ai Tong was two minutes late getting to his spot at The Emperor's Laundry. He grabbed a bag of laundry off the stack and hastily dumped its contents into his basket for sorting. He made sure his boss saw him working before he looked down at the molded heap of towels and sheets between his gloved hands. The soft scoop of dirty laundry was like an large ice-cream sundae, white and round with a sweet cherry on top, a pair of red nylon panties. They were inexpensive, perhaps a little stretched out, but something about them excited his eyes and his mind. He checked to make sure his boss was still busy with the stoic Mrs. Wu, the presser, before he allowed his hand to snatch the prize and deliver it to his trouser pocket, all in the blink of an eye.

He had practice in procuring articles of clothing, but had not found anything of interest in almost a month. These particular panties were not the kind he would normally take; they were red and nylon, while he preferred the black, lacy ones favored by Victoria Secret’s models. He liked brassieres too, but they typically came in with very little scent on them. In the summer he might find an exceptional bra, its lace powdered in sweat, its cups stained; he could put his whole fist into a cup and massage it through the fabric with his other hand. Fai preferred the panties, they seduced him with their intimate knowledge of women.

Fai slipped off his rubber glove and reached into the oversized pocket of his father’s old pants and rolled the submissive fabric between his fingers. He could almost smell the trace odors of sweat and a powdery fragrance through the roughened skin of his fingertips. Fai knew almost all the perfumes by scent, though none by name, and he was often awkwardly reminded of one of his prizes. When he took the subway to and from The Emperor's Laundry he might be captured by a particular aroma rising from a woman's skin. He would dip his head to prevent her from seeing the flush steal across his face and would secretly shift his throbbing penis so it would not give him away.

These red panties, he knew, must belong to a woman who was wide in the hips. He saw her downy white flesh rising and descending from the red barrier. She had small breasts like dollops of whipped cream and soft auburn hair, no, she was a brunette. She was short in stature but her legs were lean and looked longer for it. She stood in her bedroom and modeled the panties for him. "I bought these for you, Eddie," she said. He liked Eddie better than his own name. Like Eddie Murphy. He laughed like Eddie Murphy now, that braying, devil-may-care laugh Fai perfected by watching Beverly Hills Cop. The woman smiled. "What do you think of them?" she asked, her voice a husky Kathleen Turner.

"They are beautiful, like you," he said as Eddie Murphy. "Now come here." She respected his authority and sashayed towards him. "Yes, Eddie?" she said.
"Fai, wake up!" his boss demanded. "What do I pay you for? It is only morning and you are sitting on your lazy ass looking at the clothes before you. Wash them, boy. Don’t you disrespect me by sleeping instead of working."

"No, Mr. Fung. I meant no disrespect." Fai slid his glove back on and began to separate the laundry in front of him, the whites from the dark, the damp towels from the sheets that spelled out nightly stories in stains instead of letters. His boss hovered over him.

"Thank your lucky star," his boss said, "that your father was a good friend and a great man or where would you and your mother be now, Fai? Not here, I will tell you that. Hurmph," Mr. Fung said. "Do I need to remind you how much you owe to me for giving you such a good job at The Emperor’s Laundry? You are a worthless boy, no one else would hire you. If not for me you would have been sent back to China when your father died and put to work in the rice fields. You would be bent over double from the work, you and your mother and uncle too. And those little girls, those cousins of yours wouldn’t be in school but in the fields as well." His boss crossed his arms over his chest and "Hurmphed," again. "I let you work at The Emperor’s Laundry out of respect for the dead and I want you to work hard to show your respect for me. You don’t know how good you have it here in America." He pointed at the stack of multihued bags and told Fai to show his gratitude and get to work.

Fai was surprised to find the panties in his pocket an hour later after he had started most of the washing. He was afraid that they might have fallen out of the wide pockets of his father’s old trousers and gotten mixed up with other laundry. He slipped off his glove and closed his eyes as he ran the nylon between his fingers. The fabric was simultaneously soft and scratchy as it kept catching on the uneven ridges of his raw hands. He imagined that smell, like ripe earth and baby powder, entrapped in the folds of red nylon. He saw the woman again, she was blonde with wide hips and ample breasts like two cantaloupes. She said, "Eddie, did you just get home? I was just getting dressed."

