8. By the time she got home she had finished the last Masked Failure comic. It was good but open-ended. It seemed almost intentionally open-ended with the Masked Failure suspended over a pit. His final words were: "I’m sure that" and that was it.
She picked up some of her clothes and threw them on the bed looking for the new comic. Then she took the clothes off the bed and threw them on the floor. Her sheets were all twisted and she took them by the ends and shook them, dislodging a bra, a tennis shoe, and a cigarette lighter but no comic book.
She finally found it tucked carefully under a vase on her dresser. She picked up the comic and flopped down with it on the bed. Something fell out from in between the pages. She picked it up. It was an envelope with a strange symbol pressed into the wax of the seal. She broke the seal and opened the envelope. There was a card inside with fancy script inviting her to a meeting of "The Secret Society of Secrets." It was for that night at 8:00 p.m.
Was this real or a joke? She turned the card over and over. There were details such as the address and the instruction to wear a mask, but no indication if this invitation was actually meant for her or if it was just a gimmick of the comic book. She looked at the envelope and the mysterious symbol in the wax.
She decided that she might as well get her laundry done while she investigated this so-called secret society. The address for the meeting was the same as the laundromat. So she began stuffing her dirty clothes into a pillow case. When that was full she took one of her towels and put her remaining clothes in the center, tying the corners together. She put a handful of change into her pockets and grabbed the detergent on her way out the door.
She stretched the bungee cord around her two makeshift laundry bags and clipped it to the moped.
//She couldn’t get an answer dialing her brother’s telephone number so hung up and thought about what she was going to do. At the office, she had spilled ink on her shirt and it hadn’t come out completely rinsing it under cold or seltzer water. Maybe it would come out in the wash. She went to the closet and took her laundry detergent off the shelf and picked up the laundry basket and closed the closet door. She had her laundry coins in a special container her brother had given her. He’d picked it up at an antique store and said that it used to hold something called "film." He chuckled and said that it would de more useful as a coin purse.
She put her coin purse into her regular purse and put everything into the back seat of her car.
//She rode her moped a couple of blocks past empty, burned-out buildings. In front of one, an old bedraggled person seemed to be sleeping in a gutter. As she sped past she thought she saw the figure move and try to say something to her. But she didn’t have any money to give and continued on until she got to the block with the laundromat. It also had a barbershop and a milkbar. She got off the moped and put the kickstand down. She locked the moped to a street sign that said: "No parking, fighting, swearing or selling merchandise on the street from 2am to 6am." She unbungeed her laundry and carried it inside where there was a large man scratching himself.
It was very dim in the laundromat with one of the light bulbs flickering. People often smoked in there and there always seemed to be a pall of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. One of the dryers had an out-of-order sign on it. She walked up to a washing machine and opened the door, poured her soap in and then added her clothes. She closed the lid and inserted her coins into the slots lined up for them. She pushed a button and the washing machine began shaking back and forth.
//She drove a block before starting to look for a parking space. It was almost impossible to find one at this hour. But the laundromat had its own lot and there was a space there. She pulled on the stick shift putting the car in park and took her keys out of the ignition.
She got out of the car, closed the door and opened the back door of the car. She took out her laundry and her purse and closed the door with her hip. She walked on low heels through the parking lot and walked through the sliding doors and picked out a washing machine. She opened the lid of the machine, poured in the detergent, tilted the basket with her clothes in it into the machine, closed the lid and slid the coins into the slot. She pushed the buttons selecting the temperature, speed and water level and then the start button.
//It was a little past 8:00 and she wondered where the meeting was supposed to be. She laughed at herself thinking that there actually was such a thing as a Secret Society of Secrets.
Just as she was in mid-laugh, the dryer with the "out of order" sign made a low banging noise and its door opened of its own accord. It certainly is out of order, she thought. But then the whole front of the dryer swung out towards her and the shape of something emerged from within. The shape unfolded itself and became more or less that of a person. It had the body, arms and legs of a human but the head of a rabbit. The rabbit-headed thing looked at her and pointed with both hands at its head and then pointed at her, repeating the gesture towards its head. It looked away, back towards the dryer and she could see the strings of the mask tying it on to the person’s head. She had forgotten about the mask she had brought and realized that this rabbit-masked guide was telling her to put it on.
