Sing Lee, Hand Laundry, 5222 Lake Park Avenue. Come in. There is something immaculate about Sing Lee. Sing Lee has been ironing out collars and shirts for thirty-five years. And thirty-five years have been ironing Sing Lee out. He is like one of the yellow packages on the shelves. And there is a certain lettering across his face as indecipherable and strange as the dance of the black hieroglyphs on the yellow laundry paper. Something enthralls Sing Lee. It can be seen plainly now as he sits behind the counter. It can be seen, too, as he works during the day. Sing Lee works like a man in an empty dream. It is the same to Sing Lee whether he works or sits still. The world of collars, cuffs and shirt fronts does not contain Sing Lee. It contains merely an automaton. The laundry is owned by an automaton named Sing Lee, by nobody else. Now that the day's work is done he will sit like this for an hour, two hours, five hours. Time is not a matter of hours to Sing Lee. Or of days. Or even of years. The many wilted collars that come under the lifeless hands of Sing Lee tell him an old story. The story has not varied for thirty-five years. A solution of water, soap and starch makes the collars clean again and stiff. They go back and they return, always wilted and soiled. Sing Lee needs no further corroboration of the fact that the crowds are at work. Doing what? Soiling their linen. That is as final as anything the crowds do. Sing Lee's curiosity does not venture beyond finalities. * * * * * Sing Lee is a resident of America. But this is a formal statistic and refers only to the automaton that owns the hand laundry in Lake Park Avenue. Observe a few more formal facts of Sing Lee's life. He has never been to a movie or a theater play. He has never ridden in an automobile. He has never looked at the lake. Thus it becomes obvious that Sing Lee lives somewhere else. For a man must go somewhere in thirty-five years. Or do something. There is a story then, in Sing Lee. Not a particularly long story. Life stories are sometimes no longer than a single line--a sentence, even a phrase. So if one could find out where Sing Lee lives one would have a story perhaps a whole sentence long. "Mukee kai, Sing Lee." A nod of the thin head. "Business good?" Another nod. "Pretty tired, washing, ironing all day, eh?" A nod. "When are you going to put in a laundry machine?" A shake of the thin head. "When are you going to quit, Sing Lee?" Another shake of the thin head. "You're not very gabby tonight, Sing." A dignified answer to this: "I thinking." "What about, Sing Lee?" A faint smile. The smile seems to set Sing Lee in motion. It comes from behind the automaton. It is perhaps Sing Lee's first gesture of life in weeks. "You don't mind my sitting here and smoking a pipe, eh?" * * * * *