Someone's Been Doing Laundry in a Unit That's Been Empty for Ten Years
I manage a sixteen-unit building on the east side, nothing fancy, mostly long-term tenants, the kind of place where the same six people have lived for a decade and everybody knows everybody's schedule better than they'd probably like. I took over managing it from my uncle two years ago when his knees finally gave out on him, and most of the job is exactly as boring as you'd think. Fix the thing that's leaking. Chase down the rent that's late. Deal with the noise complaint that's usually not even that loud.
Unit 4B has been empty the entire time I've had this job, and empty for a good while before that too, going by the paperwork. My uncle told me once, kind of offhand, that the last tenant moved out owing three months and just never came back for their deposit, didn't leave a forwarding address, and it wasn't worth the hassle of tracking them down over a security deposit that barely covered the unpaid rent anyway. Unit's been sitting there since. Nobody's rented it. I actually forget it's occupiable most months, since it never comes up.
The building's got one laundry room in the basement, four washers, three dryers, the fourth dryer's been broken since before I started and I keep meaning to get it looked at. Everybody uses the same room obviously, there's no in-unit laundry in a building this old, and over time you start to recognize whose loads are whose without really trying. The Hendersons in 2A always do towels on Sunday mornings. The guy in 6B does his laundry at like eleven at night for reasons I've never asked about. That kind of thing.
About six weeks ago I started noticing loads that didn't belong to anyone.
First time, I figured I just didn't recognize it, maybe a new tenant's guest, whatever, didn't think about it. A load of what looked like bedsheets, plain white, sitting in dryer two, done and not picked up for almost two full days, which is long enough that normally somebody would've complained about a machine being tied up that long.
I bagged it up myself eventually, the way you're supposed to with abandoned laundry, left a note on the bulletin board saying unclaimed items were in a bin by the utility closet, standard procedure. Nobody ever claimed it. I ended up donating the sheets to the shelter a few blocks over because they were in decent shape and it seemed like a waste to just toss them.
It happened again about two weeks after that. Same thing, different load — this time towels, also plain white, also just sitting there finished and unclaimed for the better part of two days before I dealt with it myself.
I asked around a little, casual, nothing formal, just mentioned it to a couple tenants I run into regularly. Nobody claimed the loads. Nobody even remembered seeing anyone doing laundry they didn't recognize, which struck me as a little odd in a building where people generally notice things, but not odd enough that I did anything about it beyond keep half an eye out.
Third time was three weeks ago, and this time I actually caught the machine mid-cycle instead of finding it already done. Dryer two again, same one both previous times, running, red indicator light on, twenty-some minutes left according to the little dial.
I checked the sign-up sheet we technically have posted for laundry room usage, even though almost nobody actually uses it, it's more of a courtesy thing for busy weekends. Blank for that day. No name.
I want to be honest that at this point I still wasn't thinking about it the way I'm about to describe it now. I was thinking, somebody's guest, somebody's new roommate I haven't met, somebody who doesn't bother signing the sheet because almost nobody does. Normal building stuff. I actually sat down on the folding chair we keep down there and waited it out, twenty minutes, figured I'd just catch whoever it was and settle the whole thing with a normal conversation.
Nobody came down. The dial kept ticking through its cycle with nobody standing in front of it but me, and somewhere around the ten-minute mark I stopped feeling like I was waiting to solve something and started feeling like I was just sitting in a basement with a machine that didn't need anybody there to run it.
I went back down when the cycle should've finished, planning to just see whose stuff it actually was, maybe finally solve the small mystery of it. Machine had stopped. Door was already open, load already removed. Nobody in the room. I hadn't heard the door to the stairwell, which I would have, it's got a spring hinge that announces itself pretty loud, and I'd been sitting in the office the whole time with that door propped open specifically because I was half-watching for it.
I checked the lint trap out of a habit more than anything, since I do the machine maintenance myself. Trap was completely clean. Not empty in the normal after-a-load way, where there's usually at least a little fuzz caught in it even from a light load. Completely clean, like it had been wiped down, though I hadn't wiped it, and nobody else has a key to the machine's maintenance panel besides me.
