LA  NDRY or L  UNDRY. Those were the two choices. You never knew which one you were gonna get. The letters took turns to be fickle, blinking and spluttering in a game of chance. Mr. Lee, the laundry-mat owner, was stingy with the upkeep. He let his storefront waver, caught between two versions of itself. It all worked out, though, because his two valets, via magic or prescience, always managed to sync with the signs.

On LA  NDRY nights, we had Landry. He was all charm and brio, never a crease in his crisp, white shirt. Clean-shaven, hair coiffed back in perfect curls, he would hold out the door of the washing machine like a perfect gentleman; offer lavender sachets, fir tree spritzes, his two cents on anything and everything you were stuck on. Whenever he looked at you with his purifying gaze, you felt seen. Whenever he leaned close, you felt held—by a whiff, a cloud, an olfactory hug—steamed linens, your childhood blankie, a day-old cologne from your first date.

On L  UNDRY nights, we had Lundry. He was all moody moues and brittle words. With sandy stubbles and a rakish parting, he would sulk in a corner, hugging a basket of things—pairless socks rolled up into pouty fists, chewed up sticky notes, matte pennies, dust bunnies, clips and pins—anything lost but never found. He would sidle close, hold out the basket; ask if you recognize any pieces of your past. Whenever he brushed off lint from your coat, you felt a nagging doubt—that something else, something crucial, had been brushed off. Whenever he sighed, you felt a pang, as though the puff blew close to your tender heart.

I forgot to mention Mat. He was always there. A constant, if you will. A jingle of coins, sitting on a—well, a mat. Meditating, offering changes from a lotus squat.

The name’s Laundry-Mat, not laundromat, by the way. It’s a long story involving a bet; some beef Mr. Lee had with a local contractor.

Landry or Lundry, I always liked going to the mat. It had become a routine of sorts; a drunken habit, if you will. Whenever I got sozzled, I had this strange hankering to wash my clothes. I don’t know which part I liked the most: watching the soapy shirts tumble amidst the suds; feeling the warmth of the tangled towels; folding my undies in eye-watering angles—perfect rectangles, a balm to the eyes.

And sozzled I’d been that night, the five glasses of Midori Sours still singing my stomach green; so much so that when I saw the pools of neon green lapping the pavement in swirls, I wondered if I’d threw them up myself.

I stumbled in, undeterred. Though I was coming straight from the tavern across, I was prepared. My rucksack was filled with soiled shirts and socks. I guess I had an inkling. Earlier that day, Moe had ambushed me. “You gotta tell your Grams, Jo. Will you stay or will you go?”

Moe is what people would call a childhood sweetheart of mine. Though the flavor’s more complicated than that. An umami-heart, maybe? I’d felt smug when I first used the word, but my Grams—the formidable Mrs. Hong—wasn’t too impressed. She still thinks I’ll marry Moe, though it’s been years since we broke up. He’s a proper grandson to her now, there’s no changing that. She doesn’t know how to undo a knot once it’s been tied. She also doesn’t know that I’ve been offered a job, a gainful opportunity—to use Moe’s words—in a French submarine.

The offer, at first blush, had sounded like someone had intercepted the frequency of my dreams. When we were young, Moe and I used to listen to pirate radio stations. One of them was run by an eccentric French explorer, Dr. Gagnier. In phlegmy contralto, she chronicled the underwater adventures of her team; witnessed the vastness of the ocean. I began writing to her. Sent her drawings of the deep-sea creatures Moe and I had dreamed up. Throughout the years, I continued this one-sided correspondence, sometimes confiding in her, other times taunting her; questioning her methods—“empirically sound, but lacking imagination.” I had the audacity of someone who knew she was going to be ignored. Until one day, two weeks ago, to be more exact, Dr. Gagnier called my bluff. She’d been reading my letters with great interest. Looked up my CV. Would I, Josephine Hong, like to join their next expedition? Five years. All expenses paid. Not to mention a hefty salary.

That night, I packed my bag, just to see how it felt. Elation. Awe. But when I realized I’d have to tell Grams, the frisson of excitement fermented into something more unfathomable, something akin to fear. I ripped the letter I’d begun writing. Retreated to the duvet of uncertainty. We do need your response by the end of the month, Dr. Gagnier had said. Submarines, you know. Rather difficult to moor and so on.

I had nine days left. And not a day closer to knowing my own heart.

“Good night, Jo! Need change?” Mat asked, sitting in his usual corner—a bristly welcome mat pushed to the side of the door. His eyes were closed, fingers poised to a mudra of compassion.

“Hi, Mat!” I said, closing the door behind me. “No, that’s okay, I won some at a slot machine.”

The laundry-mat greeted me with its warm, halogen glow. Rows of washing machines glittered around me, an arcane matrix. I emptied my rucksack. Ambled towards the detergent dispenser. Squirted the soap—lurid blue—into a cup. Soon, I realized that something was off. No Landry or Lundry tonight. Weird. I tried recalling what I’d seen outside, the oracle of the storefront. When the vision didn’t come, I shrugged. Looked at Mat. Eyes still closed, he pointed at an empty machine. I shuffled towards it and fed a basket worth to its gaping mouth. But when I tried inserting the coins into its slits, my fingers couldn’t find precision, the booze kneading my intestines with their delicate flame hands.

I fumbled, swaying, until a hand folded over mine and clicked the coins in.

It was just my luck I got Lundry that night. I simply hadn’t noticed him, so blended he was with the shadow in the corner.

“Delicates?” He intoned, eyes downcast. He looked even more morose than usual, and moist, somehow—like a rain-sprinkled mutt.

“Regular,” I said, pushing the button with a certainty I didn’t feel inside.

“Are you sure?” he asked, flickering a worried glance. I didn’t answer.

Arms folded across, standing side by side, we watched the sudsy water rain down the door of the washing machine. My mind cleared. A white haze diffused across its winding terrain, engulfing my sense of time and direction. We stood in silence for I don’t know how long, until a creeping longing poked out through the clouds.

“Shucks, I was kinda hoping for Landry tonight,” I blurted. I winced at my own rudeness.

