The lady that works behind the counter where I take my dry cleaning on Main Street is nice, but a strange one. For starters, she doesn’t like dirty clothes. I brought in a black pair of pants last week and as she inspected the garment I was reduced to a sniveling blob in front of other customers eyes.
“You did it again,” she snapped. “Where did you get all these spots?”
“I went to the History House crab festival and the apron they gave us was too short.”
“How many times must I tell you when you eat crab on the shell you wear old clothes,” she scolded. “You should have worn the shirt I cleaned last week. You know, the striped green shirt with the dribble spots from Happy Ben’s Chinese food.”
Two days later I handed her a black coat I wore at a reception for a local VIP.
“Oh my Gawd! What are those spots?” she screamed.
“Gunk,” I said.
“I can see its gunk, but I need you to be gunk-specific. Where were you?”
“I was at Maltby’s and it’s either zucchini mousse soup or salsa. It could also be the tartar sauce from the fish.”
She sniffed the material. “It’s definitely Maltby’s soup, but there are other spots.”
My dry cleaner knows Los Altos restaurant menus better than any home economics teacher at Foothill College. She looked at my black jacket with disgust on her face.
“The other spots are liver and bacon juice. It will take several days sitting in our chopped liver industrial strength detergent to clean those spots,” she said.
Nervously I handed her my beige sweater that was coated with mustard. “Can you get these spots out,” I asked.
She checked the label. “This is a St. Croix knit. You have the audacity to wear a St. Croix to the Italian Deli. Have you no concept of the casual dining approach at the Italian Deli?”
Last Saturday I reached the height of a dry-cleaning fiasco. I spilled zinfandel on my camel-hair sport coat at the Community Foundation’s Red and White Ball.
Frantically, my friend at the table said white wine would take out red wine stains. I tried it.
“Now I’ve seen everything,” she said on Monday morning. “This water stain is the size of my bathtub. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? When you get goop on your clothes you don’t tamper with good merchandise.”
“But the water was bottled Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water right from the mountain,” I said.
“It’s not the dry cleaning I do for you that interests me. It’s all the food and drink you spill that I’m attracted to,” she said. “If you and other customers didn’t bring their clothes to me I wouldn’t know what the specials were at Maltby’s, Los Altos Grill, Ragusa or the Red Pepper.”
