Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (34 page)

 
          
 
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!"

 
          
 
Dommguez, 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 businessmen 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 center 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 tunes 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-armored
Martinezes march off into eternity, reflected, re-reflected, forever,
indomitable, and unending.

 
          
 
He held the white coat out on the air. In a
trance, the others did not at first recognize the dirty hand that reached to
take the coat. Then:

 
          
 
"Vamenos!"

 
          
 
"Pig!"

 
          
 
"You didn't wash!" cried Gomez.
"Or even shave, while you waited! Compadres, the bath!"

 
          
 
"The bath!" said everyone.

 
          
 
"No!" Vamenos flailed. "The
night air! I'm dead!"

 
          
 
They hustled him yelling out and down the
hall.

 
          
 
Now here stood Vamenos, unbelievable in white
suit, beard shaved, hair combed, nails scrubbed.

 
          
 
His friends scowled darkly at him.

 
          
 
For was it not true, thought Martinez, that
when Vamenos passed by, avalanches itched on mountaintops? If he walked under
windows, people spat, dumped garbage, or worse. Tonight now, this night, he
would stroll beneath ten thousand wide-opened windows, near balconies, past
alleys. Suddenly the world absolutely sizzled with flies. And here was Vamenos,
a fresh-frosted cake.

 
          
 
"You sure look keen in that suit,
Vamenos," said Manulo sadly.

 
          
 
"Thanks." Vamenos twitched, trying
to make his skeleton comfortable where all their skeletons had so recently
been. In a small voice Vamenos said, "Can I go now?"

 
          
 
"Villanazul!" said Gomez. "Copy
down these rules."

 
          
 
Villanazul licked his pencil.

 
          
 
"First," said Gomez, "don't
fall down in that suit, Vamenos!"

 
          
 
"I won't."

 
          
 
“Don't lean against buildings in that
suit."

 
          
 
"No buildings."

 
          
 
"Don't walk under trees with birds in
them in that suit. Don't smoke. Don't drink—"

 
          
 
"Please," said Vamenos, "can I
sit down in this suit?"

 
          
 
"When in doubt, take the pants off, fold
them over a chair."

 
          
 
"Wish me luck," said Vamenos.

 
          
 
"Go with God, Vamenos."

 
          
 
He went out. He shut the door.

 
          
 
There was a ripping sound.

 
          
 
"Vamenos!" cried Martinez.

 
          
 
He whipped the door open.

 
          
 
Vamenos stood with two halves of a
handkerchief torn in his hands, laughing.

 
          
 
"Rrrip! Look at your faces! Rrrip!"
He tore the cloth again. "Oh, oh, your faces, your faces! Ha!"

 
          
 
Roaring, Vamenos slammed the door, leaving
them stunned and alone.

 
          
 
Gomez put both hands on top of his head and
turned away. "Stone me. Kill me. I have sold our souls to a demon!"

 
          
 
Villanazul dug in his pockets, took out a
silver coin, and studied it for a long while.

 
          
 
"Here is my last fifty cents. Who else
will help me buy back Vamenos' share of the suit?"

 
          
 
"It's no use." Manulo showed them
ten cents. "We got only enough to buy the lapels and the
buttonholes."

 
          
 
Gomez, at the open window, suddenly leaned out
and yelled. "Vamenos! No!"

 
          
 
Below on the street, Vamenos, shocked, blew
out a match and threw away an old cigar butt he had found somewhere. He made a
strange gesture to all the men in the window above, then waved airily and
sauntered on.

 
          
 
Somehow, the five men could not move away from
the window. They were crushed together there.

 
          
 
"I bet he eats a hamburger in that
suit," mused Villanazul, 'Tm thinking of the mustard."

 
          
 
"Don't!" cried Gomez. "No,
no!"

 
          
 
Manulo was suddenly at the door.