“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.