Liason In a Laundromat

There is a scream before time stops. A woman is lifted through heavy doors by gloved hands. Her body cloaked in low murmurs, weighed down with the urgent scream of sirens that split the night.
Her fingers lie curled like soft-shelled snails at her thighs. Headlights stream out behind them, gold slug-trails instead of the silver gilt webs of spider-spun lies, and guilt written on the faces of youths loitering ill-spent in half-empty hostels on cracked sidewalks; trying to catch a glimpse of half-naked flesh and trading green paper or little packets of white snow for favours.

Glass litters the road at the man's feet. A man in uniform writes in a notepad, watching him press a damp shirt over the gentle black pool forming in the hollow of his collarbone. Intern street surgeons suturing a new, primitive tattoo on his neck to mark the occasion of virginity taken away. Their toast was premature.  

"Who's she?"
"Some prostitute."
"Tumble and a rumble in the Laundromat, eh?"
"Yeah, she got tumble-dried all right."
"Gold coin for the machine, or for her services?"
Sly laughter.
"Looked like she was foaming at the mouth."
"Swallowed too much of his detergent, eh? Ha ha ha."
"Too drunk, and the dumb kid didn't want to pay."
"Coppers'll hand him out to dry with coffin nails instead of pegs."
"Them prossies are hard, coarse. Did you see the pimp's fucking knife? He's lucky he got them first."
"Should have used fabric softener on her then, soften her up. Ha ha."
"Well 'es still alive."

A hush fills the air while onlookers stare, breath baited, goggled-eyed at the scene. The man in the Laundromat shudders and lies still. Dry-cleaners will never get the stains out of his suit. The woman in the white van has hair spreading like a bruise of wine on a tablecloth; a dark sea on the pillow. This time, it isn't Christ who changes the water to red.

The mortician will wait until morning to write his elegy on bare, unstockinged feet.