by Christine H. Chen
What I do is spray Windex, wipe the round glass window, the door handle, the drum, rake layers of gray cotton lint from the filter, sweep and mop the floor, take out the trash to the back alley that smells urine and rotten food from the dumpsters of the Double Happiness restaurant across. When I’m cleaning the countertop near the windows, I talk to the abandoned overstretched underwear, the toe-less lone sock, don’t worry, someone will love you back, and I tuck them tenderly in an empty dryer sheet box. Mrs Tang’s head bobs above the ridge of the line of machines like a lost buoy. Her face scrunches like a wrinkled shirt as she yells across the aisle that I should do more for the above minimum wage of $5.25 an hour she pays me, like fix the motor brushes in #8 since I’m studying science-y stuff instead of moping around. I climb inside #8—a fortunate Feng Shui number—and watch her eyes grow wild and bulbous like the surface of the moon. I wave her goodbye as my spaceship roars to space.
Christine H. Chen’s fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Ghost Parachute, Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, and elsewhere. Find her at www.christinehchen.com and @ChristineHChen1.
