‘The errors of a child now grown,’ said Gomez. ‘Enough! In this hot weather, someone may buy the special suit that is made just for us that stands waiting in the window of SHUMWAY’S SUNSHINE SUITS! We have fifty dollars. Now we need just one more skeleton!’
Martinez saw the men peer around the pool-hall. He looked where they looked. He felt his eyes hurry past Vamenos, then come reluctantly back to examine his dirty shirt, his huge nicotined fingers.
‘Me!’ Vamenos burst out, at last. ‘My skeleton, measure it, it’s great! Sure, my hands are big, and my arms, from digging ditches! But –’
Just then Martinez heard passing on the sidewalk outside, that same terrible man with his two girls, all laughing and yelling together.
He saw anguish move like the shadow of a summer cloud on the faces of the other men in this pool-room.
Slowly Vamenos stepped on to the scales and dropped his penny. Eyes closed, he breathed a prayer.
‘Madre mía, please …’
The machinery whirred, the card fell out. Vamenos opened his eyes.
‘Look! One thirty-five pounds! Another miracle!’
The men stared at his right hand and the card, at his left hand and a soiled ten-dollar bill.
Gomez swayed. Sweating, he licked his lips. Then, his hand shot out, seized the money.
‘The clothing store! The suit! Andale!’
Yelling, everyone ran from the pool-room.
The woman’s voice was still squeaking on the abandoned telephone. Martinez, left behind, reached out and hung the voice up. In the silence, he shook his head. ‘Santos, what a dream! Six men,’ he said, ‘one suit. What will come of this? Madness? Debauchery? Murder? But I go with God. Gomez, wait for me!’
Martinez was young. He ran fast.
Mr Shumway, of SHUMWAY’S SUNSHINE SUITS, paused while adjusting a tie-rack, aware of some subtle atmospheric change outside his establishment.
‘Leo,’ he whispered to his assistant. ‘Look …’
Outside, one man, Gomez, strolled by, looking in. Two men. Manulo and Dominguez, hurried by, staring in. Three men, Villanazul, Martinez, and Vamenos, jostling shoulders, did the same.
‘Leo,’ Mr Shumway swallowed. ‘Call the police!’
Suddenly, six men filled the doorway.
Martinez, crushed among them, his stomach slightly upset, his face feeling feverish, smiled so wildly at Leo that Leo let go the telephone.
‘Hey,’ breathed Martinez, eyes wide. ‘There’s a great suit, over there!’
‘No.’ Manulo touched a lapel. ‘This one!’
‘There is only one suit in all the world!’ said Gomez, coldly. ‘Mr Shumway, the ice-cream white, size thirty-four, was in your window just an hour ago! It’s gone! You didn’t –’
‘Sell it?’ Mr Shumway exhaled. ‘No, no. In the dressing-room. It’s still on the dummy.’
Martinez did not know if he moved and moved the crowd or if the crowd moved and moved him. Suddenly they were all in motion. Mr Shumway, running, tried to keep ahead of them.
‘This way, gents. Now which of you …?’
‘All for one, one for all!’ Martinez heard himself say, and laughed wildly. ‘We’ll all try it on!’
‘All?’ Mr Shumway clutched at the booth curtain as if his shop were a steamship that had suddenly tilted in a great swell. He stared.
That’s it, thought Martinez, look at our smiles. Now, look at the skeletons behind our smiles! Measure here, there, up, down, yes, do you see?
Mr Shumway saw. He nodded. He shrugged.
‘All!’ He jerked the curtain. ‘There! Buy it, and I’ll throw in the dummy, free!’
Martinez peered quietly into the booth, his motion drawing the others to peer, too.
The suit was there.
And it was white.
Martinez could not breathe. He did not want to. He did not need to. He was afraid his breath would melt the suit. It was enough, just looking.
But at last he took a great trembling breath and exhaled, whispering, ‘Ay. Ay, caramba!’
‘It puts out my eyes,’ murmured Gomez.
‘Mr Shumway.’ Martinez heard Leo hissing. ‘Ain’t it dangerous precedent, to sell it? I mean, what if everybody bought one suit for six people?’
‘Leo,’ said Mr Shumway, ‘you ever hear one single fifty-nine-dollar suit make so many people happy at the same time before?’
‘Angels’ wings,’ murmured Martinez. ‘The wings of white angels.’
Martinez felt Mr Shumway peering over his shoulder into the booth. The pale glow filled his eyes.
‘You know something, Leo?’ he said, in awe. ‘That’s a suit !’
Gomez, shouting, whistling, ran up to the third-floor landing and turned to wave to the others who staggered, laughed, stopped, and had to sit down on the steps below.
‘Tonight!’ cried Gomez. ‘Tonight you move in with me, eh? Save rent as well as clothes, eh? Sure! Martinez, you got the suit?’
‘Have I?’ Martinez lifted the white gift-wrapped box high. ‘From us to us! Ay-hah!’
‘Vamenos, you got the dummy?’
‘Here!’
Vamenos, chewing an old cigar, scattering sparks, slipped. The dummy, falling, toppled, turned over twice, and banged down the stairs.
