Originally published in King of the Road, 2015.
Paul catches his foot in his pants cuff, stumbling into the Men’s Den on Halstead. He tries to shoot his foot through the hem, bends to yank the cuff out from under his heel, shut the door, and look for the clerk all in one herky-jerk stride as he trips, catches his hip on the edge of a display and falls backwards over a shoe bench.
The clerk is a furious wraith, thin as death. He’s in a collarless cream shirt, pleated cinnamon pants and white cowboy boots. His face is frozen fright. He stands with his arms full of shirts half a display away from Paul who is sprawled on the floor.
“What do you want!”
“I need a suit,” Paul says meekly.
“Why!”
“What? I mean I uh,” Paul gets up. The clerk’s livid. “Yeah, I uh, sorry, about the display, I’m—“
“It is of NO concern!” The clerk hasn’t moved, hasn’t dropped the shirts, hasn’t budged. He watches Paul.
“Why do you want a suit!?”
“I have a job I have a job interview.”
The clerk drops the shirts with a disgusted hiss. He stalks off into the depths of the dark store.
Paul is alone. No Musak. No other customers. No ubiquitous TV. No friendly clerks. He scratches his head; considers shifting his weight from his right foot to his left; lifts his hand out to rest it on the chrome railing of a shirt rack, then puts it back; starts to scratch his head again, stops, makes a snide comment under his breath and unconsciously pauses for applause.
The clerk lunges back into the store. He glares at Paul. He looks him up and down. He grabs a suit jacket off a nearby rack with such force it pops the hanger right out of the jacket. He snatches a pair of pants, a shirt, a belt and a package of socks. He snares a handful of ties on his way to the register.
Paul stares at the clerk. The clerk stares back. Finally the clerk smacks his hand on the counter. Paul jumps.
“Pay now!”
Paul scurries over to the till, pulling his bulging wallet out of his back pocket. He snags the lip and spills credit cards all over the counter and the floor.
“What kind of suit is it?”
“What!?” The clerk stops moving like a freeze frame, glaring at Paul. “What!? You want this suit!? It’s silk! Smooth! See?“ he slaps Paul’s hand with the floppy sleeve. It’s soft and glossy. “Very smooth.” The clerk mutters something vindictive in Urdu and crams the jacket, shirt, ties, socks and belt into a knotted ball and stuffs them in a bag. Paul notices the bag bears the name of a prominent grocery chain emblazoned in red. He pays. He leaves.
That night he showers long and hot, scrubs his nails, clips his nose hairs, calls a cab.
Inside the taxi he lounges on the vinyl seat. The suit hangs on his frame with just enough drape to make him look two inches taller. He crooks one short leg over the other, the calf hanging like it’s broken— something he’s never done before.
Paul leans into the mahogany bar at Ted’s
“I’ll have . . .” and here’s where he always gets lost, the numeration of all the classy drinks spin off into infinity yet the same three always block his view: a margarita, a kamikaze, and a long island iced tea.
Tonight, without thinking twice he says “Give me a dirty martini” as if it’s a joke between him and the bartender who tosses him a wry smile and swivels his toothpick to the other corner of his mouth.
The drink is briny, silken, like early morning ocean water. Paul drains the glass then spins it onto the bar in a move so nimble and swift the bartender raises an eyebrow and the girl next to him says:
“Mr. Smooth.”
“My first martini.”
“I’d say it agrees with you.”
“Like one?”
“Will it make me cool?”
“Cool ler.”
“Oh my,” she grins slowly and turns on her stool toward Paul. “Forty-five seconds into our relationship and you’ve said the right thing twice. You do improve with age mister…”
“Bond.”
“Say James Bond and it’s over between us.”
Paul’s mind whirls. Outwardly, he chuckles and she giggles and they both take a sip of their drinks. What the hell is going on, he thinks. He’s never been able to say more than three words to a decent looking woman—one being ‘uh’ another being ‘sorry’. Now he’s Cary Grant. He leans over the bar and touches shoulders with the bartender.
“Can you make a Lucky Jim?” The bartender smiles, whips together an elegant martini, iridescent green with a cucumber half-mooned on the rim.
Paul stares at the drink. He’s never seen one before. He remembers a half-read article in Esquire. He paraphrases:
“Martin Amis used to drink them. The cucumber juice softens the vodka. He wrote ‘It’s the jade brandy of the Imperial Court’ but,” here Paul surprises himself. “I think it matches your eyes.”
The girl sips, eyes closed. She takes a bigger sip and lays her hand against Paul’s shoulder. She is reformed southern and a twang escapes into her husky voice. She actually says I declare.
“I declare, Mr. Martini man, that is the most delicious, most exotic martini I have ever had,” she grins and leans forward, lowers her gaze, leans her bust into Paul. She looks up at him through half lidded eyes and says in the most casual, seductive, almost funny way “you have my heart.”
