39 - Dirty Laundry

Who knew that eleven-thirty on a Tuesday night was when everybody invaded Wash Tub Laundry with their dirty underwear?  Nearly every washer was full of somebody’s bloomers and the air inside was as muggy as an August night in Atlanta thanks to two dozen rumbling dryers.  Cassidy wasn’t thrilled about the crowd or the heat, but she thanked the stars above that there were still a few machines available when she dragged her bags of unwashed belongings through the door.

Towels with underclothes, then jeans, lights and darks were all piled into their respective bins as she hummed Poison’s “Unskinny Bop”, which had been playing on the radio during the short drive from Blackbird to Nashville’s only twenty-four hour laundromat.  She put a twenty in the change machine, used the coins to get the necessary laundry detergent, and started pumping the remaining quarters into the washers. 

The sooner she got started, the sooner she could go home and get some sleep.

And torture yourself.  Let’s not forget that.

Cassidy would sleep like a baby, because she simply wasn’t going to torture herself with thoughts of Jon.  She’d treated him no differently today than she had since they day they met and if that – she – was no longer enough to jostle him out of his funk, there was nothing she could do about it.  Maybe it was his wife’s turn to tend to his mental health.

Lord, forgive me for bein’ hateful.  I’m sure she’s a lovely woman that doesn’t merit my unkindness any more than her husband merits his own unkindness.  If You have it to spare, I’m sure she could use an extra dose of patience in the next couple days.

 She felt a little awkward about it, but Cassidy was curious about Jon’s wife.  More specifically, she was curious about their relationship.  Was the little missus simply uncaring about her husband’s activities outside the home?  Or did they have one of those open marriage things?

Having never been married herself, Cassidy couldn’t say for certain, but she was inclined to believe she’d be a little interested in what her husband was doing in his spare time.  If that husband was Jon, she might be more than a little interested.  His absence from home for days at a time, without the excuse of touring, would shove her past interested to suspicious. 

Unless his wife was stupid – and Jon wouldn’t be married to a stupid woman – she had to have some inkling that things weren’t quite as they should be.

He keeps comin’ back, and maybe that’s what she considers to be important.  

That was undoubtedly it.  They’d been together for a lot of years, and the woman probably knew he would never stray too far from home.  That nothing was out there to keep him away for long when they had children, a circle of friends and family and a… life together that was more encompassing than sex and chitchat.

Friends with benefits.  That’s what you two are. 

Cassidy had been fortunate enough to have a couple of those in her lifetime.  

Theo was a genuinely nice guy who had dated Libby for a short while during an "off-again" moment with her loser boyfriend.  He had eventually been kicked to the curb during an "on-again" moment and Cassidy had felt sorry for him, so they'd gone out to eat a couple of times.   After a couple of dinners, a lunch and coffee, it turned out they liked each other well enough to become casual lovers. 

Alex had been a cute patient who persistently flirted every time he came in for an appointment, which was more often than he actually required medical attention.  It was flattering, but Cassidy had never taken him seriously.  In a weak moment, she'd agreed to go out on a date with the stern warning that she wasn't interested in a long-term relationship.   He was much more accepting of that than she'd expected and, when either of them felt the need, they enjoyed relieving sexual tension together. 

Both were men that she still considered good friends. At any given moment, she could call either one of them and be invited into bed for an hour or the night - whichever she chose.

She’d never trusted them to give her an orgasm, though.

You realize you’re a hypocrite, right?  Scoldin’ that man over keepin’ his feelin’s hidden away, when you do the very same thing.  You haven’t let anybody close enough to hurt you since that damned Derek.

Except Jon.  He’d hurt her the other day because she’d thought it safe to let her guard down with him.  That was an unfortunate miscalculation on her part but he wasn’t really at fault, so she’d pulled up her bootstraps and picked up where they left off before that.  It was healthier than licking her wounds.

Stop thinkin’ about it and him.  He’s on his way home to his family.