It was all too much to believe. A dryer that was not a dryer but a doorway into a secret society. Someone wearing a rabbit mask beckoning her into the dryer. She worried that once she followed, there would be no turning back. But the only thing she had to turn back to was her clothes washing in the washer.
She picked up her mask which was in the expressionless features of a nimoy mask and tied the strings behind her head. She took a deep inhalation as if preparing to dive into deep water and went through the dryer.
//She sat down in one of the orange seats that looked like a fingerless hand’s palm opening to grasp her buttocks. As soon as she sat down she stood back up and walked over to the low table where there was a selection of magazines. The star of the sitcom Strangers smiled out from the cover of one and she picked it up. The magazine was called Humanity which reassured her and she smiled. She walked over to the soda machine and put five coins from her coin purse into the machine and pushed a button marked Pale Ale. The Pale Ale fell through the machine and dropped into the little receptacle. She popped the top and took a long swig of the crispy, stinging liquid.
She walked back to the orange palm and sat again, putting the soda can next to her and opened the magazine. She could feel the gentle whirl of the washing machine brushing up against her.
//The person in the rabbit mask closed the dryer behind them and it was dark inside with light coming from below and around a corner. She could just make out the steps that led down, down into what must have been the basement of the laundromat.
At the bottom of the stairs were a wall and a narrow hallway leading off to the right. She slowed down as she approached the light at the end of the hall. The rabbit mask made a noise and touched her shoulder. She could see seven chairs in a semicircle, three of which were occupied by people wearing masks. The other four were empty. The space in which the chairs were set looked exactly like a basement. The floor was concrete and dirty. There were exposed pipes and wiring and insulation and on one wall was a shelf with various buckets and tools and things that she did not have the time or inclination to scrutinize. There was one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and they had gathered the chairs around it. The rabbit took a seat and gestured towards the empty seats indicating that she should sit in one.
//She sat flipping through the pages of the magazine most of which were advertisements before putting it down and staring out the window. There was no one else in the laundromat even though two of the dryers were going. She watched her clothes through the window of the washer. They went up and down, back and forth in unpredictable patterns. She tried to keep her eye on one specific piece of clothing but it would disappear and then she couldn’t tell when it came back. She wasn’t even sure what the article of clothing was. Her eyes went around and around in figure 8’s and in figure 64’s trying to follow the clothes.
She stood up and walked to the door which slid open before her. She hadn’t planned to go outside but now that the door was open it was as if the decision had been made for her. And so she stepped out into the cool evening. She looked in either direction, but as she had never really walked around, she didn’t know where to go. It didn’t seem to matter so she picked the direction opposite to the way her apartment was and started walking.
//One person was wearing a sun mask, one was wearing an alien head and the last person was wearing a pink elephant mask.
The voice behind the elephant mask said that it was time to begin. The voice was old and she could not tell if it belonged to a man or a woman. She looked at the other chairs and wanted to ask if anyone else was coming. Even if all of the chairs were filled, it didn’t seem like much of a secret society. And with only five people, it didn’t seem like a society at all.
Suddenly, everyone was standing except her and the elephant was motioning to her with its hand to stand. She rose slowly and the others in the semicircle began to shake each other’s hand in an elaborate ceremony. She felt ridiculous and wanted to go home.
"We welcome our new member to the Secret Society of Secrets. I am called ‘The Voice’ and while you are here, you must not speak. This is how we maintain our identities." The Voice went on for a while but she wasn’t really listening. She was looking for the best way to excuse herself.
This wasn’t what she had expected. She thought it would be adventurous like in The Masked Failure. But this…
The Voice was saying that the alien mask wearer had forgotten to bring the snacks. And then it started passing out pieces of paper and pencils to everyone.
"This is the part of our meeting where you write down a secret and I will speak it. No one knows who wrote what and, of course, your identity is always to remain a secret."
She rolled her eyes. Did she even have a secret?
Everyone else was handing in their slips of paper. She wrote something quickly and handed hers in.
The Voice shuffled the papers and cleared its throat before reading from the first one.
//She walked down the sidewalk not entirely mindful of where she was going.
She found herself looking in the lit windows of the buildings she passed. Her eyes were drawn there not unlike the melanophila beetle to a forest fire.
