“I’m going to the store,” she said.
“We were just going to sleep.”
“Isn’t your wife hungry?”
I turned. My wife shrugged.
“Let me go,” Gwen said. “I don’t mind. She’s got to eat for two, right? I’ll get some materials for a purification while I’m gone.”
“You told her I’m pregnant?” my wife asked.
I got back in bed beside her. We were both in our underwear. I said, “Let’s cuddle until she gets back. Enfold me in your wax wing.”
She chuckled. I turned my back to her and she put an arm around me.
Gwen was gone for an hour. She came back with takeout: steaks, gumbo, and arugula salad. It was too much food for me—too rich and too late, but my wife ate everything. I was ready to go to bed, but Gwen lit a fire. She read a prayer, and burned food. I kept looking at my wife, to say, “Where are we, this is crazy?” but my wife was watching Gwen intently. Gwen said, “I am offering everything nice in the world to the being—whatever she would like. I’m asking her to go.”
“What being?” my wife asked.
“There’s a ghost living on me,” I told my wife. “Gwen said so.”
Gwen said, “Don’t pin it all on me.”
My wife said, “Actually, right now, that makes a lot of sense.”
When Gwen was finished, we all felt better. I felt better because I could go to sleep, and my wife felt better because she hoped something would change me back to the man I used to be. Gwen said, “The being is still there. She is happy now, but she is strong.”
As we were falling asleep, my wife said, “Why don’t we just live here?”
“In Gwen’s house?”
“No, in a house like it. In the Redwoods.”
* * *
The next afternoon Gwen sent my wife and me to the Kroger’s near the house to get materials for the next ritual, what she called the real purification. I coughed several times each block. My wife said, “Could you not make that last sound?”
“It hurts.”
“I know. Just that last sound.”
“It hurts me.”
“It feels very aggressive.”
I rolled down my window and leaned against my elbow. I coughed more, and hacked. I coughed in the grocery store. People turned to watch, so I did it louder to show them it was up to me whether I coughed. I even considered spitting in the aisle, to show them. The grocery store was much bigger than the kind of grocery store I was accustomed to, but the food was not arranged well at all. My wife said she would get the ritual materials from Gwen’s list. She told me to get food. I was too disoriented to shop. I put ice cream and salt-and-vinegar potato chips into my basket. When my wife found me, she looked at the two items and then at me. I was angry. I didn’t know why I was angry, so I coughed. I said, “We can always come back.”
At the checkout register my wife said, “What about Gwen? She’s hosting us. I bet she’d like a burger.”
“I don’t think so. She strikes me as a vegetarian.”
My wife gave me a funny look I didn’t understand. I understand it now. It was very simple, of course. My wife was hungry. My wife would have liked a burger.
* * *
Gwen performed the big purification when we got home. It took her several hours to prepare. She had to cook an elaborate meal, and she took some time in her bedroom getting dressed in an organza robe and a crown. By this time, I had hope. Maybe, I thought, maybe it will all work out. Maybe it’s true what she says—hadn’t I been acting strangely? Wasn’t jealousy another word for possession? She lit a fire outside and read a long text. The fog lifted during the ceremony—due to the sun, I thought, but Gwen said it was auspicious.
“I’m cured?” I said.
“I don’t know. The being is a bit more powerful than ordinary. If it were me, I would not ever set foot again in your apartment.”
We would stay a second night. She wanted to call another expert. She warned me that the being had her feelings hurt and might get up to mischief.
* * *
That night, my wife and I got a DVD from Gwen’s collection. We chose No Country for Old Men. We were both exhausted. During one of the first scenes, Chigur was handcuffed behind his back. He slipped the handcuffs down his legs and stepped over them, so he could have his arms in front. My wife said, “Why don’t people do that more often?”
“They do. I did it every time I went to jail. It’s just they fuss at you.”
“They fuss at you how?”
“They say, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’”
I was too tired to stay up. I said, “I think I’m going to sleep.”
When I woke up, my wife was sitting cross-legged on the floor. She was in the corner with her phone and the movie had started to replay.
“Who are you texting?” I said.
“My mother.”
“Why is the movie starting over again?”
“I wanted to see something I missed the first time.”
“Why are you on the floor?”
“I was eating pretzels.”
“Let me see the texts.”
She sighed. She stood and handed me the phone. There were two or three recent texts between her and her mother. A text message rolled in from a phone number. I recognized the number. It was an old boyfriend of hers. I felt sick, like I would faint. I didn’t read what it said. I threw the phone across the room.
“You were texting an old boyfriend.”
