The day started with a mystery that caused a problem. Charlie had done the laundry and I had been angry. It doesn’t matter how many times that you tell him to separate whites and colours, he refuses to do so. The result was that my white t-shirts came out pink yet again. When I challenged him about it, he sulked, and put the rest of the clothes away in silence.

And then we came to the black Calvin Klein briefs. 

Charlie was putting them in my drawer and I pointed out that they didn’t belong to me. He held them between his fingers and examined them. “They are not mine either,” he decided. “They must be yours,” I replied. “They are definitely not mine.”

We stared at the underwear and waited for the other person to admit to owning them. But neither of us coughed up.

Charlie tossed them onto the bed. 

“This poses a significant problem,” I decided. “If they don’t belong to either one of us, then whom do they belong to?”

“That is a very good question. Do they belong to someone who you have been sleeping with?”

“In your dreams,” I responded, but there was hesitancy in my voice. Charlie had the ability of making you feel guilty even when you were innocent, and this was one of those occasions. He pounced upon my uncertainty and decided that I had been sleeping with someone who had forgotten to take their underwear home with them. 

“I can assure you that I haven’t slept with anyone. The only person that I’ve slept with is you, but even that’s debatable.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. I’m just a bit upset because I know that they are not mine, nor are they anybody else’s that I know of, so the finger of suspicion points squarely at you. Have you been sleeping with somebody behind my back?”

Charlie rubbed his hands through his hair in desperation. “Do not be disgusting. I have not been sleeping with anybody.”

“Was it one of those American Mormon boys who came knocking at the door? Did one of them come back when I was out?” It was a cheap shot. But a few days before, they had come bright-eyed and eager to save our souls. I’d politely turned them down and said to Charlie that it was inconceivable that every Mormon boy appeared to be cute. 

When Charlie was hurt, his French accent became more pronounced. “I believe it when you say that you know nothing about them, but you must also understand that I have nothing to do with them either.”

“But whose are they?”

“I have no idea. But maybe they belonged to Levi who left them behind when he moved out.”

“But that was weeks ago,” I said.

“I guess that there is no other explanation.”

And that was where we left it. Black Calvin Klein underwear unclaimed.