Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (32 page)

 
          
 
Then he finished cutting the grass.

 
          
 
It was summer twilight in the city, and out
front of the quiet-clicking pool hall three young Mexican-American men breathed
the warm air and looked around at the world. Sometimes they talked and
sometimes they said nothing at all but watched the cars glide by like black
panthers on the hot asphalt or saw trolleys loom up like thunderstorms, scatter
lightning, and rumble away into silence.

 
          
 
"Hey,"
sighed
Martinez at last. He was the youngest, the most sweetly sad of the three.
"It's a swell night, huh? Swell."

 
          
 
As he observed the world it moved very close and
then drifted away and then came close again. People, brushing by, were suddenly
across the street. Buildings five miles away suddenly leaned over him. But most
of the time everything—people, cars, and buildings—stayed way out on the edge
of the world and could not be touched. On this quiet warm summer evening
Martinez's face was cold.

 
          
 
"Nights like this you wish . . . lots of
things."

 
          
 
"Wishing," said the second man,
Villanazul, a man who shouted books out loud in his room but spoke only in
whispers

 
          
 
Originally published in The Saturday Evening
Post as "The Magic White Suit" on the street. "Wishing is the
useless pastime of the unemployed."

 
          
 
"Unemployed?" cried Vamenos, the
unshaven. "Listen to him! We got no jobs, no money!"

 
          
 
"So," said Martinez, "we got no
friends."

 
          
 
"True." Villanazul gazed off toward
the green plaza where the palm trees swayed in the soft night wind. "Do
you know what I wish? I wish to go into that plaza and speak among the
businessmen who gather there nights to talk big talk. But dressed as I am, poor
as I am, who would listen? So, Martinez, we have each other. The friendship of
the poor is real friendship. We—"

 
          
 
But now a handsome young Mexican with a fine
thin mustache strolled by. And on each of his careless arms hung a laughing
woman.

 
          
 
"Madre mia!"
Martinez slapped his own brow. "How does
that
one
rate two friends?"

 
          
 
"It's his nice new white summer
suit." Vamenos chewed a black thumbnail. "He looks sharp."

 
          
 
Martinez leaned out to watch the three people
moving away, and then at the tenement across the street, in one fourth-floor
window of which, far above, a beautiful girl leaned out, her dark hair faintly
stirred by the wind. She had been there forever, which was to say for six
weeks. He had nodded, he had raised a hand, he had smiled, he had blinked
rapidly,
he
had even bowed to her, on the street, in
the hall when visiting friends, in the park, downtown. Even now, he put his
hand up from his waist and moved his fingers. But all the lovely girl did was
let the summer wind stir her dark hair. He did not exist. He was nothing.

 
          
 
"Madre mia!"
He looked away and down the street where the man walked his two friends around
a corner. "Oh, if just I had one suit, one! I wouldn't need money if I
looked okay."

 
          
 
"I hesitate to suggest," said
Villanazul, "that you see Gomez. But he's been talking some crazy talk for
a month now about clothes. I keep on saying I'll be in on it to make him go
away. That Gomez."

 
          
 
"Friend," said a quiet voice.

 
          
 
"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.
"Caramba!
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—perfecto! 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!"

 
          
 
"Senor Gomez, I don't hardly know
you—"

 
          
 
"Know me? You're going to live with me!
Come on!"

 
          
 
Gomez vanished into the poolroom. 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! Andaler

 
          
 
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?
Senor?”

 
          
 
Senor 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 poolroom 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 along, grinning.

 
          
 
"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 onto 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 five 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 Came
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—"