The Spare Sock

At the laundrette I became briefly attached to somebody else's washing. It was going round in machine four, looking wonderfully clean. Mine was in machine six, where a white shirt kept presenting the same small orange stain to the glass.

I moved two chairs to the right.

There were seven machines, three dryers and a notice asking customers not to wash horse blankets. Nothing prohibited looking disappointed in a shirt. I settled in.

The stain was lunch. More precisely, it was the moment at lunch when I had decided that a paper wrapper could safely support the weight of the thing inside it. The wrapper had disagreed. I had caught most of the filling, which was admirable until one considered where I had caught it.

Now my laundry bag lay empty beside my boots. Through the front window I could see a bus stop, a shut florist and the reflection of the dryers. Every so often a pedestrian appeared to walk through a revolving load of towels. A perfectly ordinary optical arrangement, but pleasing.

A man at the folding table was making a red handkerchief disappear.

He pushed it into his left fist with one finger, turned the fist over and opened both hands. Empty. Then he took it from behind his elbow.

I leaned forward.

He looked at me in the window.

“First one's free.”

“What's the second?”

“You tell me whether it's any good.”

His name was Eddie. On Saturday he was helping at a school fair. He had volunteered to run the second-hand book stall and somehow come away responsible for ten minutes of entertainment. His daughter had suggested reading aloud. He had bought a handkerchief.

“Escalation,” I said.

“That's what she called it.”

He tried again. I watched his left hand. The cloth came from his right sleeve.

“Better?”

“Annoyingly.”

He grinned and put the cloth beside a folded pillowcase. His washing was finished; he was waiting for his wife, who had gone to collect a repaired shoe. He had the other shoe in a carrier bag. There seemed to be a sound domestic reason for this, but we did not get to it.

Machine six reversed direction. My shirt pressed its stain against the window again.

Before starting, I had worked a little laundry liquid into the oily patch, following the label, then washed my hands at the basin. I could still feel the change from slippery to clean. The detergent's surfactant molecules had water-attracting heads and oil-friendly tails: a small chemical arrangement that helped loosen oily dirt and carry it into the wash water. Water alone would have struggled with the grease. I had provided assistance, the recommended dose and a suitable wash. The shirt remained entitled to disappoint me.

“Sauce?” Eddie asked.

“An ambitious sandwich.”

“Mine was bicycle oil.”

He showed me a pale mark on a folded cuff.

“Still there?”

“Different shirt.”

I laughed. He had put the stained one aside for working on the bicycle. A solution I had neglected because I was busy watching mine rotate.

For a while we said nothing. A dryer stopped with three modest notes, then repeated them, less modestly. Someone came in, transferred a warm bundle to a bag and left without allowing a single garment to touch the folding table. I admired the confidence.

Eddie practised the trick without its ending. Red cloth, closed hand, open hand. Once it fell out. He picked it up, smoothed it and began again.

“Do you want a volunteer?” I asked.

“Hold out your hand.”

He placed the handkerchief on my palm, covered it with his own and asked me to close my fingers. Then he tapped my knuckles.

I opened my hand. The handkerchief was still there.

We regarded it.

“That's not the one I meant to do,” he said.

“A strong finish for a demonstration of keeping things.”

He tried once more. This time I ended up holding a blue cloth. I turned it over. Eddie looked delighted, then worried.

“Too quick?”

“For me?”

“For them.”

I made him do it while I looked away towards the window, as a distracted child might. He waited until I turned back before opening his hands. The pause helped. He tried it again, slower, talking as he went. I liked the talking. He sounded less like a man undergoing an examination.

My machine clicked. I waited for the door catch to release, then took the washing to the table. The stain was fainter. It was also present. I left the shirt out of the dryer, folded the rest and discovered one grey sock without its partner.

Eddie checked beneath the table. I checked the drum, the door seal and the inside of a sleeve. No sock.

His wife arrived carrying a small box. She asked whether we were nearly ready. I began explaining the missing item, but she was looking at Eddie.

“He's got another trick,” I told her.

“Oh, good. Do it outside. The car's on a meter.”

He packed the handkerchiefs and lifted the shoe bag. I held the door while they negotiated their parcels through it. From the pavement he raised an empty hand, closed it, opened it. A red corner appeared between his fingers.

His wife applauded twice without putting anything down.

After they left, I found my sock inside the laundry bag. I had missed it when emptying the corners. There was no audience for its reappearance, which was probably just as well.

I packed the clean washing around it and went out carrying the damp shirt separately. At the corner I held it up to the light. The orange mark had become the shape of a small, rather uncertain island.

The bus arrived while I was still holding it up. I got on with the damp sleeve over my wrist and paid before finding a seat.