The boiler takes forty minutes

The boiler's a Fulton, fifteen horse, and from cold it takes forty minutes to come up to a hundred pounds. That's why I'm in at six when the sign says seven. You can't press anything with a cold head. Guys who buy one of these places off a listing find that out in about a week.

Shirts are $3.25 on hangers, $3.75 boxed. Two-piece suit is twelve. Comforters are thirty-five, and I tell people up front that a king goes in last, after close, because it takes the whole machine. Marisol does alterations Tuesdays and Fridays and I've never taken a cut of that. Hector runs the press. He's been with me nine years, since my back went in 2019, and he's faster than I ever was.

My mother comes down at eleven. She's in the apartment over the shop, the same one since 1988, and she comes down the back stairs and stands at the counter and tells me the tickets are wrong. We went to the computer in 2016. It prints a tag. The tag goes on the collar and the number's in the system. She wants the paper books back. She says a computer can't tell the doctor's shirts from the other doctor's shirts. She isn't all the way wrong about that. We're not going back to the books and she knows it.

She brings food down with her. Doenjang jjigae in the pot with a dish towel tied around the handle, and she sets it on the folding table and says meogeo and stands there until I've had some.

Thursdays Terrence comes in with two coffees.

He's got the Lawrence store. My father opened this one on Kedzie in '88 and the Lawrence one in '96 and ran them both until his knees quit, and in 2009 he sold Lawrence. He wanted it to go to a guy from church whose brother-in-law had two up in Niles. That came apart over sixteen thousand dollars. Then Terrence walked in with a cashier's check and my father took it.

Terrence did twenty-two years at the post office, the bulk mail place out by O'Hare. Took the buyout at forty-four and bought a dry cleaner with it, which is close to the worst thing a man can do with a buyout, and he's still open seventeen years later, so what do I know. His wife does his books on Tuesdays.

He started coming here that first fall because he couldn't hold pressure in the Hoffman, and my father knew that press better than the rep who sold it to him. Came on a Thursday because Thursday's his slow day. Brought two coffees. Came back the next Thursday with two more.

Dunkin' at Lawrence and Kimball. His is black. Mine's got two creams in it and he quit asking a long time ago. Summer he brings them iced and the cups leave rings on the counter glass, and my mother finds the rings.

He doesn't sit. All that time and I don't think he's ever sat down in this store. He stands on the customer side of the counter and while he's talking he'll pull the bags down the rack for me so they're in ticket order, which nobody asked him to do and he's been doing since my father was alive.

We talk about solvent, and the Bears in the fall. Hydrocarbon's up again and we're both on Union machines, mine went in in 2013 when the state finished with perc. He gets more gowns than I do and he hates storing them, so I hear about that. The outfit on Elston is doing shirts at a dollar ninety-nine, which isn't a price, that's a man losing money on purpose until the block belongs to him.

My father died four years ago in November. They found it in August. He was gone before Thanksgiving. Terrence came to the funeral home on Pulaski in a gray suit he'd pressed himself, you could see the crease, and he stood at the back. My mother took both his hands and called him sajangnim. The Thursday after, he was at my counter at ten thirty with two coffees.

His boiler went on a Sunday in 2017 and I drove over with my father's tools and we had it back by five. That's the only time I've been inside the Lawrence store since it stopped being ours. He put new tile down. He moved the counter to the other wall, which my father should have done in '96.

Thursday's the one day my mother doesn't say anything about the tickets. She comes down at eleven and if he's still there she puts a container in his hands. Kimbap usually, cut, with the ends in there too because she knows he eats the ends. He brings the container back the next week, washed.

Last August the low-water cutoff went on the Fulton. I called the supply house out in Elk Grove Village and the part was two days, and you don't run a boiler without the cutoff, so I put the sign on the door and did the books. Ninety-four degrees that day. Hector took it off. My mother goes to her sister's in Niles on Thursdays and gets the Kimball bus at nine.

He came anyway. It was Thursday.

We drank them in the back by the sorting table because there's no air up front with the machines off. He had his cap off. He said the quiet in here was strange and I told him it's the compressor.

He kissed me. The rest of it happened there by the table and it didn't take long. The ice in the second cup hadn't gone.

He put his cap back on. Said Bob would tell me Friday and mean Saturday. He went out the front and I locked it behind him and turned the sign over. Part came Saturday.

My mother got back on the 4:40 and asked why the rack hadn't moved.

The next Thursday he was there at ten thirty with two iced, black and two creams, and he stood at the counter and told me about a woman who wanted forty dollars off him for a blouse he'd never had in the store. He asked if the boiler was holding. I said it was holding. He had the container with him and he set it on the glass, washed, and he pulled the bags into ticket order while he talked.

It hasn't happened again. Thirteen months.

My daughter's fifteen and my son's twelve, out in Glenview with their mother, and I have them every other weekend. In September she was up front with me on the way to her game and she moved a cup out of the holder to set her phone down and asked whose that was. I said mine.

My mother came down at eleven today and said ticket 4412 was on a jacket that belongs to 4421. She was right. She's been right four times this year out of maybe nine thousand tickets.

Hector's out at five. There's a king in the back from a woman on Sawyer who wants it Friday, and her ticket's safety-pinned to the corner of it.