A short story, written in tribute to Peter DeVries.

Mrs. Ivey had the maddening habit of enhancing her sentences with verbal embroidery that disguised itself from casual ears, revealing its oddness only after she’d chattered her way into an offshoot subject. Thus, she would describe an annoying situation as something that got her dandruff up, leading to a sudden sermon about buying shampoo. The savings on an economy-sized bottle were worthwhile, she said, even though the container itself would “like, burden the hand. But it’s good for you,” she added, “like lifting weights. My husband lifts weights at the gym downtown, but I don’t go with him much on account of all the dumbbells there, staring at me all the time.”
No doubt. She was an extremely attractive woman. Tank-topped and sandalled, in shorts that snickered at the idea of modesty, she was the cynosure of laundry room, pool, and dumpster at the apartment complex we shared. We shared it with at least a hundred other tenants, and in fact lived at opposite ends of the place, but she and I also shared a schedule of early afternoon errands that caused us to meet fairly soon after I moved in.
“You’re the new guy,” she said, dropping a succession of small, frilly garments into the adjacent washer. I was about to acknowledge that status when she laughed — a wonderfully infectious act — and touched my forearm. “I mean, it’s not like this is some kind of a club or anything, but I’ve lived here nearly a year now and I saw you moving in and everything, so I figured it was just a matter of
time before I got to know you — ” and on and on in that vein, her bounty of words a provocative counterpoint to her skimpy laundry. I learned that her name was Rosalie but that everyone called her Peaches, that her husband, Jack, was foreman of a county road crew, that she was 22 but married Jack when she was 18, that he was her first boyfriend and when he came on to her she was “a total innocent. Total. I mean, he shows up with this real smooth line and I swallowed it, foot-long and sinker.”