“Who?” Lundry’s eyes were still fixed on the porthole. They did this. Landry and Lundry. Pretended that the other didn’t exist. Sometimes it got confusing, because, as a matter of fact, their features looked identical: same eyes, same nose, same little turn in their left canine. If they weren’t so different in every other respects—the way they stood, the way they talked, their hair, their gait—well. One would have thought that one of them was a dream conjured by the other.

“What’s wrong?” Lundry said, a sphinx of pathos, the lonely cross-examiner of my heart. When I raised my eyebrow, he leaned close. He sniffed, in a tentative, moseying way.

“Choices. Must be hard,” he concluded. The corners of his mouth drooped. His pink earlobes looked tender. Exposed.

The thing with Lundry was, I never knew if I wanted to slap him or hug him.

“I’ve been called to the sea,” I feigned levity.

“You’re hesitating,” Lundry said. “Afraid of leaving someone.”

“They can fend for themselves, you know. Moe and Grams,” I flushed.

“I didn’t mean them,” Lundry replied.

Before I could ask “Who then?,” the washing machine beeped thrice. Lundry helped me take out the wet, balled up lump and haul it up into the dryer above. As I stooped down to pick up sundry socks, Lundry reached up and swiped the dust bin with a flick of his finger. Dust bunnies flaked up like petals.

“That’s a relief.” He rolled up the dust into a wad.

“What is?”

“The lingerers. They haven’t morphed.”

“Into what?” I felt a sudden, inexplicable chill down my spine. Instead of an answer, Lundry looked up towards the ceiling.

As though on cue, the overhead lights flickered. A splutter. A zap. Then, total darkness.

I looked around, disoriented, until my eyes began to discern shapes amidst the gauzy penumbra. The streetlights reflected in loopy lassoes against rows of dark moons: portholes, dryer portals. In one of them, haloed against the lights, I saw two bloated shadows, Lundry and me. Though all I could see was a black outline of my face, I could have sworn it turned sideways, like a weathervane, while I myself stood perfectly still. Heart churning, I followed its gaze towards the corner of the laundry-mat. It was shrouded in a deeper darkness. Darkness that moved. At first, I thought a piece of a shadow had detached itself. Until the shadow gelled into a figure, creeping out of an open dryer. It crawled onto the floor, one palm in front of the other.

An icy whirlpool in my heart. I clutched at Lundry’s sleeve.

Then, a blazing light. I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, the figure was gone, and the laundry-mat door tinkled, as though someone had just slipped out.

Mat was standing next to the light switch. “Power’s back again,” he said.

“What was that?” I turned to Lundry.

“That happens sometimes. If you hesitate for too long.”

When I looked at him with wide open eyes, he added, softly,

“The what-ifs. They cling to your clothes. Then, when the time’s right, they split off.”

I was still pondering about the laundry ghost when Moe dropped by my work the next day. I’d been keeping myself busy, cleaning out carp shit from a murky pond. I worked shifts at the Hotel Poseidon, a run-down institution with questionable maritime ties. Tragically, the owners thought that a pond in the middle of their lobby would boost the ambience. The carps shat a lot, though we never caught them in the act. They were sneaky little brutes, but I always felt bad for them. They were too big for the pond.

“Do your shits also turn into alternate carps?” I cooed. “Where are they swimming now?”

“What are you on about?” Moe laughed as he approached me. He swapped out my poo-smeared net with a cappuccino. “Ready to go, captain?”

Moe always picked me up on Wednesdays. Wednesday nights were Sichuan Dinner Nights. We gathered at Grams’s and binged spicy food and K-drama.

I inched close to Moe and sniffed at his hoodie, just like Lundry had the night before.

“You know, Lundry says our clothes gather our qi,” I said.

“Yee-s? So what?” Moe tousled the top of my head.

I recounted my adventure from the night before. At first, my thoughts and words ran in parallel—jitters were what I was still feeling, bravado was what I was exuding. Grams says I have a knack for camouflaging fear as curiosity. Or was it the other way around? But watching Moe become spellbound, I began to relish my own story. It’s true what people say. Our eyes stay the same. Moe’s shone like coals, just like they had in grade school, whenever I held him captive with my tall tales.

“So, this Laundry Tulpa. Is it yours?” Moe asked in a reverent whisper.

“It didn’t come out of my dryer!” I cried. It didn’t, did it? Doubt crawled up my skin.

“Well, if you don’t decide on that job offer soon, you might end up conjuring one,” Moe jested. “Another Jo on my hands. Now that’d be interesting.”

His smile faltered when he realized how rattled I was.

Thankfully, we had other distractions on our way to Grams. Food, for one thing: mapo tofu, fish filets, everything swimming in lurid red. Moe’s future, for another. Halfway down the alleyway, he’d slowed to a stop. He pointed at an empty wall. “Ta-da!” He flourished his hands. A wide expanse of cracked cement loomed against the dusky dark.

“Ms. Lapoor’s bookstore? It looks closed for the night,” I said.

“I got a new commission. I’ll be painting a mural here,” Moe added with a bashful smile. Moe’d quit his old job two months ago to be a freelance artist. It looked like his gamble was taking off.

“Moe! That’s wonderful!”

We danced a celebratory jig, laughing. As we twirled around, hand in hand, the streetlamp turned on, illuminating the circle between us. Breathless, we let go, flinging ourselves onto the wall. It felt cool and grainy against my back. Moe gathered up the take-out bags. I gazed far ahead, trying to pierce through the foliage. Behind it stood the laundry-mat. What did it say tonight? LA  NDRY or L UNDRY?

“Jo, did you give it some thought? The submarine, I mean?” Moe caught me off guard, yet again. How did we end back here?

“Come on, the food’s getting cold,” I pried the bags off him and broke into a run.

“You still haven’t told Grams, have you?” Moe shouted, skipping behind me.

The sun was still setting as we made our way inside Grams’s, a first-floor apartment in a tenement house. Everything looked the same—tattered upholsteries, covered with exuberant throws, windowsills decked with porous stones, shelves full of yellow paperbacks, vinous plants, wonky pots. But limned by the golden twilight, the place felt different, with an otherworldly sheen. As though it was not quite of the present, but a snapshot of the past.

