The Coat of Many Colors

Okay, so it’s just one color. And, it’s a suit, not a coat. Poetic license. It does have the power to move people. Do you want precision or do you want a story?

When I plied the seas of the business world, I had numerous suits. For years, they’ve been relegated to storage, save a blue pinstripe “all purpose” model and a black one that has been seeing too much duty at funerals. With the impending marriage of my son, my ex called to ensure I knew what to wear or did I want her to take me shopping? She’s convinced that she had rescued me from a feral state and that I would revert once freed of adult supervision.

I assured her I had something suitable. I modeled the options for myself. One looked like I was on my way to sign a loan contract and the other a wake. Didn’t matter. The wedding is about the kids and no one will remember what I wore five minutes after it’s over. I took them both to the cleaner. I could decide later.

Late last week, the weather was very crappy and I was spending the day indoors. Among other treadmills for the mind, I was flipping through some old photos. One caught my eye.

It was from my heavy duty singles period, about 15 years ago, plus or minus. I fell in with a group who partied, traveled and whatever at least weekly, and on a grand scale. This photo had been taken at one of the monthly Thursday night dances, which were also thrown open to singles at large and drew several hundred. “Thrown open” isn’t quite accurate because any of the public events carried a hefty admission fee as a screening mechanism. The powers that be were only interested in bon vivants.

I have a few dozen photos from such events, but this picture caught my eye because I was wearing it. The Suit. I will repeat that. The Suit.

About that time, I was working on a project in Indianapolis. I go up on Mondays and try to wrap up Thursday at noon on the days of the monthly dance. This would give me time to get home, relax a little and then clean up and hop into my glad rags.

On this particular week, the client called me on Tuesday and requested a Thursday afternoon meeting. When a client pays that kind of hourly rate, you treat requests like the law.

I was aware that I hadn’t packed anything appropriate for the Thursday night bash and that anything I did have would be wrinkled and fragrant by then. So, Tuesday night, I hightailed it over to a discount suit place on the north side of Indy.

I was greeted by an overanxious salesman who asked what I wanted in a suit. Mostly a material that didn’t show scotch splashes or itch when I got sweaty dancing. But, I told him something that wasn’t too businesslike. He pulled a half dozen choices in about three seconds and draped them over the top of the rack. I set about trying on the coats and taking quick glances in the multiple angle mirror while he leaned on the wall and chattered positive reviews of each.

I shrugged on the fourth coat and moved to the mirror. He straightened suddenly and laid his hand aside his cheek in wonder. “That’s perfect! It’s like it was tailor made. It’s you!” I assumed he was on commission, but the suit did seem okay. I took it on the condition it could be altered within a day.

I had it time to change before my drive back to Cincinnati and directly to the dance. Clay was the ringleader of the group and always positioned his regal self at the entrance table, just so there was no mistake about his station. He didn’t take admissions, welcome people or anything so mundane. Just posed regally. He was more social once things got rolling.

So, when I checked in, I was surprised by his greeting me with more than superficial effort. “Hi, how have you been and…wait for it…where’d you get that suit?” I was a little taken aback and think I mumbled something about Indiana. “Very nice,” he said, stroking the sleeve.

To me, it was just a suit. I wrote it off to him building up to some kind of request.

I provisioned myself at the bar and started making a circuit of the various groups of revelers clumped around the perimeter of the dance floor. I was engaged with a small one when they ran dry of potables and went off to seek sustenance, leaving me alone with Liz.

Which is to say, left me alone. Liz was never with anyone but Liz. Even if she was distractedly sending a few words your way, she was focused on checking herself out in the mirrored walls of the ballroom or examining her nails.

Except in this case. When the group scattered, he eyes widened as though first noticing me there. In fact, that was probably the case. She took three quick steps forward which put her about the depth of a credit card from my chest. “Where did you get this suit?” she husked in my ear.

“At a suit store.” I’m never at a loss for words.

“Well Liz likes it,” she intoned, running her fingertips down the lapel. I nodded slightly, avoiding dipping my chin into her carefully coiffed do. “Liz really likes it.”

It went pretty much the same the rest of the evening. The classy thing to do would’ve been to retire its number right after that. The cloddish thing would be to don it on every possible occasion, up to and including picnics.

I chose the moderate course, deciding to use its significant powers for good. My good. I’d just whip it out for the primo events.

I’m looking at the photo and thinking I should go all out for my son’s wedding, even if I am just a prop. I know The Suit is somewhere around because I throw nothing away.

There it is, in the back of a closet of the spare bedroom, along with all the other moth eaten suits. And, that’s the problem. They are actually moth eaten.

While The Suit is imbued with magical powers, one of them is not being impervious to insect munching. The Suit is slightly battle-scarred.

Not to worry. I recall woolen hand-me-downs from my cousins being whisked off to a reweaver before I was ensconced in them to itch my way through family affairs. I immediately commenced a web search and came up empty.

I started calling dry cleaners. Some said they “heard of a guy in Chicago.” Most just said no one gets that done. They just toss clothing with holes. If I like it and the hole is less than 33% of the garment’s surface area, I don’t chuck it. I wear it. But, that wouldn’t suffice in this circumstance.

There was no time for a Chicago solution. Back to the web. I looked up reweaving on a do-it-yourself basis. I had some luck there but was realistic enough to surmise that I had a better chance of teaching my earhole to chew gum than myself to reweave.

Once more, into the breach. I surfaced one possibility, a woman in the next county. I called and she sounded near death. Another reason to hurry.

So, I carefully belted The Suit into the passenger seat and sped to the far corner of the earth. I presented The Suit to her with the beseeching eyes of a pet owner offering the hit & run victim to a vet. Please, oh please, save The Suit, doc.