Amie Barrodale - You Are Having a Good Time

I went to the bathroom. I locked the door. I thought she might come in, and so I got into the tub. I clicked the number, and after a few rings, a man answered. He said, “Hello?” I saw a plastic razor and imagined taking it out, how I would like to rake it across my wrist, or her face, and then for just a moment I saw the imp. She was dirty and slimy like something that had been in the drain for decades. She was made of hair and slime. She had her hands around my throat. But I must have been hallucinating, right?

When I came out of the bathroom, my wife was on the floor. I kneeled and lifted her head. I took her into my lap. She was my only friend in this world.

Particularly at a certain time in my life, I looked at a suit and imagined myself in it, talking to a woman. I am a passionate person. I was in Kashmir in wintertime, and I was the only guest at Butt’s Clairmont Estate. Every afternoon the hotel owner, Mr. Butt, came into my houseboat, sat down, ran his hands over the knees of his trousers, and tried to make conversation. One day I complimented his jacket — he always dressed elegantly — and he said, “Do you like suits, Mr. Nudell? You can meet my tailor.”

The tailor had a corner storefront with a receiving area and a fitting room. In the fitting room, one wall was covered by a sheet, and three had built-in shelves that ran floor to ceiling and were stacked with bolts of fabric. On the top of a pile of folded remnants close to the ceiling was a piece of yellow fabric. It looked like velvet. I stood on a chair and pulled it down.

“What is it?” I said.

“Sir, we call this corduroy.”

Mr. K. Salama wore a burgundy turtleneck, a white collared shirt, and a tweed jacket. His assistant was short and thin, and he stood in the corner. Salama talked. His voice was deep and rich, and he talked in a stream. Only one word stood out: suit. When Salama said suit, something strange happened.

“You might like to have made a suit, sir,” he said. “I can make you a very nice suit for a reasonable price.”

I had brought a collared shirt. “I came to have this shirt copied,” I said.

Salama lifted the shirt and let it fall. “Lot of gentlemen like to have a suit made. I can make you a very nice suit, with a jacket and pants, and that can be a very good thing to have.”

He picked up a catalog, flipped past pictures of old men in high-waisted underwear, and stopped at a photo. He turned the catalog to show me a middle-aged man in a suit. The man in the picture looked like he sold shoes at a department store. Salama gauged my reaction and paged through the catalog some more. He stopped, and showed me a picture of a man who looked like John Goodman. I shrugged.

He said, “Lot of gentlemen like to have a two-button jacket made. For travel, that can be a very good thing to have.” He turned the catalog and showed me a wool jacket. It was gray and fit the young model nicely. I said, “Hmm.”

Salama snapped, and the smaller man jumped and left the room.

“For travel, that can be a very nice thing to have. What day are you leaving?”

“Friday.”

“Well, it’s no problem, if you don’t want to carry it, we can mail it to your home. You can even pay me when you get home, we have done that before in the past and it always works very well.”

Still talking — always talking — he went to a wall and lifted a sheet. Behind it was another built-in shelf, piled with bolts of gray wool. The small man returned with a pitcher of green tea and a basket of fresh biscuits, cake, and macaroons. Salama sat on the floor. “Please eat the cake,” he said. He took several produce bags full of fabric swatches out of a shopping bag. He dumped the wool swatches onto the carpet.

“This one I can make it you. I can give you a very good price.”

He held up a lightweight gray wool. I took it from him and looked at it closely.

“Is it wool?”

“Sir, this is wool.”

“A hundred percent?” I said. “It’s a hundred percent wool?”

“One hundred percent. No additions.”

“Yes,” I said, “this one would be all right.”

He stood, flipped back the sheet again, and withdrew a bolt of gray wool. Taking the rolled fabric by its cut end, he flipped the bolt onto the floor and draped the unfurled fabric over an extended arm.

“Is that the same as this one?” I held up the swatch to compare. The swatch was a perfect gray. The bolt was a somber charcoal.

He unrolled a second gray wool, a third, and a fourth. He talked the whole time. He told me about his first suit, which had been paid for by his parents, as he unrolled the eighth. It was lovat, he said, four buttons. He described it in detail. He said he had the sleeves and legs taken in. He flipped open the twelfth bolt, and then I realized he didn’t have the gray I wanted, and he had made a mess in his studio, and I was going to leave without buying anything.

“It’s getting late,” I said.

“You want a suit. How about an overcoat? Like this one.” He went to a closet and struggled with the zipper on a bag.

“I have an overcoat.”

I pointed to the coat I was wearing, and he made a face. He said something to the little man, who brought out a binder full of testimonials. Salama paged through them and pointed to the wall, at two framed letters. Before I could go read them, Salama pointed to a handwritten letter in the binder. It included a picture of a broad-hipped, sallow, middle-aged woman in a charcoal skirt suit. In her letter, she mentioned having worn her suit for a television interview (“There’s some exposure for you”) and said she was sorry she had not been able to mention Salama by name. He flipped past that letter to a typewritten one on yellowing paper. It was written by a British official, and it didn’t mention the suit. The official just said that Salama had not cheated him.

“Have more cake,” Salama said. He brought out a navy blazer and explained he had made it for someone from the embassy. It had brass buttons. I wondered why the ambassador hadn’t taken the jacket. I said, “Nice buttons.” He began to measure me. I pointed to a fabric. Then I pointed to something else. Soon I was the future owner of a brown wool suit, a salmon cashmere blazer, and four collared shirts.

“Now I know your taste,” Salama said. He brought down a bolt of white velvet. “How about I make it you a suit. Cotton velvet, sir. How about we make it a suit. Slim pants and jacket, I can make it you. I want to be your family tailor.”

I nodded once.

“How about a little deposit, something for a little luck?”

He rubbed two fingers together, and I slipped 2,000 rupees into his hand. It was a small deposit, but neither of us, in that moment, was afraid of anything.

* * *

“The sew man hasn’t yet come with your suit,” Salama said.

He rang a bell, and the little assistant came and stood in the doorway. Salama sent him out for tea. I sat and paged through a catalog until the little man came back. This time he brought green tea, macaroons, and a hot dog wiener. I drank my tea for a while. Salama went away and came back. Then I felt someone behind me and turned to see a man in his forties. He had strange eyes that did not give or receive light. Salama said, “Sir, please meet my son.”

“How do you like Kashmir?” Salama’s son asked.

“I like it very much.”

“Welcome. Most welcome.”

When the tailor of my suit — the sew man — came in through a side door, he walked fast, bent forward at the waist, like someone who is afraid of being beaten. He was trembling with excitement and fear. He wore his baggy trousers rolled up all the way to his mid-calf and carried the brown suit, removing it from its hanger as he apologized to Salama.