Her friend woots at Paul over her shoulder.
“Mr. Martini man, if you kiss as well as you order drinks, the night is yours.” Raucous laughter from her friend. Paul laughs. He feels buoyed, buffeted by secret winds, massaged and prodded gently, the words and thoughts bubbling up out of his gut as if dislodged by a gentle current. His heart leaps into his lungs and hangs nervously onto his vocal chords so he can’t say a thing. But his arm snakes out on its own around her waist. A light breeze seems to ruffle his hair.
Years this wind has been a necrotic hurricane blowing him back: back into the crowd, back into line, back into the mob of people unheroic and sore. People who’s movements are jerky and forced, exhausted before completion. Weak.
He had always been clumsy. He’d once knocked a woman unconscious then stepped on her baby while pulling change out of his pocket. He could shake your hand, step on your toes, say he was sorry, and introduce himself in one smooth collapse.
Suddenly this suit is a sail and he’s out front. No clouds in sight. The hurricane of truncated, epileptic crimping blown out and faded in the bright light of a cool breeze. He moves as if the fabric guides him, each gesture choreographed by the smooth suit. Back in the bar, the music dies out between songs. The whole bar is suddenly silent.
Cary grant. Harrison Ford. He locks eyes with the girl. His eyes are industrial magnets drawing her into his vibrant gaze. He puts her drink on the bar, pulls her gently to him, holds her just behind her ear, then kisses her lightly on her mouth. She waits a breath then kisses him back and he crushes her in his arms, kisses her harshly, deeply, stops. Leans back. Their eyes lock. His hand traces the contour of her lower back as he lets her go. Her friend howls with approval. The bartender sets them up with a line of Kir Royales and Elvis Costello launches into a lament about watching detectives.
Paul wakes up staring at the ceiling. The girl’s arm is draped over his chest. He slips out from under it. Light from the half open bathroom door slashes through the dark. Paul slides to the floor dragging the sheet off the the girl. He is confronted with her naked body, perfect and languid, mirrored darkly in the floor-length windows behind the bed. He realizes he’s naked and sees the city blinking out there in the dark and drops to an embarrassed crouch, clutching the sheet around him, slinking to the bathroom. He knocks over the stereo speaker, panics, but it lands mutely in a heap of clothes. The suit. He grabs the suit and crab walks into the bathroom lest someone spy him though a telescope or a helicopter hovering silently in the black sky.
Paul steps out of the bathroom wearing the suit with his tie hung loosely around his neck. He walks over to the sleeping girl, kisses her nipple. She curls and grins in her sleep. He stares at her coolly, lays his jacket over his arm and leaves.
The next two weeks are effortless. It’s like he’s in one of those old Vegas movies with Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin—Oceans Eleven, he remembers. He rents it, invites two big-band freaks from work over to get bombed on Bombay Babies. He wins a dance contest. He adds three “50 Grand or More” clients at work. When his boss invites him over for drinks and passes out, Paul screws the trophy wife on the kitchen table and lifts the Pappy’s from behind the bar.
One night, Paul wakes up to the suit in the chair at the desk scrunching its sleeve to henpecks a message.
“Paul; being your suit just ain’t my bag. It’s not you. It’s me. Try tweed. –- Suit.”
The suit opens the door soundlessly and disappears.
Paul roams the streets. He ends up back at the same bar where he picked up the girl and walks in, wet from rain, bleary eyed. The bartender hardly notices him, makes his drink wrong. A blue margarita. At least he took something away from the relationship, he thinks. He tries to remember what it was he’d ordered—the suit had ordered—back when. A dirty something?
The bartender brings him a Kamikaze—a bad one. Like lime Koolaid. Paul sees the girl from so many nights ago at the other end of the bar. He walks over to put a move on her but he geeks out in a spray of spittle and vodka spills his drink on her date.
Paul slacks at his job until they move him to the proofing room and give his parking space to a new guy from Ohio. He reverts back to his former self, retaining only an uncanny ability to match his clothes. He doesn’t even know it’s happening. A tick from his days with the suit, like a gesture stolen from an old girlfriend.
One day he’s sulking at a sidewalk coffee shop when the suit walks by. Inside the suit is a computer parts bulk buyer with a coprophagic grin on his face. Paul growls. The suit. The suit’s all over the guy, clinging to him like white on rice. Paul springs up from the table and tracks them for a block. He catches up at Van Buren and State.
“Hey you! You in the suit!” he grabs the man’s shoulder and spins him around. Paul snatches the suit by its lapels and yells into the collar.
“Nice note. Didn’t take you long to find someone new did it, you . . . costume!”