It was good advice and she’d be wise to heed it.  It was time to put Jon aside in favor of her own family.

Her cell phone told her that it was almost midnight.  Sometimes her sister was a night owl while other nights she went to bed with the chickens.  It was hit or miss as to which nest Libby was working out of tonight, but Cassidy give her a quick call anyway.  After spending a lifetime where they didn’t go a day without talking to one another, these long lapses between calls were starting to wear on Cassidy. 

As she was watching a young woman extract a fluffy Tennessee Titans stadium blanket from one of the dryers, Cassidy was reminded of Clay.  The same Clay who mentioned something to her on the sidewalk that Jon might find interesting, and she’d forgotten to share it with him.   

[11:45 PM]CASSIDY: Meant to tell you Clay said he was working on something that would make you happier next time you left N’ville.  Might want to keep in touch with him.

Maybe that’ll bring a smile to his face.

Her good deed done, she pulled up the very short contact list from her phone’s memory.  It only held numbers for Libby, Calliope, Tully, Jon, Obie and David.  She hovered over Jon’s for a tempting moment before moving on to firmly tap Libby’s name and connect the call.

“What’s the matter?” her sister answered in a breathless whisper.

Chuckling softly, Cassidy let her head rest against the wall.  “Nothin’ more than usual.  I was just callin’ to jaw.  How ya doin’?”

“Hellfire and damnation, girl!  You don’t call and wake somebody up out of a dead sleep to pass the time ‘a day.”  Libby’s sigh of exasperation didn’t even faze Cassidy.  When she fully awakened and got her wits about her, Libby would happier to hear from her big sister.  “Where you at?”

“Now why would you ask me that?  We’ve been over this a hundred times already.”

It had been established from the moment Cassidy left their hometown that it would be best if her whereabouts remained a secret.  They were running enough risk using cell phones, but the local sheriff’s office wasn’t exactly hi-tech.  If they managed to track these calls, she would wear a bonnet and call herself Mother Goose.

“That’s not what I meant,” Libby drawled.  “It’s noisy there.”

“Oh.”  Cassidy cracked an eye at the yapping Chihuahua sitting in a laundry basket.  It was dark brown and, with a little pair of round glasses, it would look a whole lot like Obie – except for the Elton John vest it was wearing.  That was a little too much flash for her mentor.  “Laundromat.  You know how that goes.  It’s almost as good as Wal-Mart in the middle of the night.”

“I hear ya.  Delores Fiddleton was down to the laundromat here the other day.  Her bra strap got wrapped around the underside of the agitator in the washin’ machine and kept it from spinnin’.  Dang thing ended up burnin’ out the motor, so now she’s suin’ the owner.”

“What in the world for?”  While they couldn’t be considered friends, Cassidy knew Delores from around town.  Quite frankly, she was surprised to hear that the woman washed her bra at all. 

“Sexual harassment.  They want her to pay for the new motor in the washin’ machine and she says ain’t fair since a man wouldn’t be washin’ a bra.”

“I see she’s been leavin’ the bleach on her hair too long again,” Cassidy snickered.

“She’s lucky she has hair left.  Hey, speakin’ of lawyers...”

“No, I haven’t found him yet.”  The question irritated her when it shouldn’t have.  In the back of her mind she’d known Libby would ask, so there wasn’t any point in being pissy about it.  “Damn man is invisible.”

“Or he don’t exist.”

That thought had actually begun to cross Cassidy’s mind as of late.  What if she was searching for somebody that didn’t exist? 

You should’ve taken David’s help.

“He might not, I s’pose,” she acknowledged Libby’s musing.  “Be nice to know one way or the other, so I can come home.”

“I sure do miss you.”

“I miss you too, honey.  Won’t be much longer.  I hope.”

Both sisters sat quietly but, seeing as Libby wasn’t exactly the quiet type, it was for an exceptionally short moment.

