Clyde

Clyde is a Colby entrepreneur whose brief appearance behind a laundromat counter reveals a second, self-consciously amateur vocation: baking pie. His warm welcome to Eli and Auden turns an ordinary laundry stop into a late-night café visit, and his pride in the pies gives the scene its easy, hospitable center.

Identity and Introduction

Clyde first appears seated behind a small counter in a dim room reached through a plain door at the end of a hallway in the laundromat. The room, unlike the bright rows of washers and dryers outside, has deep-purple walls, a window edged with multicolored lights, and an open back door letting in a warm breeze. Clyde is an older man with black hair streaked with white, reading a magazine when Eli arrives. He greets Eli as someone he expected to see that night; Eli explains that he has run out of shirts, supplying the practical reason for his stop.

Business and Baking

Eli identifies Clyde as the owner of the bike shop, the laundromat, and about four other Colby businesses, calling him a mogul. Clyde resists that label in favor of renaissance man, a playful distinction that sits beside his more modest account of his baking: he says he is only a beginner and got a late start. His copy of Gourmet, which Auden notices as he returns to his magazine, reinforces the scene’s portrait of someone who takes food seriously without claiming mastery.

Hospitality and Narrative Role

Clyde makes coffee and serves two substantial slices of pie, setting a fork beside each plate. Auden chooses apple after Eli recommends pie, and finds both the coffee and the dessert excellent; Eli adds that the pie beats the Wheelhouse by a mile. The care of the serving and Clyde’s good-humored talk about perfecting a piecrust make his café more than a convenient stop. It is a welcoming pocket of sociability within the practical business of doing laundry, and Clyde’s exchange with Eli shows an established familiarity while giving Auden a glimpse of Colby’s small-business life.