Viau, 3 a.m.

Two of us, and every machine free except two. The one you're using makes a noise on the spin like it's coming apart, and it does that every time, and nobody has ever fixed it.

You're folding men's shirts. I can tell by the collars — two thumbs, twice, before the fold.

You ask me in French if I have change for a twenty. I tell you in English that I don't, and that the machine took my last five, and we both look at the change machine, which has a sign on it in marker.

The shirts are his. He left three weeks ago. His laundry keeps turning up — in the hamper, behind the door, under the bed — like the apartment is producing it.

I'm washing sheets nobody else has been in since March.

We trade the hard parts in whichever language is further away. Yours goes to French. Mine goes to English.

The dryer buzzes and you pull out a wool sweater that's come out the size of a child's.

"Calice."

You hold it up. You don't put it in the bag. You put it in the garbage by the door, and then you sit back down and start on the next load.

We fold in silence for an hour. On the way out you hold the door with your hip.

It's getting light on Viau. Not light. The idea of it.