Slice of Life

Open All Night

By Ari Weaver

You work the night shift at Lucky Bubbles, a 24-hour laundromat on Frankford Avenue in Philadelphia, midnight to eight, in January. You fix the machines and get to know the people who do laundry at 3 a.m.: an ER nurse off her shift, a widower with rugelach, a DJ who flirts with everyone, a college kid sleeping on the bench. Tonight a man in a tuxedo comes in with blood on his cuff.

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