«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.
«Ole!»
Gomez turned like a matador in his wondrous suit-of-lights.
«Ole, Gomez, ole!»
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 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 Refriteria 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, Quetzal-coatl, 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 bums 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….'»
And at last it was time for Martinez to let the suit float him out to haunt the darkness.
Four times he walked around the block. Four times he paused beneath the tenement porches, looking up at the window where the light was lit. A shadow moved, the beautiful girl was there, not there, away and gone, and on the fifth time, there she was, on the porch above, driven out by the summer heat, taking the cooler air. She glanced down. She made a gesture.
At first he thought she was waving to him. He felt like a white explosion that had riveted her attention. But she was not waving. Her hand gestured and the next moment a pair of dark-framed glasses sat upon her nose. She gazed at him.
Ah, ah, he thought, so that's it. So! Even the blind may see this suit! He smiled up at her. He did not have to wave. And at last, she smiled back. She did not have to wave either. Then, because he did not know what else to do, and he could not get rid of this smile that had fastened itself to his cheeks, he hurried, almost ran, around the corner, feeling her stare after him. When he looked back, she had taken off her glasses and gazed now with the look of the nearsighted at what, at most, must be a moving blob of light in the great darkness here. Then, for good measure he went around the block again, through a city so suddenly beautiful he wanted to yell, then laugh, then yell again.
Returning, he drifted, oblivious, eyes half-closed, and seeing him in the door the others saw not Martinez but themselves come home. In that moment, they sensed that something had happened to them all.
«You're late!» cried Vamenos, but stopped. The spell could not be broken.
«Somebody tell me,» said Martinez. «Who am I?»
He moved in a slow circle through the room.
Yes, he thought, yes, it's the suit, yes, it had to do with the suit and them all together in that store on this fine Saturday night and then here, laughing and feeling more drunk without drinking, as Manulo said himself, as the night ran and each slipped on the pants and held, toppling, to the others and, balanced, let the feeling get bigger and warmer and finer as each man departed and the next took his place in the suit until now here stood Martinez all splendid and white as one who gives orders and the world grows quiet and moves aside.
«Martinez, we borrowed three mirrors while you were gone. Look!»
The mirrors, set up as in the store, angled to reflect three Martinezes and the echoes and memories of those who had occupied this suit with him and known the bright world inside this thread and cloth. Now, in the shimmering mirror, Martinez saw the enormity of this thing they were living together and his eyes grew wet. The others blinked.
Martinez touched the mirrors. They shifted. He saw a thousand, a million white-armoured Martinezes march off into eternity, reflected, reflected, for ever, indomitable, and unending.