That one I let sit for a couple days before I mentioned it to anyone, mostly because I didn't know what I'd even be describing. I finally brought it up to my uncle, more out of wanting to tell somebody than expecting him to have an answer.
He got quiet on the phone in a way that wasn't really like him.
"4B," he said, not really a question.
I said yeah, and asked why that mattered, since I hadn't mentioned the unit number, I'd just said the laundry room.
He didn't answer that directly. Said something about how the tenant before the one who skipped out, further back, way before I was involved with the building at all, used to do laundry at odd hours too, said it wasn't anything he ever looked into properly because it never caused any actual problems, machines got used, machines got left clean, nobody paid for it and nobody got hurt by it, so what was there really to look into.
I asked him straight if he thought somebody was getting into the building who shouldn't be.
He said he didn't think so. Said the locks hadn't been an issue in all his years running the place, and he'd have remembered a break-in pattern if there'd been one. Said maybe it was worth just leaving it alone the way he had.
I didn't love that answer, but I also didn't have a better one of my own, so for the most part I did leave it alone.
Two nights ago I went down to do my own laundry, late, later than I usually would, just because the day had run long. Dryer two was running. I hadn't started it. I hadn't seen anyone come down, and the office door was open again, same as before, and the stairwell door hadn't announced anyone.
I stood there for a while just watching it turn through the little round window. Whatever was inside was pale-colored, tumbling slow, nothing dramatic about it, it looked exactly like a completely normal load of laundry, which was somehow the part that got to me most, more than if it had looked wrong somehow. It looked exactly right. It looked like somebody's actual sheets, going through an actual dry cycle, in a building where the person those sheets used to belong to hasn't lived in ten years and never came back for a deposit that would've been worth about forty dollars after the unpaid rent.
I didn't wait for it to finish this time. I went back upstairs, and I didn't sleep great, and in the morning I went down before anyone else was likely to be around and I unplugged dryer two from the wall, and I put a paper sign on it that just says "OUT OF ORDER," which isn't true, the machine works fine, I checked it myself two days ago.
I know that's not really a fix. I know if whatever's using it wants to use it, an unplugged dryer probably isn't going to stop that. But it's been two mornings now and the sign's still up and the load, if there was going to be another one, hasn't shown up in dryer one or three or anywhere else instead.
Last night I finally went up to the fourth floor. Not to go inside, I want to be clear about that, I just wanted to stand at the door, see if I could talk myself into feeling stupid about the whole thing the way I usually can with stuff like this once I'm actually looking right at it.
Hallway up there's quiet in the specific way empty units make a hallway quiet, no light bleeding out from under the door the way it does at 4A and 4C on either side. I stood in front of it a minute. Put my hand flat against the wood, not the doorknob, just the door itself, the way you'd check if a stove's still hot.
It was cold. Not door-in-an-old-building cold. Cold like it had just come out of somewhere.
I heard the dryer buzzer go off two floors down, through the floor, through everything between me and the basement, clear as if I'd been standing right next to it. I know that's not possible. I know sound doesn't travel like that in a building this size, not through four floors of concrete and whatever else is between here and there, and I stood in that hallway telling myself that fact over and over on the walk back to the stairs.
I still haven't gone up to actually look inside 4B. I've got the key. It's hanging on the same ring as every other unit key in this building, labeled the same plain way all the others are, nothing marked on it to suggest it's any different from 2A or 6B or any of the rest.
I keep telling myself I'll go check on it this weekend, just to see. Make sure the pipes are fine, nothing's leaking, the kind of thing you're supposed to do with a vacant unit every so often anyway and which I'll admit I've been neglecting on this one specifically for reasons I'm only now willing to admit to myself.
This weekend. I mean that.
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, places, or events is purely coincidental and created for entertainment purposes only.
Would you have gone up to check the unit, or left it alone the way he did? Tell me in the comments.💬💬
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