"No need," he said, "for you to change. I love you just the way you are. Let me look at you."

The woman turned this way, then that, her tits bounced with each movement. "What do you think?" she asked.

"I think your skin is like cream and I want to lick it up like a kitten." The woman walked to him, her blonde hair flowing behind her, and pulled off her panties. She tossed them to him as he sat on her bed amid the satin pillows. He caught them in his mouth, tasted her salty essence with the tip of his tongue and was immersed in her musky odor.

The buzzer on machine number six spoiled his reverie, but he was relived to find no one was watching him. He removed the red panties from his nose and returned them hastily to his pocket. He had never fantasized about a woman at work before, never that way, only at home in his mother’s bathroom with the door locked and the hamper blocking the entrance. He figured he would have to go to the dank restroom here and take care of himself so that he could get back to work, but not before he put the clothes from machine number six into the extractor and then into the dryer.

Mrs. Wu, the presser, glared at him. He was making her look bad by being slow and not getting the clothes to her iron quickly enough. He turned away from her myopic condemnation. He wouldn’t spend the rest of his life here in The Emperor’s Laundry siting next to Mrs. Wu. It was his father’s dying wish, so it would come to pass. "Fai," his father had said, "Here in America you will be a great man. You will have a devoted wife, a welcoming home and happy children. You will surpass me in all things. I know you will make your father proud." Then he had punched Fai in the arm with all his remaining strength. Fai knew it was a matter of time before he moved beyond the cinder-block confines of The Emperor’s Laundry.

Fai had in his possession a pair of men’s jockey shorts, size 32, the size his father once wore. He would shuck his hand-me-downs and ride those luxuriously soft and white briefs over his skinny legs and transform himself into a brawny man with thick thighs, a barrel chest, a dangling penis. He would be spirited away by a fleet of limousines like Eddie Murphy in Coming To America, but these cars were filled with beautiful women and champagne. His limousine even had a little TV in it that had cable and a VCR attached. They would drive in the limos, laughing and smoking French cigarettes until they drove up to the nightclub. He and the beautiful women would step out onto the red velvet carpet inside the wood barriers that kept everyone else at bay. He would sweep in front of their cameras, shake their hands and sign their autograph books until one of his entourage took him by his muscular arm and brought him into the lobby. He would enter the world beyond the never-ending piles of dirty socks and tee shirts, where his life would be documented by the continuous flash of the camera.

"Are you daydreaming again, Fai?" his boss snubbed. Fai jumped up from his seat and pulled the twisted laundry out of the washer and into his basket. He rolled it over to the water extractor and began loading it in. "I don’t pay you to sit on your lazy ass and think, all right? Boy? You hear me? Look at her," he pointed to the unflappable Mrs. Wu. "Why can’t you be more like that, Fai? That woman, she comes in early every day, she works until we close and only stops to eat her lunch. She never sits there staring like an idiot at the clothes spinning around in the dryer. Yeah, Fai? I give you a good job here these four years and this is how you treat me? Don’t you have any respect?"

Fai switched the extractor on. The thrum of the machine was loud enough to prevent further conversation. He shrugged in his best Eddie Murphy style, and waved Mr. Fung away with both hands and a broad smile. His boss frowned and returned through the door that divided the back from the front, up where it was quiet and dry. Someday he would be promoted to the front counter and then his hands wouldn't hurt so much, his shoulders would not be sore when he went home. He wouldn't always smell like bleach and detergent.

No, instead he would open his own laundry, a whole chain of them like his boss had, except they would be nicer and all the employees would be treated like family. As a matter of fact, he would own twice as many as Mr. Fung and his stores would be all over New York. Then he would have money, lots of money, and he could move his family into one of those townhouses like Eddie Murphy had in Trading Places. It would have five bedrooms. The biggest one would be for himself, one for his aunt and uncle, one for his two cousins, and a pretty one decked out in lace for his mother. That would leave one open for guests, a guest bedroom. Once he was rich, then the women would be all over him. They would call him the Laundry King of New York and he would do his own commercial and go on Late Night with David Letterman. His father's spirit would be proud of him and fortune would smile on his family once more.