She was watching the head of a person move back and forth across the frame of the window. The head paused and bent downward. There was another head behind the first and the two heads would look at each other or face the other and then one of the heads disappeared behind the frame of the window. She wondered what they were doing. She saw a hand reach up followed by its arm and the fingers of the hand touched the head’s face. She couldn’t make out any features of the face only the vague recognition of typical parts.
The other head came back in view and then both heads left the screen. She stood on the sidewalk staring at the window for a minute feeling something before realizing where she was and then kept walking. She turned around at the end of the block and walked back, looking in the window but the lights were off.
// "I hate my job," The Voice said.
The Voice put the slip of paper behind the stack and read from the top, "I think about killing myself."
"I know who graffitied the wall."
"I forge signatures on important documents," it said.
"I don't know what to believe."
There was silence in the basement. She no longer wanted to crawl away but she didn’t know what to do with those secrets. What do you do in a town where such words dared not be spoken? Where you had an obligation to grin and bear it and not even acknowledge that it was unbearable? These were thoughts she had not even dared to think before and now she realized what this secret society was really all about. Or at least what it could be about for her. She felt shaken but also reassured that she was not alone.
It was probably time for her to move her clothes from the washer to the dryer. But instead she just sat there, basking in the silence of shared secrets.
//When she came back in the laundromat, her clothes had finished washing. The dryers that had been running had their doors open and were empty. She began moving her wet clothes into a dryer and didn’t even feel the tears that had begun to run down her cheeks. It wasn’t until after she put the coins in and selected the settings that she wiped away her tears and realized that she was crying.
She felt two things. The first was a welling up of emotion that almost choked her and made her sit down on the orange chair trying to swallow the sobs that racked her. And then also a complete refusal to believe in the actuality of her emotions. She didn’t know why she was crying and fought to check her tears. It was ridiculous and probably just had something to do with the chemicals in the detergent and had nothing to do with what she had seen in the windows on the street. After all, she hadn’t seen anything. She was happy. She was fine. Her clothes dried and she drove back home just in time to catch the beginning of Strangers.
Watching the show, she laughed as she sat back in her recliner. She made herself a bowl of popcorn and laughed and laughed.
next
She picked up some of her clothes and threw them on the bed looking for the new comic. Then she took the clothes off the bed and threw them on the floor. Her sheets were all twisted and she took them by the ends and shook them, dislodging a bra, a tennis shoe, and a cigarette lighter but no comic book.
She finally found it tucked carefully under a vase on her dresser. She picked up the comic and flopped down with it on the bed. Something fell out from in between the pages. She picked it up. It was an envelope with a strange symbol pressed into the wax of the seal. She broke the seal and opened the envelope. There was a card inside with fancy script inviting her to a meeting of "The Secret Society of Secrets." It was for that night at 8:00 p.m.
Was this real or a joke? She turned the card over and over. There were details such as the address and the instruction to wear a mask, but no indication if this invitation was actually meant for her or if it was just a gimmick of the comic book. She looked at the envelope and the mysterious symbol in the wax.
She decided that she might as well get her laundry done while she investigated this so-called secret society. The address for the meeting was the same as the laundromat. So she began stuffing her dirty clothes into a pillow case. When that was full she took one of her towels and put her remaining clothes in the center, tying the corners together. She put a handful of change into her pockets and grabbed the detergent on her way out the door.
She stretched the bungee cord around her two makeshift laundry bags and clipped it to the moped.
//She couldn’t get an answer dialing her brother’s telephone number so hung up and thought about what she was going to do. At the office, she had spilled ink on her shirt and it hadn’t come out completely rinsing it under cold or seltzer water. Maybe it would come out in the wash. She went to the closet and took her laundry detergent off the shelf and picked up the laundry basket and closed the closet door. She had her laundry coins in a special container her brother had given her. He’d picked it up at an antique store and said that it used to hold something called "film." He chuckled and said that it would de more useful as a coin purse.
She put her coin purse into her regular purse and put everything into the back seat of her car.
