“Sooooo . . .” I said, exaggeratedly awkward, as if the awkwardness were an inside joke between us. “What . . . do we do now?” I glanced at the clock floating above her head. A half hour to go; God, I hated filling this time.

“Well,” she said. “We’ve talked about it before, and . . . I think you’re right. It sounds like you don’t need to be seeing me any more.”

A year of biweekly meetings, and this is how it ends. The lack of ceremony was killing me.

“So . . .” I prodded merrily, squinting an eye, “I’m cured, doctor?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Well for heaven’s sake, I didn’t say –”

“I’m cured, I’m cured!” I cried, pumping my arms in joy.

“Nobody’s ever cured.”

“Yeah, you’re right . . . I’ll probably see you later. Ah well. Thanks.” I stood up dejectedly. “Have a good one, now.”

“See you later Adrianne.”

And the door closed behind me with a shhhhhhhh.

I’d snuck into the laundromat just before closing, a habit I’ve picked up to avoid The Racket. Half of the fluorescent lights had already been switched off: the empty space flickered with a sickly, thin light, and the floors — usually thundering with running children, reality TV shows, and hundreds of machines churning — now merely buzzed with the rocking of my two dryers. In the corner, two African men were enjoying a quiet disagreement in French.

I’d just taken a load of darks out, and began folding tank tops.

“That’s a pretty shirt,” a little voice said.

I looked down at two huge eyes peering at me from under the table. You’ve got to watch out for the six-year olds. They tend to be the exact height that falls into the adult blind spot: not close enough to the floor to be observed as a potential tripping hazard, and just short enough to miss eye contact. Also, they’re speedy.

“Oh. Hello. Thanks.”

“Is it for your little girl?”

“Heh, no, I don’t have a little girl.”

“Do you have a boy?”

“Nope, no boy.”

She considered this, clearly perplexed.

“Do you think you might get pregnant soon?”

Gah. “Uh . . . well, I guess I might.”

A smile overtook her entire tiny body: she had to wrap her arms around her shoulders to contain it. Then she ran a lap around the laundromat, stopping briefly to squirt her water bottle at her brother in the other room: a chase scene commenced, with alternating screaming and crying, a brief disciplining from one of the French men, and finally she returned, panting. Awkwardly, I had come to the underwear portion of my laundry; I debated just stuffing them back into the laundry bag. She stood there patiently for a moment, observing with those big white eyes.

“Your towels are almost done.”

“Yes.”

“That’s your shirt, too? All of your shirts are so small! They look like children’s clothes.”

“Heh. Well. I’m small, I guess.”

A pause.

“Is your husband at home?”

Jesus. The longer I talked to this kid, the further I descended into a goddamn mid-life crisis.

“Nope,” I explained patiently, “I don’t have a husband.”

(Do I look so old? Wasn’t I six too, just like five days ago? Couldn’t I still travel and live on a commune and change the world in some way before thinking about all of this?)

(These freaking six-year-olds.)

“You don’t have a husband,” she verified, as if maybe she hadn’t heard me correctly or understood.

“No husband.”

She cocked her head, looked at me sweetly. “Aren’t you afraid of being alone forever?”

Nick and I had a photo shoot the other night for a magazine in Boston, who had rather suddenly decided to feature Love and Radio in their July issue (“So, I need to send them the photos . . . tonight,” the photographer said).

Growing up the daughter of a photographer, you’d think I’d be pretty accustomed to photo shoots. Just a little camera, nothing to be afraid of; hell, I’ve done photo shoots for other people, and have struggled myself with getting others to relax — and I know it happens, I know they eventually do. I shouldn’t worry about the photographer worrying that I won’t relax, and I shouldn’t worry that I’ll keep worrying that I won’t relax (and thereby not relax) because eventually, y’know, I’ll just relax. You’d think I’d just relax immediately, with this comforting certainty so few can enjoy.

But for some reason, when there is a professional in front of me with a fancy lens and a prop of an old timey radio or whatever at my feet, Barbie-esque rigor mortis sets in. I’m all limbs.

“Whoa,” the photographer said. “Could you look a little less . . . terrified?”

“I’m . . . I’m sorry. Uh . . . ”

“Yeah, no. Relax. Just relax.”

“Should I put my arm . . . no, that doesn’t work.”

“Can you lean on that thing?”

“That’s . . . I don’t know, that looks dangerous.”

“No no, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

“I don’t know, I think . . . this kind of works, maybe? The problem is my arms.”

