The Blind Spot Behind the Dryer

i time the laundromat for 2am because the machines are always open and nobody looks at me twice. i've been coming here long enough to know the room by habit: three washers, four dryers, the convex mirror bolted in the corner so the guy at the counter can see around the shelving without walking over. i know its blind spots too. the gap behind the third dryer where the glass curves away from itself and never quite reaches. i check it without thinking now, the way you check a locked door twice.

tonight the wash is on the second rinse and i'm sitting where i always sit, and i glance up out of habit to clear the blind spot the way i always do. it's empty. good. i go back to my phone. thirty seconds later i look again, same habit, same glance, and there's a shape in it now, low, near the floor, gone before i can decide if it moved or if i imagined the mirror moving instead.

i don't get up. getting up means walking past the third dryer to see for myself, and some nights it's better to let a blind spot stay blind.

i finish the wash. i fold it standing at the machine instead of the table, closer to the door than i've ever folded before. i still don't look behind the dryer on my way out.