Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“Why didn’t you call me from the hospital?” Laura’s sister exclaimed. “I’ve been worried sick since I heard about the tornado hitting in that neighborhood. They actually had a picture of your laundromat on the news this morning and now you tell me that you were in it at the time? And then you take a cab home? What if you’d had a concussion or some kind of delayed reaction to the accident?”
Laura let Suzie get the rant out of her system before she replied, “I’m sorry you were worried. I certainly didn’t think the laundromat had made the news. At the hospital, I didn’t see the need to drag you away from work.”
“You didn’t see the need ?!”
“I wasn’t hurt, just a little dehydrated,” Laura sighed. “They looked me over, gave me fluids and sent me home. I came home, ate a good meal, had a hot shower, and went to bed until the phone rang. My biggest problem now is getting my clothes back. They’re still in one of the washing machines at the laundromat.”
“Really, you’ve been through a freaking tornado, and you’re worried about clothes?” Suzie’s voice rose, strained with disbelief. “Laura, where are your priorities?”
“My priorities in this case are perfectly fine. You know my wardrobe isn’t extensive and a good part of it is in one of those washing machines.” Laura kept her voice calm and even. Her sister could be so pushy and bossy sometimes.
Suzie let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine, I’ll take you over there after work tomorrow and then you can do your laundry here like I keep offering. The kids always like to see you. We’ll drag Dad out, too. He spends so much time alone and it will do him good to come over.”
“Okay,” Laura replied. “If you insist. How about I take the bus over early and at least get dinner going? I’m taking the day off to ‘recuperate,’ as my boss called it. And I’ll call Dad.”
“Don’t worry about dinner. I made beef stew in the crockpot yesterday and there’s plenty left over for tomorrow night. But do call Dad. You seem to get him to do things more easily than I do.” With those words, Suzie rang off.
Laura put off calling her father that evening and for a good part of the day after. It was usually so depressing talking to him, and given everything that had gone on in the last couple of days, she didn’t need any more reasons to be depressed. By 2 pm she couldn’t put it off any longer and decided it would be better to go over there and roust him out.
She arrived at his house about an hour later and of course he was home. He was home the entire day. He went out to the store once a week and occasionally played cards with some old friends, but he could easily be a hermit .
Dan Turner’s wife had died when Laura and Suzie were teenagers. When they moved out after college, he quickly sold the family home and moved into this drab one-bedroom. He got rid of everything that might remind him of his late wife and once he retired from his job as an electrician, he turned downright reclusive. Laura and Suzie loved him and knew he loved them, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with his moods.
Dan answered the door on the first ring of the doorbell. “Hi honey, what brings you by? You usually call first.”
“Hi Dad,” Laura replied. “I’ve come to collect you for dinner at Suzie’s tonight. Also, if you have time, I’d like you to drive me on an errand?”
“Sure, honey. Do you need to go right away? I’ll put on my shoes and grab my keys.” He shoved one foot into a shoe and asked, “Where are we going?”
“The laundromat. I kind of had to leave my clothes there yesterday,” Laura said, trying to figure out how to avoid telling him the reason she’d left her clothes there.
“What do you mean ‘kind of’?’” Dan froze midway pulling on his second shoe and straightened. “Wait a minute. I was watching the news yesterday about the mess the tornado left. Isn’t that your neighborhood? Didn’t the thing touch down right around a laundromat?”
“Yes, Dad, it was my laundromat, and I was there at the time, hence the need to collect my clothes,” Laura said ruefully.
His eyes grew wide. “Laura, are you okay? Why didn’t you tell me this right away?”
“Dad, it’s really fine. There was a kind man there who knew exactly what to do and we spent the night in the back room, where things were reasonably settled. The worst part was having to wait for the emergency crews to get us out. I still think we could have climbed out on our own, but you know, better safe than sorry.” She hoped he hadn’t heard about the power line on the news. She didn’t need him to worry over that particular detail. “My laundry is still there, though, and all my work clothes are in it.”
