‘Gomez!’ Everyone turned to stare.
Smiling strangely, Gomez pulled forth an endless thin yellow ribbon which fluttered and swirled on the summer air.
‘Gomez,’ said Martinez, ‘what you doing with that tape-measure?’
Gomez beamed. ‘Measuring people’s skeletons.’
‘Skeletons!’
‘Hold on.’ Gomez squinted at Martinez. ‘gCaramba! Where you been all my life! Let’s try you !’
Martinez saw his arm seized and taped, his leg measured, his chest encircled.
‘Hold still!’ cried Gomez. ‘Arm – perfect. Leg – chest – perfectamente! Now, quick, the height! There! Yes! Five foot five! You’re in! Shake!’ Pumping Martinez’s hand he stopped suddenly. ‘Wait. You got … ten bucks?’
‘I have!’ Vamenos waved some grimy bills. ‘Gomez, measure me!’
‘All I got left in the world is nine dollars and ninety-two cents.’ Martinez searched his pockets. ‘That’s enough for a new suit? Why?’
‘Why? Because you got the right skeleton, that’s why!’
‘Señor Gomez, I don’t hardly know you –’
‘Know me? You’re going to live with me! Come on!’
Gomez vanished into the pool-room. Martinez, escorted by the polite Villanazul, pushed by an eager Vamenos, found himself inside.
‘Dominguez!’ said Gomez.
Dominguez, at a wall-telephone, winked at them. A woman’s voice squeaked on the receiver.
‘Manulo!’ said Gomez.
Manulo, a wine bottle tilted bubbling to his mouth, turned.
Gomez pointed at Martinez.
‘At last we found our fifth volunteer!’
Dominguez said, ‘I got a date, don’t bother me –’ and stopped. The receiver slipped from his fingers. His little black telephone book full of fine names and numbers went quickly back into his pocket. ‘Gomez, you – ?’
‘Yes, yes! Your money, now! Ándale!’
The woman’s voice sizzled on the dangling phone.
Dominguez glanced at it, uneasily.
Manulo considered the empty wine bottle in his hand and the liquor-store sign across the street.
Then, very reluctantly, both men laid ten dollars each on the green velvet pool-table.
Villanazul, amazed, did likewise, as did Gomez, nudging Martinez. Martinez counted out his wrinkled bills and change. Gomez flourished the money like a royal flush.
‘Fifty bucks! The suit costs sixty! All we need is ten bucks!’
‘Wait,’ said Martinez. ‘Gomez, are we talking about one suit? Uno?’
‘Uno!’ Gomez raised a finger. ‘One wonderful white ice-cream summer suit! White, white as the August moon!’
‘But who will own this one suit?’
‘Me!’ said Manulo.
‘Me!’ said Dominguez.
‘Me!’ said Villanazul.
‘Me!’ cried Gomez. ‘And you, Martinez. Men, let’s show him. Line up!’
Villanazul, Manulo, Dominguez, and Gomez rushed to plant their backs against the pool-room wall.
‘Martinez, you too, the other end, line up! Now, Vamenos, lay that billiard cue across our heads!’
‘Sure, Gomez, sure!’
Martinez, in line, felt the cue tap his head and leaned out to see what was happening. ‘Ah!’ he gasped.
The cue lay flat on all their heads, with no rise or fall, as Vamenos slid it, grinning, along.
‘We’re all the same height!’ said Martinez.
‘The same!’ Everyone laughed.
Gomez ran down the line rustling the yellow tape-measure here and there on the men so they laughed even more wildly.
‘Sure!’ he said. ‘It took a month, four weeks, mind you, to find four guys the same size and shape as me, a month of running around measuring. Sometimes I found guys with five-foot-five skeletons, sure, but all the meat on their bones was too much or not enough. Sometimes their bones were too long in the legs or too short in the arms. Boy, all the bones! I tell you! But now, five of us, same shoulders, chests, waists, arms, and as for weight? Men!’
Manulo, Dominguez, Villanazul, Gomez, and at last, Martinez stepped on to the scales which flipped ink-stamped cards at them as Vamenos, still smiling, wildly fed pennies. Heart pounding, Martinez read the cards.
‘One hundred thirty-five pounds … one thirty-six … one thirty-three … one thirty-four … one thirty-seven … a miracle!’
‘No,’ said Villanazul, simply, ‘Gomez.’
They all smiled upon that genius who now circled them with his arms.
‘Are we not fine?’ he wondered. ‘All the same size, all the same dream – the suit. So each of us will look beautiful at least one night each week, eh?’
‘I haven’t looked beautiful in years,’ said Martinez. ‘The girls run away.’
‘They will run no more, they will freeze,’ said Gomez, ‘when they see you in the cool white summer ice-cream suit.’
‘Gomez,’ said Villanazul, ‘just let me ask one thing.’
‘Of course, compadre.’
‘When we get this nice new white ice-cream summer suit, some night you’re not going to put it on and walk down to the Greyhound bus in it and go live in El Paso for a year in it, are you?’
‘Villanazul, Villanazul, how can you say that?’
‘My eye sees and my tongue moves,’ said Villanazul. ‘How about the Everybody Wins! Punchboard Lotteries you ran and you kept running when nobody won? How about the United Chili Con Carne and Frijole Company you were going to organize and all that ever happened was the rent ran out on a two-by-four office?’
‘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, sm
iled 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 a
t 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 holding to doorknobs, touching the wall, feeling his own elbows, putting the flat of his hand to his face.
‘Oh, let me tell you,’ he said. ‘Compadres, I went to the bar, eh, to have a drink? But no, I did not go in the bar, do you hear? I did not drink. For as I walked I began to laugh and sing. Why, why? I listened to myself and asked this. Because. The suit made me feel better than wine ever did. The suit made me drunk, drunk! So I went to the Guadalajara Refritería instead and played the guitar and sang four songs, very high! The suit, ah, the suit!’
Dominguez, next to be dressed, moved out through the world, came back from the world.
The black telephone book! thought Martinez. He had it in his hands when he left! Now, he returns, hands empty! What? What?
‘On the street,’ said Dominguez, seeing it all again, eyes wide, ‘on the street I walked, a woman cried, “Dominguez, is that you?” Another said, “Dominguez? No, Quetzalcoatl, the Great White God come from the East,” do you hear? And suddenly I didn’t want to go with six women or eight, no. One, I thought. One! And to this one, who knows what I would say? “Be mine!” or “Marry me!” Caramba! This suit is dangerous! But I did not care! I live, I live! Gomez, did it happen this way with you?’
Gomez, still dazed by the events of the evening, shook his head. ‘No, no talk. It’s too much. Later. Villanazul…?’
Villanazul moved shyly forward.
Villanazul went shyly out.
Villanazul came shyly home.
‘Picture it, ’ he said, not looking at them, looking at the floor, talking to the floor. ‘The Green Plaza, a group of elderly business men gathered under the stars and they are talking, nodding, talking. Now one of them whispers. All turn to stare. They move aside, they make a channel through which a white hot light burns its way as through ice. At the centre of the great light is this person. I take a deep breath. My stomach is jelly. My voice is very small, but it grows louder. And what do I say? I say, “Friends. Do you know Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus? In that book we find his Philosophy of Suits.…” ’