“Your arms?”

“Uh, well, I have no idea what to do with them.”

“Try putting that one on the ladder there. Yeah.”

Pause. “You still look terrified. Look, just relax.”

The sun would set soon, and we had one hundred or so to go. “I’m getting her a beer,” Nick said.

First off, the realtor informed us that “split bedroom” means that the living room is the second bedroom listed, a claim I can’t negate with any actual housing knowledge, but which I still find highly suspect given various google and craisglist searches. Not to mention words of wisdom from Jurvis’ mom.

“We thought ‘split bedroom’ meant that the two bedrooms aren’t next to each other, but are on opposite sides of the apartment,” Jurvis said warily. “So, you’re saying that’s not true?”

“No no, it means, one bedroom, and a living room. But the living room has a door. You can use it as a second bedroom, it’s just as good!”

“But, then we don’t have a living room,” I said.

I wondered briefly if we were experiencing a language barrier. The realtor smiled nervously.

“Hmm.”

So he scrambled around for a bit, trying to find a whole new apartment, and then we piled into his car and were off. He drove like he spoke: quickly, with abrupt transitions and turns, and a cheerful disposition that seemed to be thinly spread over some kind of terror, some not-so-long-ago depression. I clung to the door. “Here we are! I can just park here!”

“Please let it be in the brick buildings,” I thought at some higher power. “Not those stucco grey things. That’s where you get murdered, doing your laundry in the basement.”

“This grey building right here, across the street, there you go! I have two apartments to show you!”

Well, the view would be nicer at least, looking at the brick ones. As we entered, someone driving by stuck his head out the window and yelled something: I couldn’t discern what.

“What are these notices of extermination?” Jurvis nodded his head toward the signs, placed on every other door or so, which said in big, black font: “WARNING: EXTERMINATION SCHEDULED, 4/15. Please evacuate your unit at this time. Extermination takes up to 24 hours. Final notice.”

“Oh!” the realtor chirped. “That’s nothing.”

“What’s being exterminated? Bed bugs? Roaches?”

“No, no, ha ha ha! That’s . . . it’s just, you know, every now and then they like to check. You know? It’s like a check up. They just look around to make sure . . . make sure there’s no problems.”

Nice of them, isn’t it?

We proceeded to violently intrude upon two different tenants, one a bartender who’d just woken up to the persistent knocking, and the other an older woman who yelled at him as he entered “NO ENGLISH, NO ENGLISH, PORTUGUESE!” They were fine apartments for what they were — although I can’t really speak for the second, since we were told we couldn’t open two of the doors to see in the rooms, and the realtor looked very embarrassed when he did. We were assured that, while there was no back yard, there was a fire escape we could stand on, and while electricity wasn’t included and could get pricey with an air conditioning unit, “there are windows. You saw them, right?”

Finally, we shook hands and went on our way, to the next realtor’s office down the street.

“Oh,” I said, once we were a few blocks away, “what did that guy yell, anyway? As we were about to go in to the apartments, that guy who drove by?”

Jurvis grinned. “He yelled, ‘This is a terrible neighborhood!'”

At fifteen seconds:

Me: Whoa, what’s that thing?

Him: I thought it was . . . sperm?

Me: Are you sure it’s not a . . . I don’t know, an organ? Of some kind?

Him: It’s . . . weird. I think it’s sperm.

Me: That other guy is controlling it somehow.

Him: Yeah.

Me: Is that window his eyes? Is he seeing through him through the window and controlling his intestine with the lever?

His roomate, happening by: Are you guys debating what that thing is?

At fifteen minutes:

Me: Hee hee! Look at that very tiny chicken!

Him: Ew, what’s it doing?

Me: Uhhhh.

Him: Whoa.

Me: Gross!

Him: Well that was weird.

At forty minutes:

Him: Is that . . . the baby?

Me: Ahhhhhkg! It is, it is! What’s it doing? What’s she doing to it?

Him: I’m going to be sick.

At sixty minutes:

Me: What?

Him: Did he just become pencils?

Me: I think his brains are erasers now.

Me: Oh, wait. Only that never happened.

At eighty-six minutes:

Me: Oh no!

Him: Ew!

Me: No, no, achkkk!

Him: What is he doing?

Me: I’m not even watching any more. I’m seriously going to hurl. I’m going to hurl all over your living room and this DVD.

Five minutes after credits:

Me: Uh, So. What’d you think?