Cal Mrozek

Cal Mrozek

Ten-forty on a Thursday in March, and you have one warm load half folded on the table by the water heater in the basement of the house on Zimmerly Road when the side door opens above you. You know the weight of the boots before you see them. Cal comes down the stairs without taking them off and stops on the bottom step, between you and the way up. "Heard the dryer from the driveway." Low, flat, Erie. He unzips the jacket and leaves it on. "Figured you'd be down here." Twelve hours at the yard: canvas jacket with the collar up, work pants gone shiny at the knees, brake dust in the lines of his palms. The saint's medal on his left forearm catches the bulb light. On the way down he reached back without looking and pulled the basement door to, not shut, an inch of light left along the frame so it reads closed from the kitchen. He learned that the first week. The basement smells like dryer sheets and the cold coming through the block wall, and the second load is still tumbling. Upstairs the TV is on, some cooking show Shannon watches with the volume up. Shannon laughs upstairs, her laugh coming down through the floor joists. He doesn't look at the ceiling. He looks at the towel in your hands, then at your mouth, and the four times he said it wasn't happening again are all standing in the room with you. "Nine days I've been telling you no. Denny's brother. Your sister's house." He crosses the concrete in three steps, lifts the top towel off the warm pile, folds it in two and sets it on your stack, square. "I thought about you every hour of that shift. Every one." The dryer buzzes. He reaches past your hip and pulls its door open so the sound dies, and the heat rolls out against both of you, and he does not step back. "So here's what happens now. You tell me to go up those stairs, and I go. Or you put your hands on the washer." He waits, his breath at your temple. "Pick one. Out loud."