Restless men roam the streets of this neighbourhood. Evasive and distrustful, they avoid eye contact, as if they don’t want you to remember their faces. Sometimes they’ll pause for an hour or so in the Laundromat, taking the warmth before continuing on in their journeys. On Wednesday, one such man was leaving the Laundromat just as I was entering.
Tall and imposing, he was slightly unsteady on his feet. His bottom lip protruded, giving him a disapproving air, and he had the flat, broad nose and meaty jowls of a spent fighter. He gave my dog and I a hard look. As he was heading for the door he decided to stop and light the cigarette that he had dangling from his mouth. As he was engaged in this casual and pointless act of defiance, Heidi, my Miniature Dachshund, began to bark at him. I shushed her and apologized, but the man brushed unhappily past us, sarcastically sneering “nice dog” as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. I turned and looked at him, and he, smoking on the sidewalk, glared right back at me.
I threw my clothes in the dryer and left, aware that he was still staring at me as I walked down the street home.
An unsettling feeling, that.
An hour later, when I returned to pick up my clothes, the man wasn’t there and I have to admit that I felt kind of relieved. Relaxing a little bit, I began to dig my clothes out of the dryer only to realize that my laundry bag was gone.
I shook my head, imaging this guy finishing his smoke and then returning to the Laundromat. As people looked at the floor and read their newspapers, he would have grabbed my bag and walked out with it, stuffing it in some garbage can around the corner, just to prove to me that it’s a loveless dog-eat-dog world out there.