“Grams, we’re here!” I croaked and padded into the unlit kitchen. Her rice cooker greeted us, letting off steam. As it did so, a gust of a different kind—more chilling—swept through me. From the corner of my eye, I thought I’d glimpsed a moving shadow, passing under the kitchen table. The Laundry Tulpa? Quickly, I crawled under, pawed through the floor. All I found was a swirl of dust. Not up to Grams’s usual hygiene standards—but no existential threat.

“Trying to find my secret stash?” Grams emerged, kaftan billowing behind her. She pulled me out of an undignified crouch, hugged us both in her breath-taking squeeze. “Still too skimpy,” she tut-tutted. “It’s those pizzas, I fear. Gluten—they’ll shave off your bones!”

“That’s crazy, Grams,” I laced her fingers with mine.

“Not crazy if there’s a word for it. Osteo-parochialism.” It was typical of her to make things more baroque, even in her mistakes.

As Moe fussed over Grams and Grams over him, an ever-amplifying mutual loop, we got settled in. A foldout table in front of the sofa, cutleries fanned out just-so, and on the telly, Grams’s favorite drama, Chronicle of a Thousand and One Year. It was the story of two lovers who toiled through multiple lives, were born and reborn again, until finally, they found each other for good. We’d watched it hundreds of times.

For a while, we basked in our usual rhythm, laughing at the protagonists, fearing for them, and—when the goings were slow—peppering each other with our own updates. But then, out of nowhere,

“Moe, ask my granddaughter what she’s doing with her life,” said Grams, with a thunderous crunch of pepper flakes.

Grams did this sometimes. Address me elliptically. Usually, I’d done something to deserve it—but what had I done this time around? I hadn’t even told her about the job offer yet.

Moe raised his eyebrows, signaling me to tell her.

“Mr. Xavier from Poseidon is giving me a raise,” I said instead.

“That rube. He doesn’t know how to shuck a single oyster. What’s next? You always said you have bigger fish to fry!”

More dynamic eyebrows from Moe. When I continued to ignore him, he interjected, “Grams, you know a lot about ghosts, right? Can living people create them, too? You know, like shadows?”

I pinched him under the blanket. He was being sneaky. He knew he couldn’t bring it up himself, so instead, this. He smiled on serenely, with watery eyes.

“Moe, my dear child, I’m not so sure. I suppose we could, if brooms can turn into goblins.”

“How do they come about? Are they spooled from our regrets?” he asked.

Grams sunk into an unexpected silence. Her eyes were set faraway, in a different time and place. Moe fidgeted; he almost looked as if he regretted his words.

“What about dead ones, Grams? Tell us again about those,” I butted in. It was an invitation. One of the many open sesames to our time old ritual. Grams’s pursed lips eased into a smile. “Now those.… Well, I’ve told you a hundred times…” Nevertheless, she began stringing together her favorite tales. About how she’d met a water spirit, back when she was a sea-diving haenyeo at Jeju Island. About how the old brooms in her attic turned into a family of goblins; how they’d bickered through the night. About how translucent fingers had curled up from a potty hole in her father’s old outhouse. How’d she’d actually felt relieved, seeing those fingers. Even the ghosts had decamped, during the massacre in April. She’d been praying for a sign; if not of life, then at least of death.

Spoken through her mouth, calamities, vagaries of fate, the inherent uncertainties of life—all felt safer, manageable. There she was, and here she was again, decades, thousands of miles away. Hearing her, I too—though for the briefest moment—felt that we could be all encompassing. That choice was an illusion, just like time.

As lights from the TV flickered across our faces, our expressions wavered, softened. We huddled closer. The drama rolled on, a faint, steady hum. In this iteration of their lives, one of the lovers was a palace concubine, the other, a medicine man. They exchanged their blood by swapping leeches through the palace wall. They promised everlasting love. Grams continued on with her own story. Everyone knew what happened next.

“They never show what happens after,” Moe said. It was a little past midnight. He was walking me back from Grams’s.

“After what?” I asked.

“After they get together ‘for good’—the couple, I mean. In the drama?”

“Well, it’s like their happily ever after,” I shrugged. “Every story’s gotta end sometime, right? Even the infinitely reincarnating ones.”

“Well, I think it’s a cop-out.”

Strong words from tender Moe. Was he angry at me?

“I suppose we can’t stop time,” he continued, his eyes downcast. “It just keeps on going, and going.” The angled shadow from the ivied wall loomed across his face. We’d reached my flat.

“Jo, I know you. You want to go, don’t you?” Moe turned on his heels and braced himself, as though there were more to come. There was.

“But you’re also deathly afraid. It’s like your weird breakdown during Mr. Poots’s class. In fourth grade? He was telling us about platypuses, showing us a video, and you ran out screaming?”

I had. A strangely numinous certainty had dawned on me back then—that when the platypuses opened their mouths, they would sound like my mom. Crazy, I know. For one thing, she was someone I had zero recollection of. Someone who’d gone deep sea diving when I was two and was gone with the waves. As I yearned to crack her mystery, I’d realized—I’d also yearned to guard my oblivion.

“But Jo, anything worth anything is like that. Fearsome. Uncertain.”

Hot anger stirred in my heart. I resented Moe for bringing her up. For not telling me, not even once, “Don’t go. I need you.”

“Moe, there are freakin’ laundry ghosts roaming around,” I rambled. “I’m not joking. How can I possibly up and leave knowing I’ll be abandoning pieces of myself behind. Not to mention that Grams needs me, and…”

I couldn’t bring up the word “you.”

“You really think you’ll have less regrets by staying? Come on, Jo. This is all you’ve ever dreamed of. You think there won’t be some ghost gallivanting about in that submarine if you stay? Go, don’t go. It’s your choice. But don’t use the laundry ghost as an excuse. And while we’re at it, don’t for God’s sake, use Grams as an excuse, either.”

The last words seemed to stun him just as much as me. Moe leaned closer. “I’m sorry Jo, you know what I mean. And you know how she is. She’ll come around. Besides, I can take care of her, just like how we’ve always been doing, and…”

“Why, Moe?”

“What?”

“Why? You’re not family.”

Moe went silent. Through the inky dark, his eyes blazed bright, but it was too late to stop the momentum that ravaged through me.

