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Show 90 say something to her about the mess in the dishroom and she would tell him he had no room to complain, considering the minimal effort he put into anything he did around here. Besides, he knew he could look at the drawing steadily until grey morning and not feel any better about it. The trouble with having the dishroom detail was that you couldn't work hard and be done sooner. You were limited to the pace the machinery set, and the machinery worked in single, deliberate stages. You loaded one of the wooden racks with dirty plates and saucers and waited until the one ahead of it had finished its bath of scalding detergent and had come out the other side of the wash unit and had rumbled its way along the track toward the rinse unit. Lorin shoved the tray he had just loaded into the washer and pushed the black button to start the spray action again, then went over to the rinser, listened for the groan that told him it had finished scalding its present load and was trying to eject it. He pulled that rack out, and while he waited for the dishes to cool enough to pick up and put away he shoved the rack that had just been washed into the rinser and began loading another one for the washer. While he waited for the washer to clear he went to the one that had just been rinsed, tested them to see if he dared to touch them yet, picked out the ones that still weren't clean and put those on a new rack, and carried the others over to the cupboard and began stacking them. The room had gotten hotter and the windows near the ceiling had clouded over. The walls had begun to drip. Lorin peeled off his shirt and felt his arms slip against his body when he moved. He had lost count of the number of trays he had fed through the machine and pulled out the other side, and he couldn't see that the mess Nelson had left piled everywhere was any smaller. Still, there was a soothing mindlessness about the dishroom detail, |
