Where the Socks Go

Thursdays were laundry day. Every Thursday after a short shift at work, Tatiana gathered up her laundry for the week and headed to the laundromat. She stopped at the bodega on the corner for some chips and a soda and would head to her regular place to wash her clothes. She rolled her little laundry cart into the building, snacks and soda set on top of the laundry bag. She pulled a roll of quarters from her fanny pack and started putting her two desperate loads in, lights and darks this week. Next week, she’d bring along her linens and towels. She had her routine down pat, and even the laundromat owners were used to her being there for a bit on thursdays. If for any reason she didn’t stop in, they’d check in with her then next time she was in like concerned family.

She sat on a chair between two old, yet miraculously pristine arcade games. They were probably older than her yet somehow still running, kind of like the laundromat itself. She pulled out her phone and immediately got sucked into an article about something bizarre that happened recently on Staten Island. Then again, when wasn’t something bizarre happening on Staten Island? She knew it would take approximately 27 minutes for the washloads to finish. The perfect amount of time for her to catch up on the happenings of the week.

27 minutes later, she pulled her loads from the wash and carefully put each piece in the dryer. The usual business for a typical laundry day.

Her whole day just about crumbled when she couldn’t find the other in a pair of yellow slouch socks. It wasn’t just a sock—it was comfort. A floppy, sunshine hued knit friend that hugged her ankle on a cozy day in. She’d worn it through spilled coffee and existential dread, and now, after a spin in the wash, its was gone, leaving her with a single, damp and drooping survivor. She tore apart her damp laundry piling in the dryer, muttering curses at the washing machine, but the void had already claimed it.

A strange man seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, whistling and giving her a little scare. He leaned against one of the arcade games, his trench coat a quilt of lost socks fluttering like moths despite the lack of wind. He spun a mitten between his fingers, smirking with teeth like loose change. “Lost a good one, huh?” he rasped, his voice was like static and he smelled of damp towels. “They call me the Sock Broker in these parts,” he added with a little bow.

Tatiana waved the lone survivor slouch sock. “My favorite sock. Yellow like this. Know where it went?” She had no urge to introduce herself back to the strange man who seemed to be attracting random pieces of laundry as they spoke.

He nodded, cracking open his coat to reveal a hoard of single socks, polka-dots, stripes, one printed with a random persons face, all pinned like a hunter’s prized furs.

“It’s in the Beyond,” he said, exhaling a puff of smoke that smelled like fabric softener. “Sock purgatory some call it. I can snag the sock for you… What’s your offer?”

Tatiana opened her mouth to bargain, but her gaze caught on a tiny sock dangling from his cuff— a hand-knit baby sock, blue and uneven, its stitches a clumsy love letter from her mother. There was a little purple T knit into the top. Long long ago when Tatiana was a toddler, it was a relic of sleepless nights of cuddling and lullabies, a thread to a softness she’d outgrown. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Forget the yellow one,” she said, pointing. “I want that one.”

The Sock Broker’s eyes narrowed, then glinted. “Handmade, huh? Heavy with memories and nostalgia. That’s a steep trade.” He stroked the baby sock, considering.

“Give me the yellow sock, the one you’re holding. It’s got enough soul to cover it. Would be nice to have a pair…” Tatiana clutched her sock, its familiar weight a shield against the world. But the baby sock pulled harder—her mom’s hands, her coos, a past she hadn’t known she’d lost.

“Fine,” she said, handing over the yellow slouch. It sagged in his grip like a fallen hero. He unpinned the baby sock and flicked it to her, its softness landing like a whisper.

“Done,” he said, tucking the yellow sock into his coat. With a tip of his sock-hat, he melted into a linty haze and dissapeared. Tatiana cradled the baby sock, its blue wool worn but warm. She didn’t put it on of course, it was far too small now. She turned to check on her clothes in the dryer only to find them folded and ready on the shelf behind her. She gathered her things and rushed out of the laundromat, heading home to set down her clean clothes and grab her keys. She couldn’t even begin to process what had happened at the laundromat.

Instead, she drove to her mother’s house, the tiny sock nestled in her pocket like a secret.

Her mom answered the door, gray hair wild, apron dusted with flour. “Tatiana? What’s wrong?”

Tatiana pulled out the baby sock and pressed it into her mother’s hands. “I found this. You made it for me, didn’t you?”

Her mom’s eyes widened, then softened, tracing the uneven stitches. “I thought it was gone forever,” she murmured, voice trembling. “I knit it when you wouldn’t sleep through the night. Kept my hands busy…”

“Keep it,” Tatiana said. “It’s yours.”

Her mom hugged her, the sock pressed between them, and for a moment, the absurdity of the trade, the yellow slouch for this tiny ghost of their past, felt right. Tatiana drove home sockless, her feet bare and cold, but her chest warm. The Sock Broker could have the Beyond and all the yellow socks he wanted. She’d given her mother something far better.