“You won’t miss me at all, will you?” I said. “You’ll be perfectly happy, having Grams to yourself. Poor little orphan who stuck around. Better than her granddaughter, the one who’d left her in the lurch.”

For a while, I didn’t realize that Moe was backing away. I only thought he was getting smaller. And smaller. Once he was small enough, and far enough—too far from me to reach out—he turned his back on me and walked away without a word.

After Moe left, I stood smarting for a while. Then my mind began to race at a speed I couldn’t follow, until it reached an inevitable conclusion.

It was all because I’d cleaned my clothes wrong the night before. Because I’d run into Lundry.

I had to see Landry. If only I could talk to him, get that bracing hug of his, I would know what to do. Moe would come back. Something would finally click in my heart. I’d find the courage to leave. Or to stay. Which one required more courage? I wasn’t sure. But no matter—Landry would have the answer.

As I speed-walked towards the laundry-mat, I prayed and prayed for the neon sign to say LA  NDRY. Even tried to visualize it in my mind. And for a while, I seemed to be vindicated. I could have sworn I saw LA  NDRY through a squint, a few yards away. Only, when I got close enough—within the blink of an eye, really—the sign had turned back to L  UNDRY. But I couldn’t turn back. My feet wouldn’t let me. Besides, where else could I go? Maybe I could reason with Lundry. Make him fess up their secrets. I pushed through the door.

Under the familiar glow, Lundry shuffled towards me with a hangdog face.

“Two nights in a row? Is everything okay?” He intoned, eyes glued to the floor.

“Listen, Lundry. Where’s your twin? Nothing against you, but a girl could really, really use Landry tonight.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t recognize the name. How else can I help you?”

“Stop playing games with me, you good-for-nothing—” I began, then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Lundry. I didn’t mean it. Please. Help me out here.”

“I’m the only valet here. I’m sorry—I really wish I could help you,” he murmured, melancholic but unfazed.

Grunting in frustration, I swiveled around and scanned the laundry-mat. No one else was there except for Mat, sitting in his usual corner. I tried to talk to him, but he seemed to be in some sort of a trance. I walked around in circles, feeling thwarted. Impotent.

“If you don’t have anything to wash…” Lundry continued, following me.

“I have something,” I snapped, and shrugged off my linen jacket.

“I think that one’s dry clean only,” Lundry thumbed at the tag. “You might want to hand it over to Mr. Lee,” he added, pointing at the shop next door. Mr. Lee’s dry-cleaning shop was annexed to his laundry-mat, separated by a transparent window. The window framed a rectangle of darkness. Rows of clothes loomed like beasts in slumber. At one a.m., the shop was closed.

“Dry clean! What a concept!” I pushed my lone jacket into a washing machine. As I huffed towards the detergent dispenser, Lundry stopped me in my tracks.

“You’re still hesitating,” he whispered. “Would you like to see better?”

“See what better?” I whispered back.

Instead of an answer, Lundry led me to a staff-only closet. Behind a curtained nook stood another dispenser. It was filled with lavender liquid, scintillating with flecks of gold. My heart beat faster as Lundry went through the motions. He filled the cup; shuffled over to the machine; popped the soap in; pushed the button. I followed behind, as if in a dream. The ensuing burr sedated me, like a whale song. Until, moments later, it amplified. I realized that the washer next to the one we’d started had begun to spin; then the one next to it, then the next. On and on it went, in dominos, until everything around me started spinning.

“Ma-at?” I croaked. “The laundry-mat’s come alive, what do we do?” Mat was still in a trance, except now, his eyeballs seemed to be swiveling fast underneath his bulging eyelids.

Lundry tugged at my sleeve.

“Shh, look over there. Look in. Really look.”

Despite myself, I followed my gaze to what Lundry was pointing at. The porthole of a washing machine. As my gaze zoomed in, shutting out peripheral vision, images came alive, like a film in a dark theater.

There was Grams, wearing her fox stole, her “war vestment.” We were in a classroom. I was twelve. Her hands gripped my shoulders, three jade rings on her index finger. She was facing Mrs. O’Brian, my homeroom teacher. Earlier that day, I’d scratched the eyes of a mean boy. Given him a bruise on the cheek. Mrs. O’Brian spoke slowly, looking at me with an indulging smile, thinking Grams would have trouble understanding—if not English, then Western educational values. She didn’t know that Grams had swallowed a whole dictionary, sheet by sheet, chewing on one onion skin page a day. She’d stolen it from her brother, the one who got to go to school; tucked its empty spine inside her beoseon socks, the day she left Jeju. She’d wrapped me in a bundle, along with two silver spoons. Wrangled us inside a steamer bound for the US. Grams nodded at Mrs. O’Brian. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I understand, I talk with her.” Later that night, she showed me how to put jade rings on my fingers, how to pack a better punch.

Trembling, I took a step towards the next machine, the next porthole.

There was Moe and me, snuggled under a tent we’d made out of my blanket. Flashlight on, long past our bedtime, poring over the pictures we’d drawn. The greying sides of our notebook stood testament to how many times it’d changed hands. In its pages, giant sea dragons. Angler fish with diamantine teeth. Sad clams. Happy prawns. As I weaved story off of one image after another, Moe listened, captivated. The sea was bottomless, endless like the galaxy. Water snakes became dragons, but only at the right temperature. Grams was actually a thousand years old, returning to the sea every hundred years. And so on, and so on, I continued, until a beady-eyed fox nipped at our ankles. Grams, scaring us with her fox stole.

“Watch out! Sleepless children become sea urchins!” She chased us out of the bed as we giggled and ran, around the living room, through the kitchen, back into our own bed.

At the next porthole, Grams at one of her driving lessons. Planting a kiss on the cheek of her instructor, who’d just steered them away from a crash. Me ushering her out of the car, fussing.

At the next porthole, our first date, Moe and me. A dark aquarium. A kiss, a swipe at my cheek in front of desolate eels.

On and on it went, our profiles, our pasts, captured in perfect round discs—flattened crystal balls, hot to the touch.

I skipped through the rest, like someone breezing through a museum, heart too full, the visions all a blur.

“I already know all this,” I croaked at Lundry. “It doesn’t help at all.”

