Free Madonna of the Apes by Nicholas Kilmer

I’m not finished,” Franklin Tilley said. He shoved the envelope into the left breast pocket of his blue suit.
    Fred told him, “My advice is, when you see him tomorrow—you made an appointment with him, didn’t you?—
If
you see him tomorrow, don’t mention the chest. That’s the best thing. All the paintings you have you might sell him, concentrate on those other things, is my advice. The big new thing you’re going to get, that’s going to knock his eyes out. Did that come in?”
    “Fuck you,” Franklin Tilley said.

Chapter Fifteen
    Fred walked Franklin Tilley to the bottom of the stairs leading to the Charles Street subway, which at that stage of its run was above ground. The evening was getting chilly. Good weather for the trees to put on leaves and flowers. Good weather for tulips and daffodils to poke their buds out of the earth in the little spaces allowed, between pavements, for such activities. Folks on the street were prospecting for a drink before dinner.
    “Laundry to do,” Fred reminded himself.
    He chose a machine in the Nite-Rite Wash-n-Dry and sat in one of the chairs provided. It was not a bad vantage point from which to observe his fellow citizens. They came in all colors, shapes, ages, and sizes. What they had in common was that they did not live in places that had washing machines. You’d say, you’d assume, that the odds were anyone in an all-night Laundromat on a late Tuesday afternoon was single; but across from the washing machines a young man at a dryer was folding tiny pajamas and laying them into a red plastic laundry basket.
    “Damned thing broke,” he told Fred, catching his speculative eye. “Tamara won’t wait for Sears. She can’t leave the kids. Doesn’t want to—she’s tried it—bringing Jenny with her—that’s the youngest—but this is a hell of a place to nurse a kid, and it’s a lot to carry. The kid, the basket. Besides, there’s something on she likes to watch, hospital program, and this gets me out of the house. I don’t mind. It’s not like there’s diapers to do. The man who invented Pampers, he’s the guy that should get the Nobel Medal of Freedom in my book. Or the woman. And you’ll say the next Nobel Medal of Freedom goes to the guy that invents a way to dispose of the disposable diapers, which I don’t disagree with you. Or the woman.”
    He folded a little yellow dress, manipulating it on the table as if it were a man’s dress shirt. Was that how a woman would do it? The dress, now a neat square, went into the basket.
    “How old’s the oldest?” Fred asked.
    “Three,” the man told him, patting the dress. He untangled three brassieres and tried to fold them, gave up, and crammed them into the basket in a state of abandon. “I’ve got one three, one two, and then Jenny. Jenny’s the youngest. She was born last New Year’s day. We missed the exemption by twenty-three minutes. It’s how I knew she’d be a girl.”
    He paused for Fred to say something he couldn’t think of.
    “She was twenty-three minutes late,” the man said. “You have kids?”
    “I guess not,” Fred said. “Not that I know about.”
    The young man thought of an answer that he kept to himself.
    ***
    She came in carrying a blue plastic laundry basket. Tabitha? Jasmine? Stella? “Hey,” she said, putting it down beside him. “Fred. Here you are all of a sudden, all fuzzy and domestic!”
    Daniella?
    She was wearing her wet hair in dark curls. A large green sweater covered the snake tattoo. “I’m starving,” she said, leaving a kiss in the vicinity of his face. “But more important, I’m going to be arrested if I don’t get some laundry done.”
    Marie? Marianne? Mary Anne? Anne-Marie? Mary? Frances? Bertha? Annie? Ann?
    “The truth is, I forgot your name,” Fred said. “I’ve been beating my head to a pulp.”
    “That’s Okay. It’s not a symptom of anything, or anything. There’s a lot of things I forget too,” she reassured him. “I’ll