The Excelsior Arms is a mid-70's apartment building in the crumbling downtown district. Its rooms are poorly insulated and frequently drafty, but cheap. Therefore, there is a frequent turnover, and more than an occasional incidence of drama. It's the perfect existence for Brady Cobb, a twice-published poet and author of a number of unpublished novels, as it affords a view of many different lifestyles and personalities. The new neighbors on the floor immediately below his, though, are very different from what he has become used to. And, very intriguing.
It was hot in the laundry room, as always. Brady had his shirt unbuttoned, fanning himself with an old magazine as he waited for the buzzer on the washer to go off.
"Why the fuck they had to put this in the basement, I'll never know," he muttered to himself. "There ain't no way to vent the heat from these machines. Hell, the humidity alone is practically unbearable!"
He had this conversation with himself every week, when he washed his clothes. He supposed they were lucky to have this; people in other buildings downtown had to lug their stuff to the laundromat. 'Now, there's a fun thought. Finding somebody else's clothes thrown in with yours, to save a buck twenty-five,' he thought. At least it wasn't usually busy down here. He wondered if half the residents even washed their clothes.
When the one working washer finally cycled down and the buzzer went off, he got up to move his laundry to the dryer. 'It's about time,' he thought, 'maybe I can go get a bite to eat while these things dry.' As he opened the dryer door, however, he was surprised to find a load of dried clothes already inside. Sighing, he began to pile them on the folding table.
"Fuckin' people just leave their stuff here," he said loudly, "like they think somebody else is gonna come along and fold it for them?"
As he piled the clothes up, he noticed a few pairs of tiny thong panties among the other clothing; shirts and trousers and such. Temporarily intrigued, he held one of the pairs up, noting its small waistband. It was a racy zebra-striped pattern, with a lacy crotch.
'Somebody's daughter must be a fuckin' stripper,' he concluded, 'or else the heat got to these and shrunk 'em down to nothin.' He pulled two more pairs out and added them to the pile. They were equally skimpy; equally racy and frilly, with nothing but a tiny band of doubled-over material running up the back.
"Damn. Shit like this'll give a man a hard-on," he said aloud. He tried to imagine who they belonged to. No one in this place that he could recall could do justice to these things! He'd have to keep an eye out; see who had recently arrived. That, or someone from the outside had found this room, and was using it instead of the laundromat down the street. Shrugging, he moved his clothes to the now-empty drier.
As he was putting his coins in the slot, he didn't hear the tiny Asian woman come in through the doorway. As he whirled around to leave, she was standing right behind him. He found himself face to face with a middle-aged woman of about five feet; pretty, in a far-Eastern sort of way. Her skin, he noticed, was flawless.
"Whoa! I didn't hear you come in, darlin'," he said. His arms already out, he placed his hands on her upper arms to keep from stumbling into her.
She looked down at the floor.
"Sorry," she said in a soft, halting voice.
Brady stood for a moment, staring down at her. "You okay?" he asked. "Did I hurt you?"
Still looking down, she mumbled, "I'm... I am okay, sir."
"Sir? Damn, I haven't been called sir in a long time," Brady laughed. At 71 years old, he didn't get much respect from most of the younger people he came into contact with. He waited for her eyes to come up to his. At last, she glanced upward, then quickly looked back down again.
"You live here?" he asked.
The woman hesitated for a moment, then said softly, "Yes, we move in recently. Apartment 3-C." She slowly dragged her gaze up to meet the tall stranger's again. "I am Sue Lin," she told him. She spoke in English, but her manner was heavily Asian.
"3-C, huh? So that's you, directly below me. I thought I smelled fried rice last night. Welcome to the Arms. Hey," he said suddenly, is that short little fella your husband? I thought he was delivering take-out or something."
"He is 5'-4," she said defensively. "He is software designer." The man's hands were still holding her arms, and she felt slightly uncomfortable in his embrace. Still, his hands were strong, and his manner was confident, almost cocky. That appealed to her in many ways. She had a thing for dominant white men.
"I'm Brady," he said, "Brady Cobb. As in, rough as a..." He smiled at her, the edges of his eyes crinkling like an old cowboy's. He'd spent a lifetime working outside, and it showed in his face, and in his rugged build. "So, what does Mrs. Lin do?" he asked, still smiling down at her. She was, he noticed, more than casually pretty. Her long black hair flowed over her shoulders like a dark waterfall. He studied her body as he held her there, unwilling to let her go, just yet. He hadn't been this close to an Asian since Viet Nam. Most of those were underage hookers and housegirls. This woman was in her late 30's, he decided. Slim and toned, with the prettiest almond eyes he'd seen in a long time. She wore a dark tank top that did the small mounds of her breasts proud, and a pair of snug-fitting white shorts. Her body was tanned and her legs looked shapely.
"I do accounting work," Sue told him. "At home. I write a little, too."
She didn't know why she told him that, but she could tell that the fact interested him by his sudden raising of eyebrows.
"Yeah? What do you write?"