“Do we really know something, when we’ve forgotten it?” he said. Then, as though to console me, he added, “People don’t realize that the future is just like the past. Only, different vectors.”

A pause. Then, “Look one row up.”

The portholes above were blurrier. There again was Grams, grey haired, ermine, but different somehow. I realized she was in her haenyeo suit, was diving into the brilliantine sea. She hadn’t left Jeju, after all. Deep down in the sea, a seahorse propelled itself towards her, curled its tail around her pinkie. A promise. But of what kind? Soon, my eyes got distracted by the visions in the next porthole. Visions of Moe. He was in a snazzy suit, his arm linked with that of an unfamiliar woman. She had a wide grin; the carefree kind of those who could examine their own hearts without fear. The two stood in line in a movie theater. Popcorns were popping ahead of them, like gentle blessings.

“What are they?” I asked.

“Different choices. Different branches.”

“Where am I?”

Lundry pointed, but I squeezed my eyes shut the moment I asked. Waves of nausea enveloped me. I was too afraid to look.

“Things don’t always braid back together, do they? Once they split off…there’s no promise they’ll ever cross paths again,” Lundry whispered.

I fluttered my eyes open to take a peek at him. He’d turned pale, his eyes glazed with purple shimmer. Oddly enough, the pureness of his desolation reminded me of Landry. Or rather, I sensed, in some inexplicable way, that he too, was aching for Landry. For the first time, I was overcome with deep, unalloyed affection towards him.

“Lundry,” I said. “What are you longing for?”

He looked at me with a brittle smile.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Ms. Hong! Ms. Hong! Wake up!! What is the meaning of this?”

I wiped sleep off my eyes as Mr. Lee’s prune-like face came into focus. Bright morning lights smote us through the laundry-mat window, catching stray motes in their uncompromising prisms.

“You’re scaring away the customers. Please fold your camping chair and go home.”

“I too, am a customer,” I replied groggily, pointing at a dryer that had gone cool. It had been three days since Lundry had shown me the portals. Instead of an answer, they’d only created more confusion. Now I was stuck with this weird longing, a periodic clenching in my heart. No texts or calls from Moe, either.

All this had only whetted my obsession for Landry. I no longer even questioned my rationale. I had to see him. Had to. It had become an imperative, as natural as water. Over the course of the next few days, the impulse congealed into a plan: I would camp out next to Mat. If the game of chance wasn’t going to crown me a winner, then I’d at least become its sentinel. The two guys had to exchange shifts eventually, right? I just needed to catch them in the act. My one mistake had been to bring a flask of something to grease my stakeout. After I’d had a few tipples, I’d dozed off. I flicked a look behind me. Lundry was still there. Had I missed Landry again? I sighed. Mat smiled on serenely.

“You talk like these guys aren’t camping out here all the time,” I scowled, pointing at the duo.

“They’re our employees,” Mr. Lee coughed. His words rang a faint bell in my head, and suddenly, an idea presented itself. Landry, too, was an employee. I could ask Mr. Lee about him. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Shifting a furtive look at Lundry, who was—as usual—sulking in the corner, I said, “Actually Mr. Lee. You might be the one I’ve been looking for. Can I talk to you in private?”

Being a nighttime launderer, I’d never been inside Mr. Lee’s shop. It’d always presented itself as a slumbering beast, a rectangle of darkness on the other side. It was odd to find it finally open, to see the racks of clothes come alive. Wrapped in sheer plastic wrappers, they hung above us like a procession, a curtain made of hollowed out people.

Psssht. Psssht. Someone in a corner, hidden behind the forest of clothes, was ironing. The hisses cast an otherworldly mist. I felt as though I’d been transported to a high-altitude mountain, where spirits play go, and memories become people. This, not to mention a familiar scent—of attics, cornflowers, and vaporizing dews—threw me off.

“I um, I…” I groped for words.

“Ye-es?” Mr. Lee looked askance at the frayed collars of my jacket (there had been, as Lundry had predicted, collateral damage from ignoring the dry clean tag).

Focus. Landry. I’m looking for Landry. He might even be hiding here at this very moment. I swiveled my eyes, saw a red thread unspooling from a bobbin, disappearing into the thicket of clothes. Beyond them, yet another base note: a sewing machine, whirling. What a relief it would be, if we knew where our threads would lead us; whether they’d still be tethered, at the end of everything.

Seeing me dumb, Mr. Lee shook his head. “Ms. Hong, I don’t mean to be the laundry police. Wash your clothes as many times as you want. Turn them into gauzes, for all I care. More business, more coins, right? But the thing is, well—you’re wallowing.”

He reached his arm out, patted my shoulder awkwardly. “And no one likes to see people wallow, dear.”

The note of sympathy finally jolted me awake.

“Listen Mr. Lee, I just wanted to catch ahold of one of your valets, Landry,” I said. “You know, the dandy guy? Smells divine? Times were, I’d run into him every other visit. Now why is it that I can only seem to run into that guy these days?” I jerked my thumb at Lundry across the window.

Did I imagine it, or was there a flicker of recognition in Mr. Lee’s eyes? If there was, it was gone it an instant. Mr. Lee suddenly became cagey. He shifted subtly into the “I no speak English” register, though we both knew it was contrived.

“Who, him? What you talking about?” He blustered. “That boy Lenny. Or Landy. I don’t remember, some white boy name. I hire him because he loves laundry. I don’t know any other guy.”

“Come on Mr. Lee, don’t play fool with me. Everyone knows there are two guys that take turns. It’s the talk of the neighborhood. Grams thinks they’re some kind of twins on the lam. Moe thinks they’re method actors. I couldn’t care less—I just need to see the other half. Just for a few minutes. Please, Mr. Lee.”

Mr. Lee blinked.

“What about the neon signs? Should I rewire them? Would that do the trick?” I ventured.

Mr. Lee cocked his head, as if to say, you crazy.

In silence buffeted by whirrs, we glared at each other, a face-off. Soon, a wraith-like figure joined us from a misty corner, deus ex machina style. It was Jimin, Mr. Lee’s son and apprentice, and an occasional plumber at the laundry-mat. As he entered, he parted the curtain of clothes with a dramatic flair. After examining each of us in turn, he held out a tin box.

“Need a break?” he suggested.