“I was texting my mother.”
She got the phone from the other side of the room. I tried to take it, but she held it behind her back. I knocked her onto the floor. It happened quickly.
“Show it to me,” I said. “I don’t care if you like him. I want you to go and be with him. You two are a very good match, in my opinion.”
I hit her in the face. She said, “Hit me one more time.”
I said, “Show it to me.”
“No. I won’t put up with this tyranny anymore.”
I stomped my wife’s foot and knocked her over. She tried to fight me. I took her hands and hit myself in the face.
I said, “Why, if you were going to do this, did you marry me? I was perfectly happy to be alone.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I saw the number.”
She gave me the phone and said, “So call it. Go ahead.”
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.
The Sew Man
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.
“But you must come in summer,” Salama’s son said. “Then everything is in flower.”
Salama took the pants from the sew man, expressing some annoyance at the wait and at the sew man’s anxiety. With great calm he brought the pants to me. “The pants, sir!”
“Have you been to Gulmarg?” his son asked.
“Please try them on, sir,” Salama said, and the three men watched me do it. All this time Salama’s son was talking, and it occurred to me that he was used to being ignored.
The trousers were loose. They had wide legs and the waist hung. Salama brought out the blazer. It had white circles of muslin for buttons, and no form to its collar. I put it on. It was loose in the shoulders and reached my mid-thighs. The lapels were wide. I had somehow turned old. I looked unbearably old.
“This isn’t what I had in mind.” I took off the jacket. My plan was to go and never come back. I said, “Maybe I should go and we can work this out some other time.”
Salama picked up his catalog. “Sir, you have asked me to make this for you and I have made it.”
He pointed to John Goodman.
“That’s the wrong picture!” I said. “That isn’t the suit.”
I tore off the blazer, dropped it onto the floor, pulled the door open, and left.
* * *
After breakfast I watched the fishermen. They sat on the noses of flat-bottomed boats about half the size of a kayak, with their legs tucked under their wool shirts. It looked familiar. When they cast their nets, it looked like they were tossing mud or vomiting. And they did something mysterious with sticks. They’d sit still for fifteen minutes watching the water, then, with one measured stroke after another, they thrust their poles into the water.
Ramzana, the man who brought me my food every day, opened the sliding door to my houseboat.
“The tailor is here for you.”
Salama took off his mittens and put them on my desk. He unwound his scarf a
nd draped it over the back of a chair. He got down onto his knees and began to rummage through a canvas tote bag. “I did not see you yesterday, so I came after prayers.”
He withdrew the salmon jacket I’d ordered and unfolded it. Still kneeling, he held it out to me. I got up out of my chair and I put it on. I went in back, to the bathroom, to look at myself.
In the blazer I looked like my dad. I looked yellow, and I looked very old. I tried pulling at the lapels, buttoning and unbuttoning the coat, and looking at different angles, but the coat was awful. I came back out, nodded, and said, “It’s good.”
“Sir”—he draped the coat over a chair back—“if you don’t mind, how much deposit had you left.”
“Two thousand rupees.”
“Sir, if it’s not any trouble…”
I began counting out more money. “How much is that jacket?”
“Just forty-eight hundred.”
“I’ll just pay you for it now,” I said, and counted out $34.
Salama’s scraping and bowing had an effect on me. I was being rude to him the way my rich friends had been rude to me, and the way salespeople at Neiman Marcus had been rude to my father. I was acting as though it was simple. If I spent my whole life like that, as the one with the money, I’d probably say things like “There’s no need for the hand-wringing, Mr. Salama.” It was funny how fast it happened.
Salama took the catalog out of his sack and paged through it until he found my measurements. “Sir, if you like, we can go ahead and make you the white suit as you have said.”
“No,” I said. “No.”
Mournfully, Salama turned to the chair back over which he had draped his scarf. He picked up his scarf slowly and wound it about his neck. He took his mittens in hand—they were oversize, and hand-knit, like Mickey Mouse gloves. He put them on, then took them off and put them back on the desk. He coughed. He switched his bag from one arm to the other, bent over, and somehow the salmon blazer slid off the chair back and caught his jacket. One of its loose strings looped itself around one of his suit-coat buttons, and he let it hang there. He bent over, rummaging through his sacks, and my blazer hung from him. He knew the effect he was having. He withdrew two plastic grocery sacks from his tote. Then, in unhurried silence, he detached the blazer from his button and replaced it over the chair back. He withdrew a circle of European-style puff pastry from one of the bags and started to heat it by holding it just above my steel, wood-burning oven.
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