The dry cleaner, regrettably, doesn’t. Nor is it.
The patron of the dry-cleaning establishment submits to the collective fantasy that her clothes, while on vacation down the street, are washed, though not wet. It’s a pleasing image, and full of the mystic alchemy that works best in secret. She agrees, as part of the ritual, to confide her heap of sweaty shirts and rumpled sweaters to the worn linoleum counter, fill out a cheerful pink affidavit, and ask not where nor how they will be spending their leisure hours. She feels heartened, and perhaps a bit frightened, by the heat, the gnashing noise and the occasional puff of smoke that rises from behind the curtain. Pay no attention, she murmurs, huddling Toto under arm. Her laundry, she assures herself, will return soon, pirouetting gracefully along the aerial conveyor belt.
By the time she leaves the shop, the one that spells out with neon clarity, DRY CLEANERS, her clothes will be entangled in a “total immersion process.” Which is to say, soaking wet. They will be rolling around in a washing machine that looks suspiciously like the model she relies on at home. She adds Tide; the dry cleaner pours in a beaker of smelly solvents, which will later render her itchy, anxious and ecologically ashamed.
Dry, she might learn, were she bold enough to ask, does not mean not wet. It means not water. Water can often be coaxed to lift blood, sweat and tear stains. Chemical, though liquid, cleaners, she has come to realize, generally cannot.
She has, on occasion, peered dubiously at the “delicate” setting on her own washer. Sighed over the heavy dry-cleaner-bound bundle. But she lacks the courage for civil disobedience. She has been warned, even before purchasing her garments: Dry Clean Only. This statute is stitched in English and Japanese as well as the international pictogram that resembles a skull and crossbones.
And so, her work wardrobe is chemically washed. After which it will be dried. Then oppressed.
Pressing is one of the two verifiable functions of the dry cleaner. The abstract in omelet executed on white linen will remain intact, indelibly affixed by the perchloroethylene bath. Unlike its original incarnation, it will be flat.
And it will be wrapped. This is the dry cleaner’s highest calling. The smooth egg-spattered blouse will be outfitted with a new hanger, one festooned with tissue paper shoulder pads and a cardboard center strut. It will be decorated with a slim green tag stapled through a buttonhole, and tattooed across the neck with the name, phone number and address of its owner. There will be safety pins, the small, tense kind that refuse to release their grip. The blouse will be shrouded with a paper bib, reiterating the “Dry Cleaner” fallacy. It will be sealed in plastic and, for good measure, chained with a heavily torqued twist-tie. No piece of clothing has ever escaped the dry cleaners.
These security measures, while extreme, are deployed to assure the dry-cleaning customer that her $55 has been disposed of judiciously. That, despite evidence to the contrary, her clothes are clean. And that they got that way-against all probability-dryly. They are proof she has been taken to the cleaners.
