Ray Bradbury: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

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

“I hesitate to suggest,” said Villanazul, “that you see Gómez. 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 Gómez.”

“Friend,” said a quiet voice.

“Gómez!” Everyone turned to stare.

Smiling strangely, Gómez pulled forth an endless thin yellow ribbon which fluttered and swirled on the summer air.

“Gómez,” said Martínez, “what you doing with that tape measure?”

Gómez beamed. “Measuring people’s skeletons.”

“Skeletons!”

“Hold on.” Gómez squinted at Martínez. “ Caramba! Where you been all my life! Let’s try you! ”

Martínez saw his arm seized and taped, his leg measured, his chest encircled.

“Hold still!” cried Gómez. “Arm—perfect. Leg—chest— perfecto! Now quick, the height! There! Yes! Five foot five! You’re in! Shake!” Pumping Martínez’s hand, he stopped suddenly. “Wait. You got … ten bucks?”

“I have!” Vamenos waved some grimy bills. “Gómez, measure me!”

“All I got left in the world is nine dollars and ninety-two cents.” Martínez searched his pockets. “That’s enough for a new suit? Why?”

“Why? Because you got the right skeleton, that’s why!”

“Señor Gómez, I don’t hardly know you—”

“Know me? You’re going to live with me! Come on!”

Gómez vanished into the poolroom. Martínez, escorted by the polite Villanazul, pushed by an eager Vamenos, found himself inside.

“Domínguez!” said Gómez.

Domínguez, at a wall telephone, winked at them. A woman’s voice squeaked on the receiver.

“Manulo!” said Gómez.

Manulo, a wine bottle tilted bubbling to his mouth, turned. Gómez pointed at Martínez.

“At last we found our fifth volunteer!”

Domínguez 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. “Gómez, you—?”

“Yes, yes! Your money, now! Ándale! ”

The woman’s voice sizzled on the dangling phone.

Domínguez 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 Gómez, nudging Martínez. Martínez counted out his wrinkled bills and change. Gómez flourished the money like a royal flush.

“Fifty bucks! The suit costs sixty! All we need is ten bucks!”

“Wait,” said Martínez. “Gómez, are we talking about one suit? Uno? ”

“ Uno! ” Gómez 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 Domínguez.

“Me!” said Villanazul.

“Me!” cried Gómez. “ And you, Martínez. Men, let’s show him. Line up!”

Villanazul, Manulo, Domínguez, and Gómez rushed to plant their backs against the poolroom wall.

“Martínez, you too, the other end, line up! Now, Vamenos, lay that billiard cue across our heads!”

“Sure, Gómez, sure!”

Martínez, 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 Martínez.

“The same!” Everyone laughed.

Gómez 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, Domínguez, Villanazul, Gómez, and at last Martínez stepped onto the scales which flipped ink-stamped cards at them as Vamenos, still smiling wildly, fed pennies. Heart pounding, Martínez 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, “Gómez.”

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 Martínez. “The girls run away.”

“They will run no more, they will freeze,” said Gómez, “when they see you in the cool white summer ice-cream suit.”

“Gómez,” 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 Gómez. “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!”

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.