“Are you sure it’s all right to go back? The building might not be safe,” Dan worried.
“We won’t know until we get there, and I really need my clothes, Dad,” Laura insisted.
Dan got himself together and they drove over to the laundromat. They had to make a few detours to avoid some broken tree limbs that still had to be cleared. When they got to the laundromat, they found the front of the building covered over in plastic and taped off, with a salvaged piece of plyboard where the front doors used to be, spray-painted letters reading, Closed for repairs .
“Well, I guess we made the trip for nothing,” Dan said and let out a tired sigh.
“I’m not giving up that easily. Let’s go around back and see what’s happening.”
Dan pulled slowly around the ruined building, muttering to himself about how it was ‘a lot more damage than you let on,’ and parked the car next to the back door. They both got out, Dan wandering over to look at the detritus of the flattened lots next door, and Laura looking at the bags and boxes of trash stacked up against the rear wall that certainly hadn’t been there earlier. The rear windows that had broken were boarded over, but the ones that weren’t showed a yellowish light shining through.
“Look, Dad,” she called, pointing at the window. “Someone’s here. ”
She started knocking on the door and calling loudly until suddenly, the door wheezed open and an older woman with a camping lantern and a cigarette permanently affixed to her lip glowered out at her. “If you’re reporters, you can go away. I’m tired of silly questions like, ‘How does it feel to lose everything?’” She gave them a sour look. “It sucks, in case you were wondering.”
“We’re not reporters, I promise.” Laura held up her hands in a placating gesture. “I was here during the storm and my clothes are still here. I was hoping to get them back if it’s possible.”
“Oh, well, in that case, come on in.” The woman did not smile (likely the shellac of lipstick she wore would not allow it), but her cigarette tipped to a less aggressive angle and she cocked her head. “You look familiar. You’re one of my regulars, every Tuesday night like clockwork, two pods of NatureClean, no softener, and your nose in one of them trashy novels where the men all wear leather pants.”
“That’s me,” Laura said weekly, feeling her father’s stare boring into the side of her burning face.
“You’re one of the good ones. Never overload, never get rowdy, always clean up after yourself if you have a snack.” Without a change of expression, the woman dipped into her coat pocket and withdrew a crumpled cookie wrapper. “Almost always.”
“I’m so sorry,” Laura stammered, now blushing so hot, she was astonished her hair wasn’t catching fire. “I would have thrown it away if –”
“Oh, the whole damn lot is a waste bin now,” the woman said and tossed the wrapper aside to prove it as she turned and slowly limped toward the front room. “Don’t blame you a bit. Other things on your mind. Don’t even apologize for the door,” she added, opening it as Laura winced. “Nothing to be sorry for. If I’d been here like I should have been, I’d have unlocked it for you, but I sprained my ankle on Monday and figured everything here could wait a day or two. Then the tornado watch went out and I thought to myself, Mrs. Shepherd, I said, what kind of puddin’-headed fool is going to go out to the laundromat with a tornado watch going on? I’m really glad you and your boyfriend weren’t hurt.”
Her father made a choked sound. “Boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Laura replied hastily. “We happened to be here at the same time.”
The woman frowned. “But he was here earlier today to get his things and I could have sworn he said something about the two of you being together.”
“Oh, we were together in the tornado, not together -together. I’d only seen him here a couple of times before.” Laura wanted to press her hands over her burning cheeks. “I didn’t even know his name until the storm hit.”
The woman stared at her with all the emotion of a stone while water dripped somewhere in the room. “That explains that, then,” she said at last and turned around, flapping one hand in a lugubrious invitation to join her as she hobbled into the laundromat. “He asked me if I had seen you since the storm. He seemed like a decent sort from what I could tell. Said his company can get this place back in working order, so I gave him the owner’s information. Old walrus will take the insurance and run, no doubt, but I hope he does decide to repair things. I’m too young to retire and too old to call some pimple-face burger-flipper ‘Sir’. I’m Beatrice Shepherd, by the way. Beatrice to my maker, Mrs. Shepherd to everyone else. Should be Miss now, being fifteen years since my Arthur passed on. I told him to go easy on those pork rinds, weren’t healthy. He told me I’d take ‘em from his cold dead hands, and so I did, God rest him. Thought I should mention, although you hadn’t dropped your own name yet, as would have been polite in my day, but times change, I suppose.”
