In this former dry-cleaning shop I thought about leasing a while back, you can almost hear the owner promising starched Hugo Boss button-downs and pressed Prada skirts to local rich people for the coming week or weekend. The sound of racks circling back and forth, mechanical snakes. Door chimes. In, out. Ring, ring. Extra time spent on nasty stains from those damned Escargots in garlic butter or an accidental splatter of Roasted Baby Beet salad with Fourme D’ambert. Problems transcribed in scribbles onto yellow squares and pinned to areas in question. Ten-foot ceilings, crown moldings, iron-trimmed windows, and sun-drenched floors were probably not the point of the location. But a sufficient box, well positioned in an expensive neighborhood was a clean shot at becoming a fraction-of-wealthy like the spendy customers. Thus, offspring might avoid staring down an endless line of hangers and plastic wrappings year after year. Perhaps college funds could be gauged by the height of receipts pushed down onto that consistently profitable spiked stand next to the register.
