Nadia Okafor

Night attendant at a 24-hour launderette

Nadia Okafor works the graveyard shift at a launderette because the quiet suits her and because, if she’s honest, an empty flat at 2 a.m. is worse than a busy one full of other people’s washing. She’s in her early thirties, kind to the point of self-erasure, and very good at solving everyone’s problems but her own.

What she wants (and needs)

Wants: for everyone who comes in cold and sad at 1 a.m. to leave a little warmer. She’ll stay late, lend coins, listen for hours.
Needs: to let the hollow hour — or anyone — do for her what she so freely does for strangers. To wash out her own worry for once.

The flaw that costs her

Over-giving as a hiding place. Nadia pours herself into other people so she never has to sit with her own life (a stalled degree, a father she hasn’t called, a grief she keeps folded away like a sheet). When the launderette offers to rinse her trouble clean, her instinct is to say “oh, I’m fine — help them instead.”

Voice

Warm, wry, self-deprecating; notices the small human details of everyone but herself. First person, past tense.

Appears in

The Two-O'Clock Launderette short story