The manager is apologetic. “Probably left from last night,” she says. “It closes at ten but some guests ignore the sign on the door and get locked out.”
She empties the machine into a basket, then my own clothes go in and I return to my room to begin packing for leaving town. After half an hour I go back and switch everything to the drier but nothing happens when I push in the money slide.
The second machine works but now I have to go back to the front desk for a refund. “Not your day is it?” the manager jokes as she hands over $1.25. “I thought that broken drier got reported already.”
When I go back to collect the dry clothes, I find her in the middle of a spirited argument with a very angry and very large woman wearing a coat so long it touches the floor. Two small children cling to her legs with their heads protruding as if sprouting from her knees and the trio looks like the Ghost of Christmas Present.
It was her washing in the machine overnight and she’s very unhappy. She seems not to care who witnesses her outburst, so I fold my clothes slowly, listening to see what happens. Ellensburg’s not the entertainment capital of the world, so this is as good as it gets.
She'd started a wash just before ten, then decided to do a second load. She moved the Out Of Order sign from the drier to the other washer so that “No one could take my machine” then went to her room to get the rest of the laundry, but the door was locked when she got back. “Had to deal with my babies,” she said, looking down at the urchins glued to her legs.
The night clerk told her the previous guy had locked up and taken the key with him, but she didn't believe it. “That desk boy lied to me,” she yelled, shooting flecks of spit towards the manager. “He abused my rights.”
I can only imagine what discourse occurred. He's probably in a padded room now, wearing a long-sleeved white jacket. The kind that buttons up at the back.
Their argument escalates, although it’s really more of a tantrum. The manager rarely squeezes out any more than a hurried “but…” as the woman gets more agitated, gesticulating and hollering about her “touching her privates” and how badly she was treated last night.
No doubt it would continue until she ran out of spit or the manager fled, shrieking. A small part of me wants to see the end, but the plot of this story was thinning and it didn’t really matter.
You can only have so much of a good thing and I believe I’ve exhausted the Ellensburg limit.
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