//She rode her moped a couple of blocks past empty, burned-out buildings. In front of one, an old bedraggled person seemed to be sleeping in a gutter. As she sped past she thought she saw the figure move and try to say something to her. But she didn’t have any money to give and continued on until she got to the block with the laundromat. It also had a barbershop and a milkbar. She got off the moped and put the kickstand down. She locked the moped to a street sign that said: "No parking, fighting, swearing or selling merchandise on the street from 2am to 6am." She unbungeed her laundry and carried it inside where there was a large man scratching himself.
It was very dim in the laundromat with one of the light bulbs flickering. People often smoked in there and there always seemed to be a pall of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. One of the dryers had an out-of-order sign on it. She walked up to a washing machine and opened the door, poured her soap in and then added her clothes. She closed the lid and inserted her coins into the slots lined up for them. She pushed a button and the washing machine began shaking back and forth.
//She drove a block before starting to look for a parking space. It was almost impossible to find one at this hour. But the laundromat had its own lot and there was a space there. She pulled on the stick shift putting the car in park and took her keys out of the ignition.
She got out of the car, closed the door and opened the back door of the car. She took out her laundry and her purse and closed the door with her hip. She walked on low heels through the parking lot and walked through the sliding doors and picked out a washing machine. She opened the lid of the machine, poured in the detergent, tilted the basket with her clothes in it into the machine, closed the lid and slid the coins into the slot. She pushed the buttons selecting the temperature, speed and water level and then the start button.
//It was a little past 8:00 and she wondered where the meeting was supposed to be. She laughed at herself thinking that there actually was such a thing as a Secret Society of Secrets.
Just as she was in mid-laugh, the dryer with the "out of order" sign made a low banging noise and its door opened of its own accord. It certainly is out of order, she thought. But then the whole front of the dryer swung out towards her and the shape of something emerged from within. The shape unfolded itself and became more or less that of a person. It had the body, arms and legs of a human but the head of a rabbit. The rabbit-headed thing looked at her and pointed with both hands at its head and then pointed at her, repeating the gesture towards its head. It looked away, back towards the dryer and she could see the strings of the mask tying it on to the person’s head. She had forgotten about the mask she had brought and realized that this rabbit-masked guide was telling her to put it on.
It was all too much to believe. A dryer that was not a dryer but a doorway into a secret society. Someone wearing a rabbit mask beckoning her into the dryer. She worried that once she followed, there would be no turning back. But the only thing she had to turn back to was her clothes washing in the washer.
She picked up her mask which was in the expressionless features of a nimoy mask and tied the strings behind her head. She took a deep inhalation as if preparing to dive into deep water and went through the dryer.
//She sat down in one of the orange seats that looked like a fingerless hand’s palm opening to grasp her buttocks. As soon as she sat down she stood back up and walked over to the low table where there was a selection of magazines. The star of the sitcom Strangers smiled out from the cover of one and she picked it up. The magazine was called Humanity which reassured her and she smiled. She walked over to the soda machine and put five coins from her coin purse into the machine and pushed a button marked Pale Ale. The Pale Ale fell through the machine and dropped into the little receptacle. She popped the top and took a long swig of the crispy, stinging liquid.
She walked back to the orange palm and sat again, putting the soda can next to her and opened the magazine. She could feel the gentle whirl of the washing machine brushing up against her.
//The person in the rabbit mask closed the dryer behind them and it was dark inside with light coming from below and around a corner. She could just make out the steps that led down, down into what must have been the basement of the laundromat.
At the bottom of the stairs were a wall and a narrow hallway leading off to the right. She slowed down as she approached the light at the end of the hall. The rabbit mask made a noise and touched her shoulder. She could see seven chairs in a semicircle, three of which were occupied by people wearing masks. The other four were empty. The space in which the chairs were set looked exactly like a basement. The floor was concrete and dirty. There were exposed pipes and wiring and insulation and on one wall was a shelf with various buckets and tools and things that she did not have the time or inclination to scrutinize. There was one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and they had gathered the chairs around it. The rabbit took a seat and gestured towards the empty seats indicating that she should sit in one.
//She sat flipping through the pages of the magazine most of which were advertisements before putting it down and staring out the window. There was no one else in the laundromat even though two of the dryers were going. She watched her clothes through the window of the washer. They went up and down, back and forth in unpredictable patterns. She tried to keep her eye on one specific piece of clothing but it would disappear and then she couldn’t tell when it came back. She wasn’t even sure what the article of clothing was. Her eyes went around and around in figure 8’s and in figure 64’s trying to follow the clothes.