“So how are things goin’ as a muse?”

So much for being distracted from Jon. 

She didn’t know what made her think Libby wouldn’t ask about him.  It wasn’t like their lives were full of celebrity encounters and she would naturally be curious.

Personally, Cassidy would rather talk about Delores’s bra.

“Goin’ okay.  I like him and he’s gettin’ done what he needs to, I reckon.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, no.  We were at the studio again today, but it didn’t go so good.  After he left, I worked with David and Obie to do a couple solo songs.”

“He left and you stayed?  Ain’t that weird?”

Was it?  Maybe, but there was no point in voicing that uncertainty. 

“Not really.”

“So you’re doin’ laundry at midnight while he’s…?”

“On his way to New Jersey.”

Libby groaned as though she were in pain.  “Maybe I’m just a simple country hick that don’t understand the mysterious ways of the world, but I surely thought ‘muse’ was code for ‘mistress’ when you told it to me.  Is that not the case?  And if that is the case, why is he in New Jersey instead of your bed?”

Lord, this is not a talk I wanted to have.

“How are the boys, doin’ Libby?  Judson sign up for baseball tryouts yet?  Should be ‘bout that time, shouldn’t it?”

“Don’t change the subject,” came the firm order.  “I know you think of me as nothin’ more than your silly little sister, but you don’t have to keep your lips sewed shut about the fella.  It’s not like I’m gonna tell anybody.”

Well if this wasn’t a fine and awkward position to be in.  She could respect the privacy of her… Jon, who had fled the state, or offend her sister, who had never fled anywhere. 

It was time to put her “big sister” panties on and deal with it that way.

“You know it ain’t ladylike to discuss that kinda thing, Liberty.”

“Don’t you ‘Liberty’ me.  Are you doin’ unspeakable deeds with that man or not?”

So much for bein’ the big sister.

“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Cassidy snapped quietly, her patience and caffeine wearing thin.  “I’m not doin’ anything ‘unspeakable’, so don’t be insultin’.  We get along real fine and I’m gonna leave it at that.”

“Fine enough that he’s gone home to his wife.”

This was a conversation that she would screw up with a full eight hours of sleep under her belt.  Being tired and the tiniest bit emotional meant that, if she wasn’t extremely careful, she would screw it up royally.

“He’s not a simple man, Lib.  There are things goin’ on in his head all the time and seems like most of ‘em are demons chasin’ him.  He does what he has to do and I don’t expect no different.  If he comes back, I’ll be what he needs until it doesn’t suit one of us anymore.”

Libby said… nothing.  She remained completely and utterly silent for so long that Cassidy thought she’d hung up. 

“Lib?”

“I’m here,” her sister murmured quietly.  “I was just prayin’.”

Cassidy wasn’t the least bit fazed by her sister’s admission.  They’d both grown up with a grandmother who had prayed aloud several times a day, sometimes over something as little as a hangnail.  It was as commonplace in their lives as vanilla ice cream.

“What about?”

“I just got to thinkin’ about you always takin’ care of everybody else.  Thought I’d ask the Lord if He might send somebody along one of these days to take care of you.”

That simple and thoughtful gesture immediately invoked a recent memory, and Cassidy flashed back to the cabin. 

“I’ll take care of you, Dixie.”

That’s what Jon said the last time they were in bed together.  Those very words. 

Lord, is this a joke?  I’ve never heard of You being a prankster, but I can’t imagine that You’d send him along to me on purpose, with him still married.  That don’t make a lick of sense to my pea brain.  If You are so inclined, it’d be nice to have a little confirmation on that, one way or t’other.  Please and thank you?  In Jesus’s name…

She didn’t get to finish the “Amen” before her palm buzzed with the vibration of her phone.  The mobile device had been fully charged before she left Blackbird, so it wasn’t on the verge of dying.  That meant, at the end of her prayer, she’d received a text message.

Lord, You don’t have a data plan, do You?