Red Hot Business

Harold never wanted to be a dry cleaner. It never once occurred to him. He had bigger plans: college—law school, maybe—a business of his own. But dry cleaning was where he was, and yet…. He was, he thought as he looked into the mirror while shaving and seeing a much older man than he thought he was, still a man destine to do great things, a man to make an impact on the greater world. As he rinsed his face and combed his greying hair, and slipped on his neatly pressed blue shirts (almost all of his dress shirts were blue). that his time for greatness, for impact was racing away from him. He took a long shallow breath of resignation and knew that any remaining chance of greatness left to him could be measured by the width of a grain of sand and that he, like so many others was a mere, but necessary part of some illusive collective beach of greatness. He was only a dry cleaner. Not even an owner of a dry cleaning business—an employee. A mere skilled operative working for elderly owners who, owing to their advancing age and deteroriating health spent less and less time doing the actual work.

It fell to him to open the shop each day and he didn’t mind really. He was by nature an early riser. He sat his coffee on the sidewalk beside the door because as the lock was old and tricky it often took two hands to get the lock to turn. How many times had he mentioned this to the Oswalds—yet nothing ever came from it. When the lock finally clicked, he picked up his coffee, and swung the door open, looking as he always did for any smudge marks on the glass door which read:

BE CLEAN

Open M-F 6 a.m to 6 p.m.

Sat. 8 am to 4 p.m.

Closed Sundays

It was 5:37 a.m. and he yawned as he sat his half drank coffee on the counter and began switching on the lights for the front and back working area of the shop. He picked up a couple of cleaning rags from their stack under the counter and Windexed both sides of the front door and the front window, then wiped down the counter, and finally swept the floors in front and back, as he did every morning when he came in and every evening before he went home. There was always so much lint and dust. Fabric, he knew, was always shedding cells and settling everywhere. He took pride in the cleanliness of the shop. Something the Oswalds commended him for. NO ONE wants to leave their clothes in at a dusty, untidy cleaners, they said. And of course, they were correct.

Harold gulped down the last dregs of the cooled coffee and tossed the cup in the trash can under the counter, turned the Closed sign to Open and headed for the back of the shop. He hadn’t taken more than a few steps when the bell over the door sounded and he turned to see a man with a huge bundle of suits in his arms waiting to be let in.

“Phew!!” said the man as he entered, perspiration beading on his forehead and cheeks. He wasn’t a particularly large man, but neither was he small. He had a tidy red beard and a large scar under his right eye. He wore suspendered jeans ,a green flannel shirt and seemed to Harold to be unlikely to have so many suits. Yet life was strange, and people and their habits even stranger.

“Getting really hot out there,” the red-bearded man continued as he plopped his bundle on the counter. It was 57 degrees outside—cooler in the shop.

Harold began sorting, tagging, checking over the items, and pushed an information ticket over to the man. “Fill this out, if you will, while I get a good count.” Harold counted and folder the items: 3 suit jackets with matching trousers, one each blue, black and brown, 4 silk ties of various dominant colors and patterns—some he had marked for stains and one, yes, only one black dress sock which Harold held up and turned to return it to the man. But he’d gone. Did the bell over the door sound? He didn’t think so. But surely it did. Must have. Getting old, is what he thought.

As he continued sorting and tagging the garments, reaching into the pockets of the jackets and trousers, he yelped and jumped back—his fingers burning and tender. What was that? It felt like a card maybe, small, rectangular in the left hand pocket of the brown suit. He stuck his fingers in his mouth to cool his reddened fingers. Then laughted at himself. I’m turning myself into a silly old fool. Yet he had to admit he wasn’t eager to put his hand back in that pocket. No sir. What he did do, was to grab the black dress sock and pull it over his hand and pull out the offending item and laid it on the counter. It was as he had suspected—merely a business card. How could that burn him? It made no sense. Yet his fingertips were still red and sensitive. The card read: HELL’S FIRE in big bold letters—black if you have to know. And beneath it a slogan in italics “Let’s heat things up.” There was no person’s name, no phone number, no address. Well, no physical address. There was a website:www.hellsfirenow.cu.edu.

Edu? that’s odd, he thought. But the bell over the door sounded and another customer walked in and he forgot all about it.

It wasn’t until Brandy (the only other permanent, albeit part time employee came in around 8:30, sucking down a triple shot of espresso and chattering nonstop about the AMAZING band she had heard last night with her mates and while she was cleaning up the counter once again he heard her cry out. At that moment, Harold knew, and it all came rushing back to him—that stupid business card. She’d obviously touched it.

“What the hell, Harold?” she cried out, Harold was already by her side taking her hand in his and looking at the inflamed finger tips.

He led her to the sink in the back and turned on the cool water and placed her fingertips underneath. “Keep them there,” he said, “until the heat has left your finger tips.”

“Jesus H. Christ! What the fuck was that?” She said as Harold went back up front to handle the offending business card. She said more of course, because Brandy Witherspoon had never, not once in the three years she had worked there, had a silent moment. Her thoughts were a speedway to her mouth—she had no need for thought storage.

The offending business card lay on the floor behind the counter. The black dress sock lay adjacent. Harold opened the drawer under the counter, retrieved some tweezers and to two small zip lock bags, one a bit smaller than the other. He used the tweezers to pick up the card and place it in the smallest bag—which he ziplocked closed. Then still with the tweezers placed the first bag into the second and zipped it shut. No heat. Nothing. He looked for the information ticket the red-bearded man had left to label the bag for his retrieveal. His name was L. Santorini, no address, no telephone number.

It didn’t bode will.

Nothing did.