Ella stopped with her hand on a T-shirt. “But it says—”
“So break the rules. It’s okay. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I don’t know. The whole laundry room floods with soap?”
Hector laughs. “You are awesome, you know that? Go ahead. I dare you. Be bad.”
Ella overturned the basket into the drum, added half a cup of liquid Tide, and slammed the lid. “There. Are you happy?”
“I am. Felt good, didn’t it?”
“Maybe.” She turned and leaned her bottom against the washer, an act of supreme courage because it brought her back in direct communion with Hector’s face, which had the kind of fresh, animal beauty that made your eyes sting. She’d forgotten what that was like, instant attraction. Not that she hadn’t encountered beautiful men since meeting Patrick; this was New York, after all, colonized by the beautiful, the brilliant, the rich. Sometimes all three in one hazardous, electromagnetic package. But falling in love with Patrick had somehow, blessedly, immunized her against fascination for somebody else. She could appreciate a man’s gleaming charisma—she could say to herself, Well, that’s certainly a good-looking guy, nice style, great sense of humor—without feeling any meaningful desire to have sex with him, even in the abstract, even in fantasy. So it was strange and shameful and utterly unsettling that when she tried to meet Hector’s lupine gaze, she felt her skin heating up and her mind grasping for wit. Like some membrane had dissolved in her sensible, grown-up, married brain, unleashing an adolescent miasma. Wanting to say something sensible and thinking, Your eyes are the color of cappuccino, can I drink you?
“My mom was a rule-follower, too,” Hector said. “It’s okay. I get it. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed. You guys seriously fold each other’s laundry?”
“Sure. I mean, when we have to. Not just because. That would be weird.”
“What about—well, you know—”
He grinned again. “Unmentionables? If you feel that strongly, Queen Victoria, you can always take them up to your room and dry them on a chair arm. Me, I’ve got nothing to hide. Just tighty whities. Pretty boring stuff.”
“You do realize we’re in New York City, right? A rental building? We’re not even supposed to make eye contact in the hallway.”
Hector shrugged. He wore a fine-gauge V-neck sweater, charcoal gray, cashmere or merino, a bit shabby, exposing a triangle of white T-shirt at the neck. The sleeves were pushed halfway up his forearms. The blue jeans were likewise worn, but to an honest fade: not the awkward, fake threads of a pre-shredded pair. He had enviable olive skin, and maybe that was the key to his strange luminosity—this smooth, golden sheath of his that didn’t show a single line, not even in the fluorescent basement lighting. Just a shadow of stubble on his jaw. Because of course he rolled out of bed like that. Stretched, shook himself. Probably drank a shot of wheatgrass and did fifty naked pushups. “Just the way we operate around here,” he said. “Band of brothers. And sisters.”
“But folding laundry. Really? That’s—I don’t know, it’s so personal.”
“It’s just laundry. And we are kind of personal around here. Anyway, you can’t just dump your buddy’s clothes in a pile and leave the scene. That would be wrong.”
“Why wrong?”
“Do unto others, Ella. Who wants wrinkled T-shirts?”
“Then just do your laundry some other time. After work. What’s with everyone jamming up the laundry room at dawn on a Saturday? I feel like I’ve walked into some kind of cuckoo commune.”
“It’s not that bad, I swear.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s totally a commune. And I’ll bet you’re the mayor.”
“I don’t think communes have mayors, do they? I mean, by definition?”
“You’re dodging the question.”
“Sorry.” He hung his head a little. “Like I said, I have seniority, that’s all.”
“Seniority? You?”
He ran a hand through his hair, which was shaggy and dark and thick, contributing hugely to Ella’s overall impression of Hector as a handsome, unkempt wolfhound. “Is it that bad? I guess I should clean up my act a little more. That’s what happens when you don’t spend all day working for the Man.”
Ella threw up her hands. “Fine. Don’t tell me anything. I’ll just have to figure out all the house rules on my own. Or do my laundry on Monday nights after work.”
“Actually, no. You don’t want to do that. Nights are bad.”
“Bad? Bad how?”
Across the room, the first dryer switched off and let out a series of frantic beeps. Hector jumped from the table. “Oops! That’s me.”
“Should I give you a hand?”
“Naw, I’ve got it.”
“Are you sure? I’m feeling a disturbing need to contribute somehow.”
“Ah, see? Drinking the Kool-Aid already.”
Drinking something, that’s for sure, Ella thought. Realized—the horror!—she was staring at Hector’s backside as he bent to remove the clothes from the dryer. Like a teenager. And then she remembered, like an electric shock, Jesus, I’m married! The way she would sometimes have nightmares, early in her marriage, in which she was in bed with some faceless man, nobody in particular, having sex, and realized halfway through that she had a husband and she was cheating on him, and she would startle awake and stare, heart thumping, at Patrick’s sleeping shoulder and feel such a drenching, horrified guilt that she actually cried. As if she had genuinely, consciously, in real life committed the crime of adultery.
Except this wasn’t a dream. Hector was real. Hector and his pert backside, his unemployed, slacker hotness, stood a few yards away, had a name and a face, and now, in this altered landscape of her life, unexpected and unsought, she had no nearby husband to immunize her. No one to keep her safe from the wolfhounds of New York City.
She turned swiftly for the door. “Guess I’ll be going, then!”
“Wait! Hold on a second.”
Unless he wasn’t real. Unless he was an actor or something, installed here as an instance of charity, or maybe a test. Or occupational therapy. She wouldn’t put that kind of trick past her mother. She wouldn’t put anything at all past her sister, even though Joanie was supposed to be studying in Paris right now.
He certainly looked like an actor. If this happened in a movie—vigorous, raven-locked guy prowls into post-breakup laundry room and purrs all the right things—you would roll your eyes and say, Nice try. Or you would think it was some kind of porn.
“I can’t,” she said over her shoulder.
“Please?”
Ella paused, hand on knob. “You’re a big boy. Don’t beg.”
“Not begging. Just polite, like my mama taught me. So do you have a minute?”
“Not really. I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do.”
“Wow. The brush-off. Was it something I said?”
“No, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t say sorry. If I accidentally shot off some kind of sexist bullshit, just call me on it, okay? My bad.”
“No! It’s not that. I just—” I’m married, she finished in her head. Wronged, scorned, cheated upon, humiliated, separated: all those things. But also, technically, married. And I don’t know if you’re