She stood up and walked to the door which slid open before her. She hadn’t planned to go outside but now that the door was open it was as if the decision had been made for her. And so she stepped out into the cool evening. She looked in either direction, but as she had never really walked around, she didn’t know where to go. It didn’t seem to matter so she picked the direction opposite to the way her apartment was and started walking.
//One person was wearing a sun mask, one was wearing an alien head and the last person was wearing a pink elephant mask.
The voice behind the elephant mask said that it was time to begin. The voice was old and she could not tell if it belonged to a man or a woman. She looked at the other chairs and wanted to ask if anyone else was coming. Even if all of the chairs were filled, it didn’t seem like much of a secret society. And with only five people, it didn’t seem like a society at all.
Suddenly, everyone was standing except her and the elephant was motioning to her with its hand to stand. She rose slowly and the others in the semicircle began to shake each other’s hand in an elaborate ceremony. She felt ridiculous and wanted to go home.
"We welcome our new member to the Secret Society of Secrets. I am called ‘The Voice’ and while you are here, you must not speak. This is how we maintain our identities." The Voice went on for a while but she wasn’t really listening. She was looking for the best way to excuse herself.
This wasn’t what she had expected. She thought it would be adventurous like in The Masked Failure. But this…
The Voice was saying that the alien mask wearer had forgotten to bring the snacks. And then it started passing out pieces of paper and pencils to everyone.
"This is the part of our meeting where you write down a secret and I will speak it. No one knows who wrote what and, of course, your identity is always to remain a secret."
She rolled her eyes. Did she even have a secret?
Everyone else was handing in their slips of paper. She wrote something quickly and handed hers in.
The Voice shuffled the papers and cleared its throat before reading from the first one.
//She walked down the sidewalk not entirely mindful of where she was going.
She found herself looking in the lit windows of the buildings she passed. Her eyes were drawn there not unlike the melanophila beetle to a forest fire.
She was watching the head of a person move back and forth across the frame of the window. The head paused and bent downward. There was another head behind the first and the two heads would look at each other or face the other and then one of the heads disappeared behind the frame of the window. She wondered what they were doing. She saw a hand reach up followed by its arm and the fingers of the hand touched the head’s face. She couldn’t make out any features of the face only the vague recognition of typical parts.
The other head came back in view and then both heads left the screen. She stood on the sidewalk staring at the window for a minute feeling something before realizing where she was and then kept walking. She turned around at the end of the block and walked back, looking in the window but the lights were off.
// "I hate my job," The Voice said.
The Voice put the slip of paper behind the stack and read from the top, "I think about killing myself."
"I know who graffitied the wall."
"I forge signatures on important documents," it said.
"I don't know what to believe."
There was silence in the basement. She no longer wanted to crawl away but she didn’t know what to do with those secrets. What do you do in a town where such words dared not be spoken? Where you had an obligation to grin and bear it and not even acknowledge that it was unbearable? These were thoughts she had not even dared to think before and now she realized what this secret society was really all about. Or at least what it could be about for her. She felt shaken but also reassured that she was not alone.
It was probably time for her to move her clothes from the washer to the dryer. But instead she just sat there, basking in the silence of shared secrets.
//When she came back in the laundromat, her clothes had finished washing. The dryers that had been running had their doors open and were empty. She began moving her wet clothes into a dryer and didn’t even feel the tears that had begun to run down her cheeks. It wasn’t until after she put the coins in and selected the settings that she wiped away her tears and realized that she was crying.
She felt two things. The first was a welling up of emotion that almost choked her and made her sit down on the orange chair trying to swallow the sobs that racked her. And then also a complete refusal to believe in the actuality of her emotions. She didn’t know why she was crying and fought to check her tears. It was ridiculous and probably just had something to do with the chemicals in the detergent and had nothing to do with what she had seen in the windows on the street. After all, she hadn’t seen anything. She was happy. She was fine. Her clothes dried and she drove back home just in time to catch the beginning of Strangers.
Watching the show, she laughed as she sat back in her recliner. She made herself a bowl of popcorn and laughed and laughed.
next