The Duck and the Washer

The basement cinema co-op smelled like dust and popcorn butter, the way it always does. Low ceiling. Mismatched chairs. A projector the size of a small car humming up on the table in the corner.

I got there early, which is not like me. But this was not like me.

I'm Sally. I'm thirty-four, and I run the parsnip hydraulic washer over at the veggie co-op. It's a big steel tub with spray nozzles and it hums all day and it hates me. That's the job. I've dated a few people in my twenties and nothing stuck, and I figured that was sort of my whole deal now. Parsnips and Netflix.

Then I made an account on that match site as a joke. And I met Rick.

We'd been messaging for weeks. Every night. He was funny in a dry, sideways way, and he worked the thatch comb binder at the farm supply, and I could not put my finger on something about him. He mentioned, sort of in passing once, that he liked to wear women's lingerie under his work clothes. Just threw it out there like he was telling me his favorite sandwich.

I stared at my phone for a full minute. Then I typed back, "okay but which color," and he sent me a photo of a pale pink silk camisole laid out on a bed, and I laughed so hard my roommate came to check on me.

So. Tonight was the meet. The after-movie discussion group at the co-op basement, because neither of us could handle the pressure of an actual restaurant.

I scanned the crowd. Profile pics lie, everyone knows that. I was looking for a guy around thirty-six, brown hair, some kind of grin in the one photo where he wasn't in profile. There were maybe twenty chairs full of movie people arguing about the documentary we'd just watched. A guy with a cane. Two sisters who always sat up front. Nobody who looked like my messages.

Then the door at the top of the stairs banged open, and a man came down them two at a time, still buttoning his jacket, grinning like he'd won something.

"Sally," he said, before I'd said a word. "You're shorter than your typing."

"And you're later than your promises," I shot back.

He stuck out his hand like this was a business meeting, and I shook it, and his palm was warm and rough and I let go maybe one second later than I meant to. (Don't judge me. You weren't there.)

"Sorry, sorry," he said, dropping into the chair next to mine and scooting it closer, which I noticed. "The binder jammed at three and I stayed to help clear it. Thatch combs are mean little monsters when they gum up."

"You smell like farm supply," I said.

"That's my signature scent. Well. That and something else."

I raised an eyebrow at that, and he just grinned wider and reached into his jacket. And out came a wooden duck.

Not a rubber duck. A duck decoy, hand-carved, glass eyes, painted feathers, the whole thing. He set it on my knee like it was a gift basket.

"Happy early birthday," he said.

"It's not my birthday for five months."

"Then happy Tuesday. Squeeze it."

"Rick."

"Squeeze the duck, Sally."

I squeezed the duck.

It did not quack. It sang. A little melodic three-note tune, sort of warbly, like a music box inside a bird. The two sisters up front turned around. The guy with the cane said "what in God's name," and I was holding a singing wooden duck in a movie basement and laughing so hard I had to put my hand over my mouth.

"Where did you even get this," I wheezed.

"Estate sale back in April. The guy swore it quacked but it sings, which is better. I've been carrying it around for a few months waiting for the right moment."

"You could have just texted me a normal compliment like a normal person."

"Where's the fun in that?"

He had a point. That was the annoying part. He had a point and a singing duck and a grin, and I sat there through the entire discussion group with the duck in my lap like it was a purse.

The discussion was about the documentary, some thing about lighthouses. I retained maybe forty percent of it, because Rick leaned over every few minutes and whispered commentary that was funnier than the film. Once he whispered it and his breath touched my ear and my brain shorted out for a second. (Again. You weren't there.)

Afterward, the group broke up into its little clusters, and Rick helped me stack my chair. He held it under one arm like it weighed nothing.

"So," he said. "The washer."

"The washer?"

"Your parsnip hydraulic washer. You told me last week it's got a stuck valve. The intake valve on the spray manifold, right? It cycles and then sticks and you have to whack it with a mallet."

"I do have to whack it with a mallet," I admitted. "It's very satisfying but I don't think it's good for it."

"It's not. It's also not fixing it. That's a Series Four valve seat and they warp. You sand the seat, you re-seat the gasket, and it cycles clean for another year. I've done it twice on the wash line at the supply co-op."

I looked at him. Really looked. Thirty-six, forearms, that grin.

"You know valve seats," I said.

"I know valve seats."

"And you're offering to come fix my washer."

"I'm offering to come fix your washer."

"When?"

"Tomorrow. The co-op's quiet after four, you said. I can bring tools and we can have it done before the evening shift."

"And what does this heroic repair cost me," I asked, and I heard my own voice go a little flirty on the cost part, which surprised me more than the duck did.

Rick shrugged, easy as anything. "Nothing. The repair's free either way. But I'd like to take you to dinner sometime, you pick the place, and you can say no and I'll still fix the valve. And I get to hold the duck one more time before I go."

"I'm keeping the duck."

"Obviously you're keeping the duck. It was always yours. I just delivered it."

* * *

I drove home with the wooden duck in my passenger seat, singing its little song whenever I took a corner too fast. Which was often, because I was happy and driving like it.

Here's what I keep turning over, even now. The lingerie thing. He'd told me about it in week two of messaging, plain as a weather report, and then never mentioned it again. Like he'd said his piece and was braced for me to vanish, and when I didn't vanish he didn't know what to do with that.

Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow was the washer, and the co-op after four, and him rolling up in whatever he drove with a toolbox on the seat.

I parked, picked up the duck, and squeezed it one more time in the dark of my kitchen.

Three notes. Warbly. Perfect.

I set it on my dresser where I could see it from bed, and I texted him: four o'clock sharp, bring the good sandpaper.

He texted back a thumbs up and then, a minute later: "wear work clothes you don't mind getting spray water on."

Like I owned any other kind.

* * *

He showed up at 4:00 sharp. Two minutes early, driving a dented blue pickup with a toolbox rattling in the bed. I watched him park from the shed window and something in my chest did a little hop.

Rick got out wearing jeans and a work shirt with the farm supply logo on the pocket. Brown hair pushed back. Sleeves already rolled. He waved at me through the window like we'd known each other for years instead of weeks of texting and one movie basement.

"Four o'clock sharp," he said, hauling the toolbox out. "You doubted me."

"I absolutely doubted you."

"Fair." He grinned. "Where's my patient?"

The washer was in the back shed, humming along in its low grumpy way. I'd run the last batch at two so it'd be empty and cool by the time he got there. He set the toolbox down, popped the latches, and started pulling out wrenches like a surgeon laying out scalpels.

"Show me the whack spot," he said.

"Right here. This is where I do the mallet thing."

"That's what I thought. Okay. Kill the power for me?"

I killed the power. He climbed half into the machine's guts, which was a sight, honestly. Forearms and leverage and a string of muttered commentary about Series Four valve seats and whoever designed them.

"They warp," he called from inside the machine. "Every time. It's not you."

"It's a little me. I mallet it."

"It's a little you," he agreed.

I stood there handing him things and watching him work. And that's when I saw it.

At his collar. Where the work shirt gaped when he stretched up toward the manifold. A thin strap. Not a tank top strap, not an undershirt. Lace. Deep blue, delicate, actual lace, sitting against the tanned skin of his shoulder.

My brain did the record scratch thing.

He stretched again. The strap moved with him. It was real. It was attached to something he was wearing under a farm supply work shirt, inside a parsnip shed, at four in the afternoon, while he fixed my washer.

I handed him the gasket scraper and said nothing. Because what was I going to say? Nice lace? But I thought about the photo. The pale pink silk camisole he'd sent me in week two, laid flat on what looked