Not “sorry.”
Not even “please don’t call the super.”
Just that ridiculous sentence, spoken with the calm panic of a man who had probably negotiated billion-dollar deals but couldn’t survive Tide.
I stood in the basement laundry room of my Brooklyn apartment building at 10:38 on a Tuesday night, holding a basket of Lucas’s school clothes against my hip.
Foam covered the floor.
White bubbles crawled toward the drain like they had somewhere better to be.
In the middle of the disaster stood a tall man in a dark cashmere sweater, barefoot, holding a dress shirt that had clearly started life as white and was now the exact shade of Pepto-Bismol.
I stared at the shirt.
Then at the bubbles.
Then at him.
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