Chapter 27: Lingering Aroma Audit
The industrial laundry room in the athletic complex was a cavern of concrete and steel, always throbbing with the heat and vibration of massive machines. Ben stood just inside the doorway, the heavy door swinging shut behind him with a definitive clang. He shouldn’t have come. Patricia’s text had been a command, not an invitation: ‘Basement laundry. Now. Or the leash video goes to the Dean.’
“There he is.” Avery’s voice bounced off the cinderblock walls. She leaned against a folding table, already changed into clean sweats. Patricia stood by a towering, humming dryer, her arms crossed over her chest. A large mesh laundry bag, bulging with dark fabric, lay at her feet.
“You’re two minutes late,” Patricia said, not smiling. “We started without you.”
“Started what?” Ben’s voice felt small in the vast, humid space.
“Spring cleaning,” Avery said, pushing off the table. She kicked the mesh bag. “Post-season stuff. The whole backline’s gear. It all needs to be checked before it gets washed. Some of it’s… ripe. We need a sensitive nose.”
Patricia bent and upended the bag. A heap of soccer jerseys, shorts, and socks tumbled out, a pyramid of damp, colored cotton and polyester. The smell hit Ben immediately—a complex, acrid wave of dried sweat, grass stains, and body odor that had been stewing for a week.
“Check what?” Ben took a step back, his heel hitting the closed door.
“For mold, mostly,” Avery said, her tone faux-official. “Sometimes a jersey gets so funky it’s unsalvageable. You’re going to sort them. Good sniff, bad sniff. Simple.”
Ben stared at the pile. “You are out of your minds.”
Patricia moved then, fast. She grabbed his wrist, her grip like cable, and twisted it behind his back. At the same time, Avery shoved him forward. He stumbled, off-balance, and they marched him toward the bank of dryers. One of the giant front-loaders was open, its drum still radiating a residual warmth.
They didn’t throw him in. They wedged him in.
Avery forced him to his knees while Patricia pushed his head and shoulders into the empty steel drum. The metal was still faintly warm from the last load. Then they shoved his legs in after him, cramming his body into the tight cylindrical space. He was folded, pressed against himself, the door frame digging into the small of his back. Before he could even struggle, he heard the heavy clunk of the door being shut, plunging him into near darkness. Only the small round glass porthole let in light, now obscured by Avery’s face as she peered in, grinning.
“Cozy?” Her voice was muffled by the thick glass and metal.
He pushed against the door. It didn’t budge. The latch was solid.
“Let me out!”
“After the inspection,” Patricia said. Her form moved into view beside Avery’s. She held up a navy blue jersey. Number 4. Through the glass, it looked vast. She bent, and Ben heard the hiss of the laundry chute’s service door opening beside the dryer. A narrow gap, maybe two inches high, ran along the bottom of the dryer door for airflow. Patricia shoved the jersey through it.
Fabric flooded into his cramped space, covering his face, filling his mouth with the taste of stale salt and synthetic fiber. He choked, spitting it out.
“Sniff, Ben,” Patricia commanded, her voice clear through the gap. “Is it salvageable?”
The jersey reeked. It was a physical presence, a blanket of other people’s effort and exhaustion. He turned his head away, pressing his cheek against the cool steel.
“Wrong answer.” Avery’s voice. Something else was shoved through the gap—a pair of shorts, damp at the inseam. They landed on his neck.
“This is insane!”
“This is efficient,” Patricia corrected. “Now, do Jersey Four or not?”
He took a shallow, reluctant breath through his nose. The odor was pungent, sour, but not truly rotten. “It’s fine,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“It’s fine! It’s fine, just wash it!”
The jersey was pulled back out through the gap, slowly, dragging across his face. Another item took its place immediately—a sock. It was crusty at the toe.
The procedure continued. Item after item was fed into his metal prison. A sports bra that smelled of sharp, fermented sweat. Shin guards lined with damp, sour foam. He gave terse, humiliated reports: “Bad.” “Okay.” “Wash it.” They didn’t pull the “bad” items away. They left them on top of him, letting the collection of rejected garments grow into a smothering, stinking blanket inside the drum.
“I think he’s getting desensitized, Pat,” Avery said, her tone analytical. “His judgments are getting inconsistent.”
“You’re right. We need a control sample.” Patricia’s face disappeared from the glass.
Ben heard footsteps, then the main door opening. Voices—female, laughing—spilled into the room. “Hey, you got him in there?” someone asked, a voice he didn’t recognize.
“Yep. Doing quality control.”
More laughter.
Patricia’s face reappeared. “New method. We bring the test to you.”
The dryer door unlatched and swung open. Blinding fluorescent light stabbed his eyes. Before he could unfold his stiff limbs, hands grabbed him—not just Patricia and Avery’s now, but others—and hauled him out. He collapsed onto the concrete floor, blinking up at a semicircle of five women from the soccer team. They looked down at him, expressions ranging from amused curiosity to open contempt.
“He’s the guy from the photos?” one asked, sipping from a water bottle.
“The very same,” Avery confirmed.
Patricia crouched in front of him. She was sweating lightly, a fresh sheen on her skin from some earlier workout. She pulled the neckline of her own tank top away from her chest, then leaned forward and wiped her bare forearm across his face.
The warm, slick dampness smeared over his cheek, his lips, his nose. The smell was immediate and potent—Patricia’s particular, personal salt.
“That’s the baseline,” she said to the others. “Now you know what a pass smells like. Anything worse than that, he flags.”
A tall defender with a buzzed cut stepped forward. She’d just finished a conditioning drill; her gray tee was dark with sweat across the chest and under the arms. Without a word, she pulled it off over her head, balled it up, and dropped it onto Ben’s lap.
“How’s that?” she asked, looking at Patricia.
Patricia nudged Ben with her foot. “Well?”
He looked at the heap of damp fabric. The room was silent, waiting. He slowly brought it to his face and inhaled. It was stronger, sharper, with a medicinal hint of liniment. “It’s… worse,” he whispered.