“Nice to meet you formally, Mrs. Shepherd. I’m Laura Turner and this is my father, Dan. Do you suppose we could get my things now?” Laura asked anxiously.
“Sure, sure. I took them out of the machine so they wouldn’t get ruined. I’m sorry I couldn’t dry them, but the power’s off, you know.”
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Shepherd.” Laura grabbed the woman’s hand and squeezed. “We won’t take up any more of your time. Let’s go, Dad.” Laura made it to the back room door before she realized her father wasn’t with her. Turning back, she saw Dan exactly where she’d left him, staring at Mrs. Shepherd who gazed coolly back at him while taking an exceptionally long drag on her cigarette.
“Dad,” said Laura, loudly.
Dan spluttered a little and managed a, “Thanks for helping out my daughter. It’s much appreciated.” He started to leave, only to turn back and offer a handshake. “It was wonderful to meet you, Mrs. Beatrice — Mrs. Shepherd, I should say. Good bye.”
“Charmed,” Mrs. Shepherd replied, but she said it with a smile and her lipstick didn’t crack after all.
By the time they got to Suzie’s house, Laura would have welcomed another tornado to save her from her father’s questions about James. She didn’t know the answers to most of them and the things she did know about him, she wasn’t interested in sharing. At last, her irritation got the best of her and she interrupted yet another probing question with, “And what did you think about Mrs. Shepherd?”
She thought that might shut him up and it did, but for less than a minute before he remarked, “I wouldn’t mind being shut up in a broom closet with her on a rainy night, that’s for sure.”
“Dad!”
Fortunately, the conversation ended there as they arrived, right as Suzie pulled up beside them with the kids in the back seat.
“Granddad, Aunt Laura!” Abby cried, all but throwing herself out of the car. “Are you staying for dinner?”
More dignified Tim followed. “Will you help me with the trains, Granddad?” he asked. One of Dan’s few hobbies was electric trains and he had given Tim quite a few in the last couple of years.
Abby was already pulling Laura toward the house, pleading, “Can we bake cookies after dinner?”
“You’ll have to ask your mother about that one, kiddo, and I brought laundry to do so we might not have time. Don’t you have any homework?”
“We finished ours at Aftercare, before Mom picked us up,” Tim answered.
After they got inside and the kids went into the family room with their grandfather, Suzie said, “I thought I was taking you to get your clothes?”
“I was getting antsy, and I thought I’d get Dad to take me. The woman who runs the laundromat was really helpful. She’s hoping the place will get repaired. And before Dad brings it up, I wasn’t alone in the laundromat the other night. There was a man there. His name is James and we had quite an evening together, but I don’t want to talk about it when the kids or Dad might come in any minute,” Laura said in hopes of forestalling more questions for the moment. She hadn’t decided how much she wanted to share with her sister.
“Okay, let’s get your laundry going and then dinner,” Suzie acquiesced. “We’ll have time to talk after dinner when the kids are busy with Dad.”
Dinner was filled with the children’s accountings of their day and discussion of the extent of damage from the tornado. It turned out the church Laura and Suzie attended had been badly damaged, as well as several houses nearby and then the laundromat and the adjoining block of shops, which was almost a mile away. Everyone was upset about the church.
“Was anyone there when it happened?” Abby asked. “I wouldn’t want Pastor Jonathan to get hurt.”
“He doesn’t live there, silly,” Tim responded. “Why would he have been there late at night?”
Suzie quickly took control of the discussion. “There was no one at the church when the storm hit. Everyone from church is safe. But the damage is significant, and I haven’t heard what we’re doing about Sunday services. And we’ve talked before about you calling your sister ‘silly,’ Timothy.”
“Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Abby.” Tim hung his head but quickly looked up and asked, “Hey, how come the church was hit and those houses, but this laundromat was over a mile away and it got hit, too?”
Dan explained, “Tornadoes are unpredictable and they can bounce around. They’ll touch down in one place and then bounce back up and come back down again a way away. Some don’t cause much trouble at all, because they don’t touch down. Of course, any heavy storm is probably going to cause some damage. We’re really lucky no one was seriously hurt in the storm. Property can be repaired, but injury is much more serious.”
After dinner, the kids and their grandfather headed to the basement and the increasingly complicated train system. Abby liked the trains almost as much as her brother did and time with Granddad was something to be treasured, especially when he was in a good mood.
Over the dishes, Suzie brought up Tuesday night again, “So, Laura, what else happened at the laundromat?”
“Well, you know how I’ve been trying to get you to read my books, the Masters of the Shadowlands series?” Laura led in.
“Sure, it’s that kinky romance stuff you like.” Suzie placed a plate in the dish rack.
“James…” Laura swallowed before she rushed out the words. “His name is James Black, and he’s into that… um, lifestyle. I never really believed people did what was in the books, but it turns out they do. BDSM is real. I mean, I knew it was a real thing, but I thought the books were just exaggerations and fantasy, and it’s real !”
“How exactly did you find out he was interested in this BDSM?” Suzie rested her hands on the kitchen counter and slowly turned to face Laura. “BDSM? Isn’t that like sadomasochism or something? Hurting people for fun?”
Laura sighed and dropped the dish towel, leaning on the counter as well. “If you’d read the book, you’d know it’s not like that at all. BDSM stands for several things. Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism. In the case of Tuesday night, it stood for Bondage and Discipline. He spanked me, and then the next morning he gave me the best orgasm I’ve ever had.”
“What do you mean, he spanked you?” Suzie's voice rose, her words spilling out in a rapid cadence that mirrored her mounting agitation. “Did he tie you up or something? Why didn’t you fight back? He assaulted you! We should call the police. My god, he could be a sex maniac or a serial killer!”
Laura shushed her sister. “Keep it down, please! I don’t want to upset Dad or the kids. And he didn’t assault me, for heaven’s sake. I consented to everything. It hurt, but you wouldn’t know now that I’d been spanked. The red marks were gone by the time I got home from the hospital. To tell you the truth, it was kind of hot. Anyway, I deserved it. He told me not to go to the windows and I did anyway, after he told me he would spank me if I went. When I showed him I was sorry, he stopped spanking me and then we cuddled.”
Suzie visibly relaxed. “So it was a sex thing?”
“We… He… He went down on me,” Laura stuttered, her body warming at the memory. “I haven’t had a man do that before.”
“So, are you going to see him again?” Suzie tilted her head and wrinkled her nose.
Unable to meet her sister’s curious eyes, Laura dropped her gaze to the dish towel. “I don’t know. In retrospect, it’s all kind of embarrassing. I’d like to see him again, but I don’t know if he wants to see me. He didn’t come to the hospital or anything. If he’s interested, he can contact me. Even if he doesn’t want to see me, I think I still want to find out more about real life BDSM.”
“Are you sure about this, sis? It sounds like it might be dangerous. What if you meet someone who wants to hurt you for real once he’s got you tied up?” Suzie worried.
“There must be good ways to find out about it.” Laura lifted her gaze and chewed her bottom lip. “James said the same thing my books do – BDSM is about being ‘Safe, Sane and Consensual.’ I’ll have to do some research. The internet has everything on it. There must be something sensible there.”
“Okay, but promise me you’ll be careful.”
Suzie clearly had more to say, but just then, Abby came in, begging them to come downstairs and see the new train installation, so she had to settle for her sternest ‘I mean business’ as her daughter dragged her away. When bedtime for the children arrived, Dan took Laura home and the next day, she went back to work like nothing had changed. But she had.