I did not, but a breath mint sounded like good ammunition before Mr. Lee and I launched into another verbal joust. Eyes fixed doggedly at the senior, my fingers reached out towards the junior’s offerings. I tossed in whatever I managed to get ahold of into my mouth. Then I spat it back out with a violent cough.

“What the hell, Jimin? Why are you offering me buttons?”

Round buttons of all colors glistened like skittles inside his tin can.

“Looked like you needed them,” Jimin shrugged. “You know. For openings. And closings,” he said, as though it were the most evident thing in the world.

Wiping tears from a near choking hazard, I glared at the father-son duo. This was going nowhere. A strategic retreat was in order.

“If you’ll excuse me, I got laundry to fold. But this isn’t over,” I said, with what I hoped was a menacing wiggle of my fingers. “I’m going to keep on coming until I find Landry again. My coins, my business.”

As I turned on my heels to huff out, Mr. Lee tapped gently at the back of my shoulder.

“Ms. Hong. While you’re here—I can’t seem to reach your grandmother. Tell her it’s ready, would you? The sooner she picks it up, the better. As you can see, we have very little space.”

Maybe Mr. Lee’s ultimate revenge was to jinx me. As soon as he asked for Grams, she became unreachable. I first realized that something was off when I ran into Madame Moira that afternoon.

“Hi, Jo! I didn’t see your Grams at our card night yesterday,” she greeted me with bisous. “Is she traveling?”

This was odd. Grams never missed hwatoo nights. She often had big wins, and “equally entertaining losses.” A faint tingle of worry passed through me, but I shook it off.

“Not that I know of. I’ll give her a ring.”

I realized with a pang that I’d forgotten to call her the past few days. I’d been too preoccupied with Landry. I bade goodbye to Madame Moira and punched in her numbers. She didn’t answer her cellphone, which was expected. She’d always treated it as a kind of decorative brick. The fact that she also didn’t answer her home phone, however, was cause for concern. I tried to stave off panic. Maybe she was pottering about in the tenement lot, tending to the community “garden.”

“Everything’s okay,” I told myself, as I turned on my heels and headed towards Grams’s. I tried not to break into a run. That made me break into a sweat.

The window to her apartment looked dark. “Grams?” I knocked. No answer. With shaking hands, I opened the door with my spare key. Dusty darkness greeted me. The house felt hollow, as though something had been sucked out. My eyes darted this way and that, trying to figure out what else—other than Grams—was missing. That’s when I saw it, huddled under the kitchen table. The Laundry Tulpa. Her head buried in between the crooks of her legs, her fingers laced tight. She was balled up the same way I’d sit in front of a TV as a kid, waiting for Grams to come back from work.

“Hey—” I approached on tiptoes. I felt an almost literal wrenching of my heart. Before I could untangle her face—my face—from the shadows, she darted across the hall, into Grams’s bedroom, like a swarm of negative particles.

I followed after her and managed to glimpse, just in the nick of time, something dark slipping inside Grams’s wardrobe.

The wardrobe was ancient. Lacquered in black, with mother of pearl inlays. I tugged at its hefty doors and peered in. A swath of dusty clothes. A puff of naphthalene, turning the flutterings of moths into dust. And whispers, like the whispers of goblins Grams used to hear from her childhood attic.

“I bet two tiger souls and three golden keys that she’ll leave. She’s always been an ingrate.”

“I bet three bilious gents that she’ll stay. She’s always been a scaredy cat.”

Were they talking about me? A flash of anger triumphed over my fear. I tugged at the clothes and made a parting in the middle.

“Hey you! Where’s my Laundry Tulpa?”

I thought I’d glimpsed pairs of goblin eyes and ruddy button noses, when, like a Polaroid in reverse, they faded, leaving only mothy darkness. The Laundry Tulpa was nowhere to be seen.

Muttering in frustration, I snatched at an empty hanger squished between a bulky hanbok and a winter parka. It poked out like a dislocated bone. I held the forlorn beast in my palm, trying to gage what it used to hold.

The next thing I knew, I was back in the alleyway, aimless, breathless. I made desultory stops, just to keep myself moving. At the Bodega, where Grams buys her scratch-off lottery tickets. At Emo Volant, where Grams has her fancy Friday dinners. At the pizzeria. The tavern. Even Hotel Poseidon.

“Have you seen.… No?” I asked, distractedly.

After a few more stops, I gave myself permission to run. My mind kept spinning stories, and I needed to escape.

Grams fell in an abandoned parking lot. Grams got kidnapped by the CIA. Grams knows about the French submarine. Knows about my impending betrayal, the other side of the Schrödinger’s laundry. Grams feels hurt. Grams regrets the sacrifices she’d made. Grams is swimming back to Jeju Island. Grams is about to be eaten by a whale.

But wherever I went, so too, the stories. And the conviction that somehow, in some inexplicable way, my indecision and Grams’s disappearance were linked. “Halmeonie, where are you?” Tears welling up in my eyes, I tried to recall Grams’s face that last time I saw her. Her puckered profile limned by the glow of the TV. What had been her expression? What had I missed?

Out of a Pavlovian instinct—for crying always reminded me of someone’s big hoodie, his firm embrace—I pressed the speed dial for Moe. We hadn’t talked since the Sichuan night. He would have answered if I’d called. Moe always picked up, no matter how mad or sad he was. But I’d been too proud. Afraid to admit I’d hurt him.

Moe didn’t answer.

When the ringtones segued into voicemail, eerie, unfamiliar, I started running again. In circles and jittery swerves, without a direction or a goal. I didn’t know where to go. Wasn’t even sure who I was looking for anymore. Grams. Moe. My Laundry Tulpa—it was Moe who’d coined that word, I finally remembered. As my inner vortex gained momentum, spinning me out of control, I longed for anyone, anything, to stop me in my tracks.

It was Ms. Lapoor, the bookshop owner, who’d unwittingly obliged. I’d been turning a corner and bumped smack into her, scattering the cheese rinds she was carrying in her shopping basket.

“Whoops! We seem to have gotten tangled, Jo! Oh, the tails we trail!” Ms. Lapoor exclaimed, laughing, picking up the rinds. Mercifully, it was getting dark out, and she didn’t seem to notice I was in a state. I stammered hello and helped her pick up her things.