“Fucking reject,” the bulk parts buyer slams the corner of his aluminum briefcase into Paul’s nuts with a deft flick of the wrist—undoubtably provided by his silken friend. Paul goes down hard and the man steps away, looking for a break in traffic. Paul stares after the man trying to catch his breath, clutching his balls through cheap chinos. The man turns slightly and Paul catches a glint from a button. Dark, expressionless—like the eye of a shark. Paul stares. Hurt. Dejected. But defiant. He strokes his hand against the chinos. The man darts into the crowd and the button’s gone. Like it looked away.
That night Paul hears a knock on his door and the suit comes in looking sharp. It stands just inside the doorway.
The suit’s empty shirt billows between the buttons. The empty sleeve rises gently to cross over the slackened, hollow chest. It cocks gently toward Paul.
“I’m sorry about the costume thing,” Paul says. “I was . . . the chinos are just pants. No different than a pair of jeans.” He invites it in. They sit on the couch and Paul balances a beer on his knee. He peels the damp label from the glass as they sit in silence.
“Look,” says Paul. “I don’t know who this guy is but after I bought you from that crazy men’s store bastard you changed my life.”
The suit stands and walks over to the window. The city twinkles; lights the color of old coke bottles line the streets. It unbuttons its collar, slowly pulls off the tie and stuffs it absently into a coat pocket.
“Without you, I’m just . . . Paul searches for an appropriately sluggish word. “I’m just rack.”
The suit walks back to him and slaps a sleeve across his cheek, catching a soft silky button on his cheekbone. Paul grabs the suit by its lapels and glares into the lining beneath the Brioni tag.
“You made me. Who. I. Am.”
The suit collapses; Paul holds it to his chest. In a few minutes he gently, tenderly, almost absently fingers open the top buttons on the pleated linen shirt. The suit ruffles slightly and the buttons unhook themselves like magic. They entwine in the faint coke bottle haze and Paul finds himself dressed, the clothes pressing against his skin. He is bare-chested, the pant waist hanging rakishly on his slim hips, as if he’s standing on the prow of a ship, vibrant and alive, steered into the wind by a single-breasted silk suit and a tailored shirt with French cuffs.
Paul excels again at work. He rakes in mounds of money, gets invited to go bowling with the hipster design team and makes a brilliant suggestion at the ideal moment—perfectly posed. He roams the tonier bars, letting the suit slip him through the crowd, sliding against people, fingering fabric, noting the weave and weft of certain labels. He buys shirts from a private shop downtown. They know him there: Everything must match Olive colored silk suit.
One day he’s on the box, half-stripped as Tzucci the tailor sizes him up for a new shirt when Tzucci’s brother brings a jet black worsted wool Botanga Venetta number from the back. Paul’s suit is piled on a butler’s chair in plain view—trapped. The brother talks Paul into trying it on. After six weeks in Italian Jade, the black is undeniably appealing. And he looks good in it. He looks Bond. He wears it home.
In the car, the suit writhes and ripples on the seat.
“Hey, come on. It’s just a suit, man. It ain’t you. I’ll just wear it to work. You know they think I’m eccentric, always wearing the same green suit week after week. Drakkar can only do so much. I need to have you cleaned, you know. I have to wear something.”
The suit practically rends itself.
When it comes back from the cleaners, Paul tips the delivery man, hangs the suit in the hall closet still in its blue plastic bag and shuts the door.
He wears the Vetanna out and comes home with a stunning blonde straight out of a 1940s detective movie. They do it against the aquarium and one of the fish dies.
When Paul puts on the old suit it feels drab. Cold. He murmurs something empty into the collar. He takes a cab to the office.
Throughout that day he bumps into his desk three times, spills a glop of sauce from his steak Roquefort onglet onto his pants, and on the way back into the office—huge greasy splotch like a dumbass badge on his crotch—Paul slams full force into Jenny Reardon on her way to a face-off with a client. Her papers explode and he’s horrified to see his own hands batting them around in the air like a deranged mime.
Paul swerves violently twice on the way home. At a red light he tears the jacket off his back, throws it onto the floorboard. He screams down to it as he fights inch for inch through the traffic.
“You stupid rag. You know I was going to wear other clothes, come on. What did you think was going to happen? Or did you think! Christ! I’ve been checking out new suits ever since that first martini.” Paul calms down a little as the express lanes open up and he tears off toward his new place in the burbs. “We had our time. I’m . . . I’m grateful for what you’ve taught me. But it’s time we got real.” The pants bark the breaks at 85 miles an hour and a red Camry nearly takes his bumper out.
At home Paul tosses the suit into the bottom of the closet with a reflexive curse. He doesn’t pick it up for six months.
In the end, he wears the pants to garden. He gives the jacket to Goodwill. Every once in a while he’ll find the pants in a rumpled heap on the floor by the window as if they’d been standing thee all night, staring into the street. Paul finally takes them to a church drive. On the way he kneads the silk between his fingers. He remembers the time they made fun of the mannequins at 900 North. He remembers the Lucky Jim.