‘Vamenos! Dumb! Clumsy!’
They seized the dummy from him. Stricken, Vamenos looked about as if he’d lost something.
Manulo snapped his fingers. ‘Hey, Vamenos, we got to celebrate ! Go borrow some wine!’
Vamenos plunged downstairs in a whirl of sparks.
The others moved into the room with the suit, leaving Martinez in the hall to study Gomez’s face.
‘Gomez, you look sick.’
‘I am,’ said Gomez. ‘For what have I done?’ He nodded to the shadows in the room working about the dummy. ‘I pick Dominguez, a devil with the women. All right. I pick Manulo, who drinks, yes, but who sings as sweet as a girl, eh? Okay.
Villanazul reads books. You, you wash behind your ears. But then what do I do? Can I wait? No! I got to buy that suit! So the last guy I pick is a clumsy slob who has the right to wear my suit –’ He stopped, confused. ‘Who gets to wear our suit one night a week, fall down in it, or not come in out of the rain in it! Why, why, why did I do it !’
‘Gomez,’ whispered Villanazul from the room. ‘The suit is ready. Come see if it looks as good using your light bulb.’
Gomez and Martinez entered.
And there on the dummy in the centre of the room was the phosphorescent, the miraculously white-fired ghost with the incredible lapels, the precise stitching, the neat button-holes. Standing with the white illumination of the suit upon his cheeks, Martinez suddenly felt he was in church.
White! White! It was white as the whitest vanilla ice-cream, as the bottled milk in tenement halls at dawn. White as a winter cloud all alone in the moonlit sky late at night. Seeing it here in the warm summer night room made their breath almost show on the air. Shutting his eyes, he could see it printed on his lids. He knew what colour his dreams would be this night.
‘White …’ murmured Villanazul. ‘White as the snow on that mountain near our town in Mexico which is called the Sleeping Woman.’
‘Say that again,’ said Gomez.
Villanazul, proud yet humble, was glad to repeat his tribute.
‘… white as the snow on the mountain called –’
‘I’m back!’
Shocked, the men whirled to see Vamenos in the door, wine bottles in each hand.
‘A party! Here! Now tell us, who wears the suit first tonight? Me?’
‘It’s too late!’ said Gomez.
‘Late! It’s only nine-fifteen!’
‘Late?’ said everyone, bristling. ‘Late?’
Gomez edged away from these men who glared from him to the suit to the open window.
Outside and below it was, after all, thought Martinez, a fine Saturday night in a summer month and through the calm warm darkness the women drifted like flowers on a quiet stream. The men made a mournful sound.
‘Gomez, a suggestion.’ Villanazul licked his pencil and drew a chart on a pad. ‘You wear the suit from nine-thirty to ten, Manulo till ten-thirty, Dominguez till eleven, myself till eleven-thirty, Martinez till midnight, and –’
‘Why me last?’ demanded Vamenos, scowling.
Martinez thought quickly and smiled. ‘After midnight is the best time, friend.’
‘Hey,’ said Vamenos, ‘that’s right. I never thought of that. Okay.’
Gomez sighed. ‘All right. A half-hour each. But from now on, remember, we each wear the suit just one night a week. Sundays we draw straws for who wears the suit the extra night.’
‘Me!’ laughed Vamenos. ‘I’m lucky!’
Gomez held on to Martinez tight.
‘Gomez,’ urged Martinez, ‘you first. Dress.’
Gomez could not tear his eyes from that disreputable Vamenos. At last, impulsively, he yanked his shirt off over his head. ‘Ay-yeah!’ he howled. ‘Ay-yeee!’
Whisper rustle … the clean shirt.
‘Ah…!’
How clean the new clothes feel, thought Martinez, holding the coat ready. How clean they sound, how clean they smell!
Whisper … the pants … the tie, rustle … the braces. Whisper … now Martinez let loose the coat which fell in place on flexing shoulders.
‘Olé!’
Gomez turned like a matador in his wondrous suit-of-lights.
‘Olé, Gomez, olé!’
Gomez bowed and went out the door.
Martinez fixed his eyes to his watch. At ten sharp he heard someone wandering about in the hall as if they had forgotten where to go. Martinez pulled the door open and looked out.
Gomez was there, heading for nowhere.
He looks sick, thought Martinez. No, stunned, shook up, surprised, many things.
‘Gomez! This is the place!’
Gomez turned around and found his way through the door.
‘Oh, friends, friends,’ he said. ‘Friends, what an experience! This suit! This suit!’
‘Tell us, Gomez!’ said Martinez.
‘I can’t, how can I say it!’ He gazed at the heavens, arms spread, palms up.
‘Tell us, Gomez!’
‘I have no words, no words. You must see, yourself! Yes, you must see –’ And here he lapsed into silence, shaking his head until at last he remembered they all stood watching him. ‘Who’s next? Manulo?’
Manulo, stripped to his shorts, leapt forward.
‘Ready!’
All laughed, shouted, whistled.
Manulo ready, went out the door. He was gone twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds. He came back