“Where are you off to on this balmy night?” She asked.

I muttered something incoherent about picking up Moe. I was afraid of saying out loud that I’d lost Grams. That I’d lost Moe, myself, everything. Saying so made it so—who’d told me that before? Grams or Moe?

“Well, say hello to him for me. I’m off to feed the mice!” Ms. Lapoor laughed, her buttery voice booming in the darkness.

As she walked away, she added—twirling back to face me, a dark silhouette of warmth,

“Say, didn’t he do an amazing job?”

“On what?” I shouted back, craning my neck—for she was already far, far away, receding into a dot.

“Why, the mural of course! You’re standing right in front of it!”

By then, she’d disappeared into the mist, the tinkle of her laughter scattering in the air.

Alone again, I blinked, facing the wall shrouded in darkness. Just as I inched close, the streetlights spluttered on like magic, and there it was. The ocean. Dotted with brushstrokes of creatures we’d dreamed up as kids. In the center was a giant angler fish, with mischievous eyes and a crooked, yet regal smile. It was uncanny how much the fish resembled Grams.

Perched on its lower teeth that protruded like stools, were two children, a boy and a girl. They were poring over a book, the lobe of the angler fish dangling above them like a reading light.

When I recognized their faces, I felt faint, as though the pulp was gone from my legs. I stumbled into a squat. Began crying again. First in small pockets of sobs, then in a keening wail. By then, I’d lost all sense of decorum. I felt something ancient dissolve inside me, a hardened lump of detergent stuck in a corner.

I don’t know how long I cried. Probably a long while. If anyone heard me, they didn’t complain. Maybe they thought I were alley cats, fighting. Or ghosts, gabbing. The street remained graciously empty. I began to wonder if my tears would ever stop—maybe this is how I would finally merge with the sea, through irrigation, flowing all the way back to the Atlantic; when, through the haze of my eyes, I spotted a dark shadow untangle itself from a lighter one. I held my breath. Had my Laundry Tulpa come back to taunt me? This time, I didn’t try to run after it. I watched it. Acknowledged it. Until the shadow crossed the threshold of light, and the shuffling gait crystallized into Moe.

“Jo, is that you on the ground? Come on, what has Grams always told us?”

“Never sit on a cold floor, or your hips will be twisted like yeot,” I answered, sniffling, laughing through my tears. Relief flooded in, buoyed me up from the abyss.

I stood up and hopped towards him, ignoring the cramp in my legs.

“Why the hell aren’t you answering your phone?” I slapped him on the arm.

“I left it in my toolbox by mistake.” He pointed to a bucket by the mural. “I came back to retrieve it.” His smile faltered when he saw my tear-streaked face. A pause. A piercing gaze. Then, like two clasps coming together, a hug.

Burying my face deeper into Moe’s hoodie, I tried searching for the words that wouldn’t come.

“Moe.”

“I know, Jo. I know.”

Moe hugged me tighter. I inhaled deeply, taking in his scent. Mugwort. Turpentine. Rain pattering down on parched dust. Maybe this is what I had been looking for, all along. A scent to hold onto, as I felt my way through the dark maze—the deep recesses of my own soul.

Together again as Moe and Jo—the troublesome duo, as Grams liked to call us—we wound our way back through the alleyway. Now that Moe was here, my paranoia had simmered down.

“Don’t worry Jo, she’ll turn up,” he said, when I told him Grams was missing. “Did you check if she left her phone behind? At her place, I mean.”

Mortified, I stammered I didn’t know. The Laundry Tulpa had distracted me. We decided to head back, try and find more clues. We were about halfway there when Moe stopped in his tracks. Something had caught his eye.

“Jo, have you asked Landry about Grams?”

“The laundry-mat?” I blinked. “But Landry’s never there these days. I started my day…I mean, I’d already been…” I flushed as I trailed off. I didn’t want to tell Moe I’d camped there.

“Well, he’s certainly there now,” Moe pointed at the faint glimmers of light emanating from the cul-de-sac.

“No way,” I followed after him. The squiggles that beckoned us became bigger, and bigger, until I could no longer deny what it spelled out: LA  NDRY.

We stepped in. As we high-fived Mat in the corner, Landry came to greet us with open arms. He was glowing as usual, brilliance, personified. Whiffs of lavender enveloped us.

“Hey, Landry, long time no see.” I hugged him back. “Lundry’s been manning the place for a while now, hasn’t he?” A day ago, I would have been over the moon to run into him like this. But all I felt then was a faint twang of nostalgia, for Lundry—of all people. It was typical of me to be so contrarian.

“Who?” Landry’s smile turned misty, like rays of light diffusing in a fog.

“Never mind,” I shook my head. It’d been a long shot, anyway.

“Have you seen our grandmother? Petite, prim, with deathly glare?” I asked, shifting gears.

“Of course I know Ms. Hong. Why, she’s there just now, at Mr. Lee’s,” Landry pointed at the window across. In disbelief, we stared through the window as our eyes adjusted to the unfamiliar rectangle of light. Nine p.m. on a weekday, and yet, still open. What was going on? And beyond the thicket of clothes, who else was there if not Grams, talking with Mr. Lee? We rushed into the shop next door, almost tumbling in.

“Grams, where have you been?” I shrieked, running towards her. “And why aren’t you answering my calls?” My voice was full of reproach, masking the sense of relief that melted me on the spot.

“Eh? Oh,” Grams fumbled through her purse and extracted her phone. She raised her spectacles and squinted. “I must have switched off the sound. What’s all the fuss?”

“But, but…Madame Moira. And, and…Mr. Lee. They were looking for you,” I wailed.

“Not anymore,” Mr. Lee chimed in. What a frustrating man.

“Where were you all day? And what are you doing here? Couldn’t this wait?”

Before Grams could answer, I turned to Mr. Lee.

“Speaking of, why are you still open?”

Mr. Lee shrugged, impervious. “Can’t a man offer extended business hours?”

Then, with a long, pole-like contraption, he unhooked one of the hangers rotating from the ceiling. Something brown and slim, wrapped in plastic, came slinking down. It was Grams’s fox stole, glaring back at us with its beady eyes. So that’s what was missing in her wardrobe.

