Spin Cycle:
A Romantic Christmas Story
By Rusty Fischer, author of A Town Called Snowflake
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Spin Cycle
Rusty Fischer
Copyright 2012 by Rusty Fischer
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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Cover credit: © lalouetto – Fotolia.com
This story was formerly released under the title “Suddenly in Snowflake.”
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Author’s Note:
The following is a FREE short story edited by the author himself. If you see any glaring mistakes, I apologize and hope you don’t take it out on my poor characters, who had nothing to do with their author’s bad grammar! Happy reading… and happy holidays!
Enjoy!
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Spin Cycle:
A Romantic Christmas Story
Dana Devlin saw the neon “Laundromat” sign flickering in the lonely strip mall to her right and yanked the rental car over without even signaling.
She wasn’t worried about being pulled over; heck, she could have done donuts in the middle of the street – naked, practically – and no one would care.
(Seriously, did this town even have a police force?)
Snowflake, South Carolina on Christmas Eve wasn’t exactly a metropolitan hotspot, and at this time of the night she was the only car on the street.
The tiny strip mall had a Laundromat, a sub shop and a convenience store; all decked out in holiday trim and all, amazingly, still open.
Dana smirked; not exactly a carriage ride through Central Park, but for the chance to get away from her boyfriend’s family for an hour or two, she’d take it.
She parked the rental in front of the Laundromat and stood, reaching for the laundry basket in the backseat; then she remembered – no laundry.
All she had was the fresh red wine stain on her new white blouse and the memory of the brief tantrum she’d had after spilling it.
“Use Mom’s laundry room,” pleaded Chad, her boyfriend of two months.
“No thanks,” she’d spat, grabbing her purse and heading for the door. “I thought I saw a Laundromat on our way into town; I’ll go there.”
“The Snowflake Suds and Duds?” Chad asked rhetorically, his family chortling in the background as if they were sharing yet another of their many inside jokes. “Why would you want to go to that dump when we have a perfectly good machine here? Mom can get that stain out in 10-minutes, no problem.”
What she’d wanted to say, of course, was, “If I spend another 10 minutes with you and your family I’ll use your mother’s matching snowmen cheese spreaders to slit my wrists!”
Her freedom had come at a price; now she had nothing to wear while she washed her shirt.
“Yes I do!” she said aloud to the cool night breeze, stiff black heels scraping on the pitted drive.
Dana marched to the back of the rental and popped the trunk; inside was the bag of matching Christmas shirts she’d painstakingly picked out for Chad’s family; all 12 of them!
Surely, one of them must fit.
None too eager to stand around in the bitter cold at midnight and make a guesstimate, she yanked the whole bag inside with her.
There were carols playing inside the dimly-lit Laundromat, adding to her blood pressure.
(Chad’s mother was a big fan of the singing cats version of “12 Days of Christmas,” so she’d been over the caroling after about five minutes in the house.)
Inside the Snowflake Suds & Duds, the scent of peppermint and spice from several flickering candles mingled with detergent and soap, and she noticed little snowflake stickers on all six of the silent washing machines.
She wondered if they stayed up all year, given the town’s name, or just for Christmas?
Not that she cared; if Dana had her way, this would be her one – and only – trip to scenic Snowflake, South Carolina.
The Laundromat seemed deserted, and why not?
Every sane person in Snowflake was home snuggling by the fire with someone special.
Here she was, in the last Laundromat in town, red wine splashed across the front of her blouse and on the verge of tears – again.
“Hello?” she asked, rooting through her purse for enough quarters to start her load.
She found them in one of her side pockets, but just barely.
“Anybody home?” she asked playfully, sliding the four quarters in their appointed slots and turning to face the silent row of dryers across from her, as if one of their round, giant faces might reply in the affirmative.
Her voice would have echoed through the empty, cavernous space if it weren’t for a soulful sax solo soothing overhead.
“Hello?” she asked again, peering around the corner at an empty service desk, where a stack of books and CDs waited for their owner to return, perhaps from the convenience store or sub shop?
The machines were silent, even hers; the only sound in the place a smooth jazz rendition of “White Christmas” which she hated to admit was kind of… nice.
She looked out the huge plate glass window, peering through painted on snowflakes and seeing only her car.
She looked at the open washing machine in front of her, the four quarters all ready to go, and smiled wickedly to herself.
Somewhere, on her bucket list, there must have been an item reading “Take off your favorite stained blouse in the middle of a deserted Laundromat on Christmas Eve in a tiny town called Snowflake while you consider how best to tell your boyfriend you’re breaking up with him.”
She quickly peeled out of her shirt, closed the top of her machine with a shuddering thud, slid in the quarters and, just as soon as the machine started gurgling realized: she had no detergent!
Not an ounce.
She looked frantically through her purse to find lotion, hand soap, anything; nothing.
She spotted an old vending machine in the back, sporting rows of brightly colored detergent boxes; she scrambled for more quarters, finally finding two – her last two – and sliding them into the machine.
The little box slid out yellow and orange and she raced to pour it into the machine, spilling half of it on her naked belly as she yanked off the top in record time.
At last, her load was rumbling and sudsing away.
Dana leaned back against the washer, listening to another smooth jazz Christmas carol and thinking how much more peaceful a rumbling 1972 washing machine could be than a house full of nosy, know-it-all future in-laws (this according to Chad, who gave new meaning to the term “rushing things”).
Only when she heard a male voice clear his throat did she suddenly remember; her blouse was INSIDE that relaxing, sudsy, rumbling 1972 washing machine!
“Oh! My! God!” she gurgled, scrambling through the bag of cheesy holiday T-shirts at her feet to find something – anything – to cover up with. “Oh! My! God!”
In a blur of activity she heard good-natured chuckling, saw a flash of rough fisherman’s sweater, a chiseled face full of three-day stubble and dug even deeper into the bottom of the bulging outlet mall sack.
Just before giving up and going au natural for the rest of the evening, Dana finally grabbed a powder blue baby doll T-shirt with the words “It’s All About Me!” printed in gold foil on a burgundy Santa bag; it barely fit, clinging in all the wrong places and riding up every time she moved more than inch.
“I thought this place was empty!” she gasped, still clutching her arms over her chest as she stood protectively over her wash
ing machine, as if the chuckling intruder was there for her stained shirt. “Where did you come from?”
The chuckling was coming from a youngish guy, leaning lazily against the sales counter and clutching a brown paper bag in his hand.
“I’m-I’m-s-s-sorry!” he stammered, face blushing as he stood his ground. “I went next door for a second and when I came back, there you were… just… standing there and, well, I guess I was too shocked to say anything. I mean, you hear about this kind of thing happening but in all my years it’s never quite happened to me before…”
He let his voice trail off and, at last, removed his deep, green eyes from chest level to meet her own.
“What?” she asked as he slid a ring of keys onto the counter. “You work here or something?”
“Kind of,” he said, looking out the huge plate glass window at her rental car.
His voice was vaguely sad, like maybe he had the Christmas blues or something.
(That, or he was afraid Dana was going to call the cops on his Peeping Tom butt!)
She felt a little bad for the guy.
He looked about her age, like he should be in college with she and Chad, and yet here he was stuck running the