Late Nite at the Sudzy Dudz

The older boy unfolded himself out of his plastic chair and ambled out of the Laundromat to rummage in the trunk of a black 1970s American car out in the dirt parking lot. He was back shortly, moving slower and leaning over under the weight of the black tool box in his left hand.

Scully felt herself staring.

Setting the toolbox down on the washer, the boy stepped back to give the man room and his father opened the machine and had the coin-collecting mechanism off the nearest washer in under a minute.

Scully was shocked and appalled to think this man and his clean-cut sons were about to rip off the quarters from some crappy dilapidated Laundromat. And, of course, that she should really stop them, being a law-enforcement officer and all.










“The office over there looks locked. I’m planning to shove an envelope under the door,” he said. “I think I got one in the car.”

Scully felt herself relax.

“If you don’t mind my askin’ ma’am,” the man said as she dug her clothes out of the washer and piled them on top of the non-working one to her left, “Why are you carrying a gun in here? I know it’s night, but without the bikers here Sturgis isn’t that bad a place.”

“Oh there, you are,” Mulder’s voice, holding the overly-pleasant tone that heralded bad news, rang from the doorway. “Doing wash?”

“I seem to recall that I told you I’d be doing wash when you got in the car to go out to the site,” she said tersely, not looking at him.

The younger boy at the drying table began to snicker.

Scully looked at him and then followed his gaze to the doorway to see what was so funny.

Apparently, it was Mulder. Covered from head to toe in what appeared to be some toxic combination of mud and who knew what else, it smelled like pure manure.

“If you think that I can be persuaded to wash any part of that,” Scully said. “Think again.”















Mulder was too busy eye-rolling at the suggestion that they might be out there to hassle whatever AIM activists remained in South Dakota to catch the looks that passed among the man and his sons, but Scully saw them, even as she stuffed the last of her laundry into the first dryer the boy had worked on.

“Are you sure this will be ok?” she asked the boy. “I’d rather not light my underwear on fire.”

The, Scully hated to admit, extremely handsome kid gave her a look that clearly implied he could think of quite a few better ways to light her panties afire than by putting them into a defective dryer. She felt guilty because the look was appreciative and that she found it more than a little flattering despite the fact that she was much the worse for the humidity and more than old enough to be his mother. He gave her a grin that should have been illegal and said in a way that was downright dirty, “Yeah, it’ll be fine. If I fix something it stays fixed.”

“Isn’t it past your bedtime, sonny?” Mulder asked from the doorway, in a way that was too casual to not be pointed.

“Gee, Dad,” the kid said with an aw shucks hayseed shtick that could have got him into any acting school in the country. “Have I got your special permission to stay up late?”

“Don’t argue with the FBI man covered in bullshit, Dean,” the father growled from where he was loading in the last of their laundry. “That’s pretty much guaranteed to not end well for anybody.”