Mr. Lee handed Grams the stole.

“There you go ma’am,” he said. “Good as new.”

Grams thanked him and took off the wrappers.

“I thought I’d lost the stub,” she said. “Luckily, that gentleman found it for me,” she pointed at the laundry-mat across. Landry waved from the other side, holding the lost and found box. Strange. I thought only Lundry kept a box like it. Landry was all about new things. The golden horizon of the future.

“Can you actually clean this, grandma? Isn’t it real fur?” I asked, brushing the side of the stole.

“Oh, it’s real for sure, but it’s not real fur,” Grams said, cryptically. As she ran her finger through its nine tails, her gaze turned misty. Then, with a brisk shake, she wrapped the stole around my shoulders.

“What do you say, Moe? Looks dashing, doesn’t she?” She turned to Moe, smiling through teary eyes. I felt her fingers tremble in the soft fur. For the first time, Grams looked frail.

Moe nodded, wrapping his arms around Grams’s shoulder.

“Jo always looked a bit like a fox,” he said.

“And now, she’s finally ready to brace the waters,” Grams squeezed my hand.

“You knew,” I cried. “How did you know?”

“My little daechussi, I see through you like the palm of my hand,” Grams said. “Plus, the habit of littering dies hard, doesn’t it, Moe?” She winked, smoothing out a crumpled-up pros-and-cons list. At Moe’s behest, I’d tried it out one night; only ended up doodling a haggard-looking mermaid in the middle.

“Jo’s a real hog,” Moe chimed in, oinking.

“Stop it, you two!” I flailed my arms, swatted them on the back, trying to hold back the tears that were welling up again. As the three of us stood in a silent circle, awash in something, Mr. Lee dashed to the window, crying,

“Lanny!! Lennnyyyyy!!!!! What have you done?”

We swerved our head in unison. Through the window, we saw something spectacular. Mat was hopping like a frog in rice paddies, jolted out of his usual poise. I’d never seen him so frantic before. He had good reason to be. The entire floor of the laundry-mat was sloshing with water. Gray, cornflower blue, milky pink. A few feet away, Landry stood planted in the middle of a stream, head held up, eyes closed. He was drenched. Water splashed around him in gurgles and waves. One of the curls in his hair had come loose.

As Mr. Lee dashed out of the cleaner’s, into the laundry-mat, the three of us followed him like schoolchildren, Moe and me linking our arms through Grams’s. We waded through the effluvia, our shoes and pants sopping wet. As soon as we arrived, we were greeted by a deafening noise. All the washing machine doors blasted open, spewing out lavender water like Niagara Falls. Mr. Lee shrieked, while Mat continued to jump around, and Landry stood stock still, with a beatific smile. As the water sloshed about our ankles in breaking waves, the spumes turned into iridescent bubbles, floating up, up, and up. They surrounded us in strange, orb-like mirrors, reflecting back thousand little mini-mes, Moes, Grams.

As I turned to Moe, speechless, someone touched my shoulder. Landry had waded close, hair wet, face slick with soapy water. Bedraggled, he suddenly looked so much like Lundry. Even his smile seemed to be infused with an unfamiliar sadness.

A sudden flash of insight.

“You miss Lundry,” I said.

“I hit permanent press,” Landry said, looking away.

A few feet away, Mr. Lee was trying to close a washer door. “Someone call maintenance!” he yelled, as Grams inched close to him and whipped out her neglected phone. It dropped in the murky water.

“I thought no one ever used that cycle,” Moe chimed in, looking at Landry with surprise.

“We normally don’t,” Landry agreed. “But I had a feeling Jo wanted to hold onto something,” he trailed off, pointing at a washer in a corner. One of them had kept its door closed after all. Inside, something black was whirling. Swirling.

My Laundry Tulpa?

When the beep broke through the deafening waves, we waded towards the machine, and Landry took out a lone black sock. He folded it over my hand like a mitten.

I blinked. Then, regal in my fox stole, I wielded my new sock glove like a maw, nipping at Moe’s forearm. He broke into a laughter. We turned around.

In the midst of the flood, Grams was now kicking water at Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee scowled, but the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. They were surrounded by bubbles, rising up in helixes.

“Someone call the maintenance guy!” Mr. Lee yelled again, but this time, his words lacked urgency, sounded singsong-y, even. Watching Moe, Landry, and Mat wade back towards them, each in their own gait—Moe, loping; Landry, dashing; Mat, shuffling—I looked around, head on, at myriad versions of me. Then I reached out my hand, and with a single swipe from my new mitten, popped a bubble.

Grams watched me with an impish grin and also reached out her hand. Pop, pop, pop, the bubbles went, disappearing as stealthily as they’d appeared. Soon, the others followed suit. Mat caught them in between his hands, like a cat chasing a butterfly. Moe stuck out his tongue, felt the worlds dissolve at its tip. Landry opened his arms, welcomed their demise with his warm embrace. As the bubbles popped, more rose from the slopping tide. We couldn’t tell when they would end. Maybe never. But that was all right, too, at least for a while.

Years later, I will receive the news of Grams’s unexpected passing through a telegram. Miles away from home, stuck in La Jonquille, a yellow submarine, I will drink to her, nursing a glass of cognac in my hands. Galactic darkness will swirl past me. And through the porthole, amidst the deep, dark sea, I will glimpse the laundries we’d lost float by in the unfathomable water. The ill-chosen bootcut jeans of my twenties (what a time the early millennium was!), Grams’s kimjang pants, Moe’s hoodie that could fit two people. Like strange bedfellows, yet totally in their elements, they will swim next to the dark sea creatures I’d hoped and feared to find. Fish with coral antlers; clams with donut holes in the middle; giant dinosaur turtles—3,000 years old, their eyes large enough to fill an entire porthole. I’d even be convinced that I spotted Mom, not a platypus, yet still mysterious, amorphous.

But that night, all that mattered was the present. Us together, hand in hand, splashing through the flood, sending away—without a care in the world—the myriad versions of ourselves.

 

(Editors’ Note: Sunwoo Jeong is interviewed by Caroline M. Yoachim in this issue.)

© 2026 Sunwoo Jeong