Martínez 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 Martínez heard passing on the sidewalk outside that same terrible man with his two girls, all laughing together.
He saw anguish move like the shadow of a summer cloud on the faces of the other men in this poolroom.
Slowly Vamenos stepped onto 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.
Gómez swayed. Sweating, he licked his lips. Then his hand shot out, seized the money.
“The clothing store! The suit! Vamos!”
Yelling, everyone ran from the poolroom.
The woman’s voice was still squeaking on the abandoned telephone. Martínez, 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. Gómez, wait for me!”
Martínez 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, Gómez, strolled by, looking in. Two men, Manulo and Domínguez, hurried by, staring in. Three men, Villanazul, Martínez, and Vamenos, jostling shoulders, did the same.
“Leo.” Mr. Shumway swallowed. “Call the police!”
Suddenly six men filled the doorway.
Martínez, crushed among them, his stomach slightly upset, his face feeling feverish, smiled so wildly at Leo that Leo let go the telephone.
“Hey,” breathed Martínez, 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 Gómez 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.”
Martínez 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!” Martínez heard himself say, and laughed. “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 Martínez, 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!”
Martínez peered quietly into the booth, his motion drawing the others to peer too.
The suit was there.
And it was white.
Martínez 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 Gómez.
“Mr. Shumway,” Martínez 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 Martínez. “The wings of white angels.”
Martínez 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!”
Gómez, 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 Gómez. “Tonight you move in with me, eh? Save rent as well as clothes, eh? Sure! Martínez, you got the suit?”
“Have I?” Martínez 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 Martínez in the hall to study Gómez’s face.
“Gómez, you look sick.”
“I am,” said Gómez. “For what have I done?” He nodded to the shadows in the room working about the dummy. “I pick Domínguez, 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!”
“Gómez,” whispered Villanazul from the room. “The suit is ready. Come see if it looks as good using your light bulb.”
Gómez and Martínez entered.
And there on the dummy in the center of the room was the phosphorescent, the miraculously white-fired ghost with the incredible lapels, the precise stitching, the neat buttonholes. Standing with the white illumination of the suit upon his cheeks, Martínez 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 color 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 Gómez.
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 Gómez.
“Late! It’s only nine-fifteen!”
“Late?” said everyone, bristling. “Late?”
Gómez edged away from these men who glared from him to the suit to the open window.
Outside and below it was, after all, thought Martínez, 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.