It was a photo of a blue wall. A bougainvillea coming over the top of it, a cat asleep on a step in the shade. I put it up in the morning and it got more likes than anything I have posted in a year, which is not saying much, because I do not post much.
My friend back home wrote under it: so jealous. A minute later he added one more word. Seriously.
I took it on the way to the laundry. In my other hand I had a plastic bag with 2 weeks of shirts in it. You cannot see the bag.
I read his message sitting in the laundry, on a plastic chair between the machines.
It is a self-service place on a corner in George Town. 10 washers, 4 dryers, one of the dryers broken since before I arrived. There is a sign in 3 languages asking you not to sit on the machines, and a small television on the wall showing a cooking program with the sound off. A woman comes in every afternoon to do the washing for a guesthouse down the road. She folds sheets faster than I can read.
While I was there a young couple came in with big backpacks and asked me how it worked. I showed them where the coins go and the button on machine 3 that you have to hold down for a second longer than feels right. They thanked me, and then the girl took a photo of the row of machines, laughing, and sent it to somebody. I have no idea who.
The washer takes 40 minutes. I had nothing to do for 40 minutes except think about my friend.
We were at university together. A few years ago he bought a house, 3 bedrooms and a garden at the back, and sent me a photo of himself holding the keys. I looked at that one for too long as well.
The third bedroom is his father's now.
His father fell on some ice outside a shop 2 winters ago, and after the hospital he could not really live on his own. So he moved into the third bedroom. My friend told me this on a call last Christmas, in one sentence, in the middle of telling me about something else. Then he went back to the something else.
I have put the rest together from small things he has said since. He works from the kitchen table 2 days a week now, so that somebody is in the house. He drives his father to appointments on Thursday mornings. He knows the names of all the pills. Once, at the end of a message about football, he mentioned that he had learned to cut his dad's toenails, because his father cannot bend down that far anymore and will not let anybody else do it.
He did not make anything of it. He said the first time was the worst, and now it takes 10 minutes.
This is the man who is jealous of me.
I sat there with the machines going round and tried to think of the hardest thing I had done that week. I sent 2 invoices. I argued with my landlord about a water bill, in a friendly way, and lost. I walked to the laundry.
I have never looked after anybody. Not properly, not for years, not in a way that decides where I live. Out here nobody depends on me for anything except a few emails, and that is a big part of the reason I can be out here at all.
He is doing the difficult thing. I am doing the thing in the photo.
I started a reply. It was laundry day, I wrote, and then deleted it, because it sounded like I wanted him to feel sorry for me. I started another one, asking about his father, and deleted that too. He tells me about his father when he wants to.
The photo was not a lie. The wall really is that blue. The cat really does sleep on that step most afternoons. It is a good life and I chose it, and most days I am glad I did.
But he is looking at it from a kitchen table with a list of pills stuck on the fridge. I think the photo does something for him on a Thursday. I did not want to take that away from him just so I could feel honest.
My mother is in her seventies and she is fine, for now. I call her on Sundays.
When she is not fine, I do not know which of the 2 of us I will turn out to be. I think about that more often than I say.
The washer finished. I moved the shirts to one of the dryers that works and put in 2 more coins.
Then I took a photo of the row of machines, with the broken dryer and its paper sign and the cooking program on the wall, and sent it to him with no message.
He wrote back a few minutes later.
"Still jealous."
Fair enough. From his kitchen, I would be too.
Andrew - No Refunds •••