This laundry room smells like vomit. The washer is spinning, around and around, white foam frothing up against the glass, and my black bra waving to me from the window. I imagine myself floating in a blue sea of socks, feeling serene amid the bubbles and quiet whirring.

But the vomit smell permeates my vision.

My god, how can anyone breathe through that odor? It smells like someone shoved a corpse into one of the dryers and left it to ripen. If I went over there and opened that dryer right now, the one with the "Out of Order" sign, would I find rotting flesh intermingled with an old pair of khakis?

I would leave, right now, if I could. Except that my neighbor from down the hall, Dennis, watched ever so closely as I loaded my underwear into the washer. As if he were fixated on the viscosity of the detergent as I poured it into the machine. Dennis tells me that he used to be a dentist. I wonder what he does now.

I am an army of one. I will guard my underwear, which has disappeared from this laundry room before, as if the olfactory cells of my nose were disconnected from the larger nervous system. I am the last line of defense. I will be a warrior for the bikinis. I will protect Victoria's secret until my last breath. I cannot, will not abandon my cause.

Dennis is sitting against the opposite wall. I can't help but feel that he must be responsible for the smell. I fear that the smell is imprinting itself onto my hair follicles, denaturing the lavender from my shampoo. I will walk into my apartment, and the smell will be there, hovering around me like tear gas.

Dennis speaks,

"So you like that magazine then, do ya?"

"Yes," I manage to cough. I have been holding my breath.

"Any good celebrity gossip? Love scandals, drugs, things like that?"

I look down and realize there is a People in my hands. As I flip through the pages, a tiny Leonardo DiCaprio, encrusted with jewels, floats by my eyes.

"Yes," I say, gathering my composure. I will not allow the smell to overshadow my duty.

"This band apparently set fire to their hotel room again. Second offense. Seems the drummer will have to do time for arson."

Dennis looks at me, eyes gleaming with anticipation.

"Sometimes I think I could set a fire. It might be romantic." He scratches and tugs at the hair on his gut with a fervor that leaves me with goose bumps.

The spin cycle is finished.

I put six fabric softener sheets into the dryer. Every time I close my eyes, I imagine the same scene. It is next Thursday, and I have just gotten home from work. I unbutton my blouse and, to my horror, there is an odor wafting from my chest. The bra! It has retained the vomit smell, and over the course of the day has integrated the scent into my skin. The smell is deep in my oil glands, penetrating the hair shafts. It is subcutaneous.

I open my eyes.

Dennis is picking at his toes and then wiping his hands on the laundry room chairs. He looks up at me every once and a while, gives me a little smile.

I have managed to learn two things about Dennis since I have been in this laundry room. One is that he wears only white t-shirts and black cotton pants. He has three loads of nothing but black and white. The solemnity of his pants juxtaposed against the gaiety of his whites, rollicking so freely among the iridescent bubbles, gives me courage.

The other lesson I have learned about Dennis is that he hates his mother. He says she left him in the car once when he was little, with all of the windows rolled up. He calls her a bitch.

I have attempted to make the fine art of washing underwear appear so intricate and consuming that one could not possibly both wash delicates and maintain eye contact simultaneously. But now, my pale pink panties are rising and falling, in an almost mathematical pattern, as warm air caresses their fibers. I long to join my underwear, to rest in the pillow of oxygen that promises to melt me into a cocktail of mountain breeze and heat.

Instead, I am trapped here, with Dennis and the vomit smell. Which may be one and the same.

I look up. Dennis is moving towards me.

"Can I sit over here?" he asks, his fat feet slapping against the linoleum.
"Sure," I mutter. I slide my basket off the seat and place it on the floor. There is room for three on this bench, but Dennis takes up two spaces by himself. His breathing is labored, as if his organs cannot support such a large and greasy body. I begin to feel sorry for him.

"So what do you do, Dennis?" I ask, breathing only through my mouth now.

"Well, I used to…used to be a dentist. But now I run my own internet business. You … you should come over sometime, and I'll show you my products."

Curious. I nod and look at the washer. Twenty-seven minutes, and my laundry will be liberated from this pit of foulness.

"How long have you been living in the city?"

"Oh, about four years now. I was living with my mother before…before she moved to Tallahassee." Dennis makes agitated little movements with his fingers. As if there is a conflict there, among the phalanges. "She…she used to be a seamstress. She made all of my clothes when I was a boy. I got beat up once because of a stupid little bow tie she made me wear. Green with yellow dots…stupid little…stupid little bow tie." He is breathing heavily now, and staring at my bra, the red one with little white polka dots, as it dances in front of the glass window.

I look down into my magazine, flip through the pages. I can almost see the stench on the pages now, drifting up, up, up from an ad for a new perfume. The model shakes her wrist at me seductively, "Come try our new eau de vomit. It will make you feel sexy like me."

Dennis takes a deep breath.

" I think you are really beautiful," he says.

The dryer reads thirteen minutes. Can this be accurate? How have only fourteen minutes passed since last time I checked? Is it possible, just possible, that reality itself has been warped by the heat of all these dryers and the smell, the ever present, putrid smell? Could time have slowed down, unable to face another second being slathered in the stink of this room?

And then it happened. There is a hand on my breast. My right breast. The one I fondly refer to as Felicity.

There is a moment of choice for all women, a moment when the line has been crossed, when the things that we hold dear have been irreconcilably violated. First it was my laundry. Now, it is my breast.

The People magazine in my hand swells up, suddenly filled with life. It swoops up, arcing gracefully in my petite hands, then bashes down on the arm of Dennis.
I gather my underwear into my basket as a young mother gathers her children before crossing a heavily trafficked intersection. Dennis seems confused, as if he cannot understand why his tactic did not work. I do not think that he has noticed the smell the entire time he has been down here.

As I rush out into the open air, I feel heady, light like a soap bubble. My lungs expand, steadily filling with cool, fresh air. My laundry is still damp, but as the hybrid of moisture and warmth envelops my fingertips, I would swear that I sense the smell beginning to dissipate in the wind.