He felt so good that he slipped off his glove and reached into his deep pocket to finger the red panties that were secreted there. They were soft and playful, slipped across his skin like beads of water. He was smiling when his boss came back, purple and angry as always.

"What do I pay you for, you no-good boy? You are standing there dreaming while money walks out of my pocket and into the street. Why don’t you take the clothes out of there and put them in the dryer. You have no respect for me, boy. Why do you keep smiling like that?"

"I am thinking of my good fortune," Fai said.

"What's good about it? You are nothing but a lazy dreamer, too small for real people to even see. You won't amount to anything." His boss said this without anger, as if giving fatherly advice. "I took you in when your father died, when you were just a stupid boy. Your father, he was a good and honest man and he would die of shame to see his only son unable to do the job of a washerwoman. You must work harder to show me your appreciation. I would hate to break my word to your father, but if he knew how lazy you are he would understand."

Fai smiled good-naturedly. He was not concerned with his boss' tirade, they were just the words of an old, unhappy man with misery in his heart. Fai had a lot to look forward to, including the red panties he draped around his hidden fingers. He could see the woman now, a redhead with rounded breasts and a voluptuous body. Her wide hips sloped to downy median, as soft as snow.

"I suppose I must keep you on," his boss was saying, "despite how useless you are. Get those clothes in the dryer and work harder. We have a lot of clothes to clean and don’t have time to stand around thinking and dreaming."

"Yes," Fai agreed. His mind focused on the valley between the woman's breasts, a milky alp he could slide his lips across. "Eddie," she said, "I missed you. I’ve been waiting."

He laughed in his Beverly Hills Cop way, and beckoned her to him. She unzipped his pants and slid her silken fingers into his white Calvin Kleins, her fingernails tickled his thick bush of pubic hair.

"Why are you laughing like that? What are you doing there? Are you playing with your privates?" His boss managed to utter. He grabbed Fai by the wrist and yanked his hand out of his pocket. "Don’t do that in front of people. You have no shame, boy, you… what is that? What do you have there in your hand? Is that a customer’s clothes? Is that from the laundry?" His boss gasped in white shock, paler than Fai had ever seen him. "You take underpants and put them in your pockets? Oh, your father is frowning down on you now. He will curse you. I can not look at you any longer. I can not even think to tell your mother of this sickness for the shame it would bring upon your family. Go, now. The sight of you is making me sick."

Fai looked down at the red flag that waved from his outstretched hand. The fabric draped delicately over his skin, as if it were alive and part of his hand. He put the panties back in his pocket. He turned away from his shaking boss and walked towards the front. Up there, nothing would be wrong. He would sit at the counter with his boss’ wife and listen to the Chinese songs she played on the little portable radio. He could chat and laugh and gossip with the customers that came in, finally seeing them face to face. There he could see the massive sculptures of flesh that left stains behind to prove they were human. Up front everything would still be all right.

His boss was right behind him thrusting him into reality, shouting that he must leave immediately. Fai knew that if he made it through the door, Mrs. Fung would let him stay and the panties would never be mentioned again. She would coddle him like a stray puppy, feed him noodles from her own chopsticks. His boss stopped him at the dividing door and spun him around. He picked Fai up and shoved him across the laundry. Mrs. Wu never looked up once.

"Please, Mr. Fung, I mean no disrespect," Fai said suddenly. "Please let me stay. I am proud to work for you. It was an accident. I promise. No more dreaming." His boss pushed Fai out into the alley behind the building and slammed the door shut. Fai stood in an iridescent puddle with the stench of the Dumpster and the residue of detergent and lint traps. The walkway was deserted save him. He was alone.

Fai dipped his hand into his pocket and removed the cause of his problems. He grabbed the red panties by the worn elastic waistband and waved them at the strip of sky above his head. He cradled the slick, synthetic fabric against his cheek and smiled into the crotch. They smelled of earth and honey and dispelled all the odors of the dark alley. He knew his father would understand.

 

<END>