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pressed a single button and was immediately connected to the concierge.
    “I need a garbage bag,” he said. “The thickest one you have.”
    “Certainly.”
    “And directions to the closest laundromat.”
    “Would you like to use our laundry services?”
    “No, thank you.”
    “We’ll send the directions up with the bag, then.”
    “Thank you,” Lewis said.
    The garbage bag arrived fifteen minutes later, and came with a map on which the path from the Fort Garry Hotel to the Happy Cat Laundromat had been traced with a pink highlighter. In the bathroom, Lewis removed the clear plastic from his dress shirts. He pulled out the silver pins, making a small pile on the granite to the right of the sink. He let the cardboard fall to the floor. He removed the tags from the remaining six pairs of pants with his fingers. He pulled the socks apart and plucked off the labels. When he’d finished with the underwear too, Lewis stuffed all the clothing into the black plastic garbage bag and swung it over his shoulder.
    In the lobby, Lewis pretended not to notice the desk clerk watching him. He walked through the revolving door, his garbage bag just fitting inside it. Having never been in Winnipeg before, Lewis closely followed the directions on his map. He had just turned left onto Corydon Street when the plastic bag started to tear. The split got longer and longer with each step he took. By the time he arrived at the Happy Cat Laundromat, Lewis was cradling the bag in both arms as he would an injured dog.
    Once inside, Lewis fit his newly purchased wardrobe into two washing machines. It took twenty-sevenminutes for the clothes to be washed, then he transferred them to two dryers. When the clothes were dry, he put them back in the washing machines. He had just begun his third rotation from dryer to washer when a woman walked into the laundromat. She was fascinatingly un-attractive. Her brown hair was dirty and hung just past her shoulders, slightly too long for her face. Her posture was stooped. She did not take steps but shuffled along as if her feet were skis. She was not curvaceous and yet carried too much weight to be thin. Her mouth hung open. There was a mustard stain so perfectly located over her left nipple that it was hard to believe it wasn’t intentional. Lewis could not take his eyes off her.
    Pretending to stare at the television mounted in a corner of the room, Lewis watched her. She loaded a single washer and then began reading a celebrity gossip magazine. She had removed her clothes from the dryer and was folding an excessive number of pairs of once white, now grey cotton underwear when she looked up, directly at Lewis, then walked towards him.
    “Do you know who I am?” she asked, a pair of panties in her left hand.
    “Um. No.”
    “I’m God.”
    The woman continued to look directly at him. There was no hint of irony or sarcasm in her words. Instinct told Lewis to stop making eye contact immediately and leave the laundromat, but he did neither of these things.
    “Really?” he asked instead.
    “In the flesh appearing.”
    “Then I have a question for you.”
    “Ask me whatever you like, but you have to tell me something first. Why are you doing your laundry over and over again?”
    Lewis didn’t immediately answer, although he was fully aware that his wife had inspired the repeated washings. Three, maybe four years ago, she’d painted a series of landscapes. They were some of the best work she’d ever done, and certainly the most marketable. Each canvas looked out onto the ocean, a thin line of sandy brown at the bottom leading to a painstakingly rendered sequence of slightly darkening shades of blue.
    But then she’d covered them with a sticky lacquer and set them beside an open window. Three days later, she’d returned and the paintings were covered with dust and grime, much of which obscured the subtlety of the many shades of blue.
    “Why did you do that?” Lewis asked. Having never succeeded in