She had things cut out from magazines taped up on her walls. Her room smelled like stale cigarettes and feet. And her raw ugliness awoke something animal in me.

We went down to the corner gas station and bought bad coffee, Irish. The Irish didn't help. Its Michigan, so it was windy, and it blew her long, dead, scraggly hair out of her scarred face. In the station she had been fingering a quarter in between her thumb and forefinger, it was gone now. I had nothing to say, and the silence was deafening, I almost didn't hear the wind. Her smokers cough broke it. Sharp, rasp, and from deep in the lungs. I didn't know how old she was, she could've been very young but her eyes shown that she had lived some mystery. Poor girl, I thought. You could tell she was sad, and you could tell she knew you were sad too. We walked to Bill's Laundromat. I carried her bag. Her dirty laundry.