose above the tide of passing traffic, its warm high tones as familiar to him as the school across the street and the liquor store two doors down.

"It's not that I don't like it," she was saying, "I just don't get it. I'm not good at that subject."

He lifted the brown bottle wrapped to its neck in paper, smiled as he took a sip. She glanced up with a helpless shrug, her short dark ponytail curving just past her neckline, framing the left side of her face. [This story is copyright © David Speranza]

"You were good at geometry," he said. Her thin shoulder blades drooped in disappointment as her eyes fell to the soda bottle set at an angle between her knees.

"Geometry's different," she said. "It's just logic and a lot of memorizing. But algebra's all these messed up numbers and formulas. It doesn't make sense like geometry. It's too abstract."

She sighed and twisted the cap from her bottle. Her father watched quietly while she took a sip. Abstract, he thought approvingly. Already she uses words like abstract.

He took another gulp of beer, wiped a wet trace from around his mouth. He let his hand continue down the length of his beard, felt the little hairs spring back in a wave as his fingers brushed over them. In his stomach a pressure had begun to build, expanding slowly into a compact ball. He felt it shift and roll into position, then finally release itself in a quiet belch. A warm feeling of contentment rose through him.

"What do you say?" his daughter chirped, the words automatic.

"Who do you think you are? Your mother?"

"I know," she grimaced: "'Do as I say and not as I do.'"

"'Excuse me,'" he said. "There. You happy?"

She nodded, not so much satisfied as amused. There was no childish rebellion asserting itself for the sake of principle; she simply enjoyed teasing him.

"Do you think I'm too skinny?" she said suddenly, tugging at the loose fabric of her jeans. The thin, faded material bunched easily in her fingers.

"Let me see," he offered.

She draped her right leg across his rounded thigh, dangling it for inspection while she sipped her soda. Her eyes followed a woman in a dark suit and sneakers moving briskly past, on her way to nowhere. Her father grasped the narrow leg between thumb and forefinger, his fingers nearly touching on the other side.

"That tickles," the girl said. She squirmed, dropping one hand to the pavement to keep her balance.

"You could use a little meat on you," he said, loosening his grip. "But you ain't scrawny. You got plenty of time to put some weight on. Anyway, better to have too little than too much."

She stared down at her leg like something curious that belonged to someone else, watched it swing lightly against her father's high black boot, the little jingle of his buckle comforting to her ear. Sensing him turn, she glanced up to find him gazing over his shoulder. Inside the laundromat a woman sat alone on a row of plastic chairs, flipping boredly through a newspaper while an impatient Latina fed a creased bill over and over into the change machine above her.

"It hasn't even been five minutes," said the girl, holding up her wristwatch.

He nodded distractedly, and she saw his eyes were not on the dryers but on a heavily creased leather jacket that hung from a wheeled hamper against the wall. One colorful half of the red-white-and-blue eagle peeked out from behind a thick sleeve like the faded skin of a tattoo.

"Just making sure no one swipes my Harley jacket," he said. "I ever tell you I was wearin' that when I met your mother?"

She nodded, sliding her leg down to rock slowly back and forth against its companion. Of course he had told her. Why were adults always repeating themselves?

"You're not cold?" she asked. The breeze from a passing car brushed coolly against her face.

"Cold? Nah. Fall's a long way off yet."

She watched his eyes focus across the street on two dark-skinned girls (Hispanic? Italian? Black?—in this neighborhood it had become so hard to tell) whose languid movements were followed attentively by a boy standing propped beside a parking meter. The father noted the boy's attire: backwards baseball cap, baggy striped shirt, blue jeans three or four sizes too large that bunched in unattractive folds around his ankles. It was a style which still baffled him. He watched the girls glide without concern in the boy's direction. He can't be more than eight or nine, thought the father—no wonder they don't notice him. Besides, who could take those pants seriously?

At that moment one of the girls glanced casually over her shoulder, caught the boy nodding at her in precocious approval. An amused giggle burst from her that could be heard across the street.

"Yo, baby, you got it goin' on," called the boy, unfazed. His voice was ripe with the authority and assurance of someone ten years older. With a shocked expression the girl turned to her friend, consulting with her in hushed giggles.

Father and daughter both laughed, watching the boy accept this little setback with a simple gracious nod before turning up the street for new game. The daughter thought it funny hearing such an expression from so unlikely a source, but her father, unfamiliar with the current vernacular, was struck by the boy's precocity. How had he acquired such confidence, he wondered, such complete assurance, at so young an age? Even as he laughed he felt a trace of nervousness move uneasily into his throat.

"Out of the mouths of babes," said his daughter.

He turned to her in surprise.

"Look who's talking."

"I'm not a babe."

"Oh no?"

"Uh-uh."

"What are you, then?"

She paused.

"I'm older than he is."

"Don't mean a thing. A boy like that could be twenty-five and you'd still be older than him."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that's about as old as a lot of boys ever get."

"Even college boys?"

He saw the doubt in her eyes, heard the solemn tones of eagerness and respect at the words "college boys." For some reason it bothered him.

"College boys are even worse," he said. "They just look older. And I've seen enough to know."

The girl grew thoughtful while her father suddenly imagined her two years older and stepping from a train (or would it be their old van?) onto the new green grass of a college campus. It was a thought that made him proud; then sad; then, unexpectedly, angry. She was right. She wasn't a baby anymore. When had that happened?

He shook his head and reached for her watch, turning her thin wrist gently between two fingers.

"Quarter's about up," he said, standing from the curb. "We better go check the clothes."

"Seems like they should give more than seven minutes for only one quarter," she said, rising with him.

He considered this a moment, taking another sip of beer before turning to the door.

"Once upon a time they did," he said.

"Seems like a ripoff, if you ask me."

"Yeah," he nodded.

Then he took her arm and together they walked into the laundromat, the heat of the dryers meeting them at the door. As the warm air embraced them, he noticed for the first time that outside it was growing cold. He shook his head, feeling in his pocket for more change.

 

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Originally published in The Prague Revue, Vol. 2, 1996